All existing organization required a leader.

For an organization to operate smoothly, a

great leader should complete his role which is given by practicing the values of the
representative organization. Oxford Dictionaries defined leader as the person who leads or
commands a group, organization, or country. Throughout years, there are many versions of
the definition of leadership depending on the individuals who defined it.

In this first part of the essay, I would like to describe why Elon Musk is the leader of
my choice. Elon Musk is one of the most influential individuals in the world. Elon Reeve
Musk, born on 28 June 1971 is a South African-born American entrepreneur and
businessman. Musk founded X.com which later would be known as PayPal in 1999, SpaceX
in 2002 and Tesla Motors in 2003. He founded not one, not two, but three multi-billion
company early on in his life. When Musk sold his start-up company, Zip2 to a division of
Compaq Computers, he instantly became a multimillionaire in his late 20s. His intention of
colonizing Mars seems like a joke a few years before but now the possibility of colonizing
Mars is much higher. These marvelous accomplishments are a few of the reasons Musk is one
of the most respected individuals worldwide.

Most of the people who have worked and who are working with and for Elon Musk
described him as a visionary. He is definitely known as an actual genius who take advantage
of his intelligence and channel them towards his innovative creation. SpaceX, in my opinion
is Musk’s greatest achievement. He had revolutionized the space industry by leading SpaceX
into successfully launching Falcon Heavy and dropping the payload, Musk’s Roadster to a
trans-Mars injection heliocentric orbit in February 2018. This event is a historical moment for
mankind because there are many people who doubt that the launching was possible. Now, the
cynics had been proven wrong and Musk continued to break barriers of the human perception
and cynicism. Musk’s vision to making life multi-planetary has gone to its first step, and he
will continue down this path until he succeeds to achieve his goal. A world where humans
could travel to a different planet may be possible in the future.

One of Elon Musk leadership traits is to move fast. Every operation in any of his
companies are constantly moving at a fast pace. Whether Tesla or SpaceX, the pace of
innovation of both companies are rapid. SpaceX pace of innovation is much faster than the
big airspace company; e.g. NASA which is a country driven system. Smaller company are
known to be more innovative than bigger company because smaller company operation
would perish if they didn’t try innovating. Tesla and SpaceX are a super engineering driven
companies that implement rapid communication for their day to day operation.

Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, Solar City, Open AI and Hyperloop wouldn’t exist without the
innovative mind of Elon Musk. He is constantly making changes, introducing new ideas and
improving products. Let’s take Tesla Motors for instance. Tesla’s business strategy would be
continuous innovation. One of the innovations of Tesla is their battery cells. The battery
range for Tesla Roadster are 265 miles, which are twice than the next competitor. This is a
huge step in making electric vehicle practical. Tesla’s recharge time is 7 times more and takes
30 times shorter time range than a Chevy Volt that takes an entire night to get 40 miles of
driving. Tesla also provide charging station infrastructure with the addition of massive
charging network for free. Tesla is already way ahead of other companies in renovating their
batteries. You can probably guess what they had done to the other components of their
products.

Every leader has their own style of leading. Same goes with Elon Musk. James Burns
defined transformational leadership as a process of transforming the status quo.
Transformational leaders exert strong influence on followers and stimulate individuals to
discuss possibilities for the future. This exactly describe the leadership style of Elon Musk.
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.” SpaceX for instance wouldn’t exist
without his vision concerning space exploration. Kevin Brogan, one of the engineers in
SpaceX recalls that Elon always wanted to have day by day plans and even hour by hour
forecasts and sometimes minute by minute countdowns. His leadership is more of a hands-on
approach. The founding employee of SpaceX, Tom Mueller states that “Musk is not afraid to
get his hands dirty.” Musk once were fully covered in epoxy checking the sealing of surfaces.
Musk also interviewed the first two hundred employees and keep on doing interviews for
engineering positions in his companies today. Elon Musk transformational leadership had
enabled him to lead multi industries organizations.

A leader should not be perfect but strives to be a better leader every day. Elon Musk
has proven throughout these years that he also been through failures but doesn’t dwell on
them. He gets up, fixes his mistake, reinvent them and succeed to achieve all the goals he sets
to. Therefore, I see Elon Musk as a leader who are flawed but constantly will improve for the
sake of his companies.