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The Transformational Leadership Style

of Elon Musk
by Mark Bilton | Mar 10, 2016 | Get A Life, Get A Move On, Get Going, Get Real, Get
Social, Get Up | 0 comments

Would you work for a company whose former employees say both, It was incredible!
and Id never work there again? A great question asked byJeremy Unruh writing for the
Booth Company.
If you want to work for a person who leads by example and who, through his own

drive toward excellence, pushes you toward your fullest potential and perhaps
beyond, you might. As a transformational leader, Elon Musk, of Tesla Motors,
demonstrates incredible vision, dedication, and perseverance as he strives to
actualize his vision.
Dolly Singh, former HR head at SpaceX, says about Elon Musk, The thing that makes
Elon Elon is his ability to make people believe in his vision. Jim Cantrell, SpaceXs first
engineer, adds, Most of us cant conceive these things working; he cant conceive it
failing.
Yet the amazing vision and drive that make up the leadership style of Elon
Musksometimes mean that an engineer might spend nine months working 100
hours a week on something because Musk has pushed him to, and then out of
nowhere Musk will change his mind and scrap the project.
Musks incredible journey began in South Africa, where he was severely bullied as a
child, even ending up in a hospital when a group of boys threw him down a stairwell
and beat him severely until he blacked out. From these inauspicious beginnings, he
moved on to attend universities in Canada and the United States, including two days
in a program toward a Ph.D. in Applied Physics at Stanford University. He left that
program to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams in the worlds of the Internet,
renewable energy, and outer space.
Today, at 39 years old, heis the founder, CEO and CTO of SpaceX, co-founder, CEO
and product architect of Tesla Motors, chairman of SolarCity, co-chairman of OpenAI,
co-founder of Zip2, and co-founder of PayPal. He isthe 39th wealthiest person in the
US.
In all his ventures, Musk sets the bar for the rest of the industry, whether on earth or
in space. SolarCity, founded to help combat global warming, is the second largest
solar provider in the U.S. With Tesla, he built affordable electric cars and moved on
to triple the number of supercharger stations. To encourage auto manufacturers to
expand the electric car industry, he allows use of Teslas technology patents. With
SpaceX, already partnering with NASA, his goal is to make trips to Mars affordable for
the average person. He wants to establish a space colony of 80,000 on Mars by 2040,
envisioning it as an alternative to potential extinction on this planet.
Transformational leaders can come into conflict with leaders who resist change, as
Musk did at PayPal. They are also particularly gifted at spotting what is not working
more easily than other leaders, as Musk did with theapproved California High-Speed
Rail system. He went on to design and propose his own Hyperloop, using a dozen
engineers from SpaceX and Tesla, a system which he says will take people 350 miles

from Sylmar (a northern district of Los Angeles) to Hayward (east of San Francisco)
and would theoretically allow commuters to travel between the cities in 35 minutes
or less, providing a shorter traveling time than even a commercial airplane can
currently provide.
Like Steve Jobs, Musk is a visionary and a genius, but perhaps his most outstanding
qualities are his belief in his own vision, his drive and his persistence, refusing to
accept obstacles in his path.
read more at boothco.com

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