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A critical analysis of Elon Musk’s leadership in Tesla motors

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DOI: 10.1007/s40497-021-00284-z

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Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40497-021-00284-z

RESEARCH

A critical analysis of Elon Musk’s leadership in Tesla motors

Md. Rahat Khan 1

Received: 8 December 2019 / Accepted: 28 February 2021

# The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Faculty of Entrepreneurship, University of Tehran 2021

Abstract
This present study applies qualitative research method to evaluate the entrepreneurial roles and leadership styles of Elon Musk in
Tesla motors. The study places its focus on the general review of Elon Musk’s leadership and attempts to match the leadership
traits with some traditional leadership approaches widely recognized in leadership theory. The study employs a structured
observation technique assimilating numerous secondary sources with a view to analyzing Musk’s leadership traits in Tesla
motor. The results unfold Musk’s leadership attributes and shows that they match more or less with all the traditional leadership
approaches but the servant leadership approach. Additionally, the outcomes also demonstrate a new character (entrepreneurial
leader) in Musk’s leadership. Finally, the study offers some recommends for Elon Musk to follow, such as the champion/
corporate intrapreneur and the servant leadership approaches so that they add practical values in his leading trait. This study
will be a guideline for the new entrepreneur and will provide some distinctive ways of improvement in existing entrepreneurship
as well as for management literature.

Keywords Elon Musk . Tesla motors . Entrepreneur . Leadership

Introduction Leadership is nothing but the ability to influence others

In the twenty-first century, both the scholars and practitioners
have said, core tricks are crucial to impel organizational per-
formance such as strategic planning and leadership (Bennett
& Lemoine, 2014). Doheny et al. (2012) stated that trans-
versely many industries, an increasing wave of volatility, un-
certainty, and business complexity and anxiety are cracking
markets and shifting the surroundings of competition.
Although globalization has shaped opportunities with one
hand, on the other hand, it has also established some threats
as well. The obstinate global recession has dulled repeated
explode of confidence for the return to a way of affluence.
The task of assimilating technological progress that hit the
market, along with the effects of demographic changes in
the workforce has created some uncertainty that the leaders
might face some major challenges. So, leaders require im-
provement in the discipline based on the concurrent business
environment.
* Md. Rahat Khan
rahatkhan.mrk14@gmail.com;
rahat.khan.dba@cityuniversity.edu.bd
1
Department of Business Administration, City University, Khagan,
Birulia, Savar, Dhaka 1216, Bangladesh
(Robbins & Judge, 2013). In the twenty-first century, leader-
ship is a challenge not only to lead an organization but also to
lead the environment as the business environment is changing
dynamically. During the past few years, organizations have
become progressively more conscious of the serious need for
leaders. So, leaders have to make constant changes in people,
process, structure, and technology. This entails flexibility and
promptness in management decision-making (Horney et al.,
2010). From the textbooks some traditional and basic leader-
ship qualities can be found such as autocratic, democratic,
laissez-faire leadership style (Robbins & Judge, 2013). As
the environment has changed; so the concept of leadership
has also changed (Rost, 1993; Goldring & Greenfield, 2002).
The current study is narrowly focusing on the leadership
traits of Elon Musk in Tesla motors. The basic aim of the study
is to find out to what extent the patterns of leadership tactics
match with Musk’s leadership in Tesla motors. More specifi-
cally, this particular study will try to observe Elon Musk’s
leadership practices in Tesla motors and try to unearth which
sorts of leadership attributes exist in Mask’s leadership. As a
consequence, the study will cover the following. The follow-
ing part of the study will discuss some leadership attributes
under the shape of literature review. In the third section, the
study will discuss the methodology of the research. After that,
the study will evaluate and narrate about Elon Musk and his

Tesla motors. Then, the study will analyze the leadership style
based on Elon Musk’s leadership. Finally, the research will
have a discussion on findings along with ending remarks.
Review of literature
Some contemporary leadership styles which have been prac-
ticed in organizations for reaching the organizational goals
have been stated below.
Charismatic and transformational leadership style
Charismatic leaders habitually try to build the status quo
healthier, whereas transformational leaders spotlight on
changing organizations into the leader’s vision (St. Thomas
University, 2018). Transformational leadership (TL) was
coined in 1973, in the sociological research named “Rebel
Leadership: Commitment and Charisma in the revolutionary
process.” The study was conducted by Downton, J.V. (Simic,
1998). Then, James MacGregor Burns applied the term “trans-
formational leadership” in the book titled Leadership (Burns,
1978). According to Burns, TL is a process where leaders and
supporters constantly try to endorse their individual psycho-
logical capability and motivational competence to higher
levels. In this process, the reciprocal and rising relationship
is present between leaders and their followers (Krishnan,
2004).
Participative/distributive leadership
In participative or teamwork leadership, more opportunities to
contribute in decision-making offer employees with superior
authentic rewards from work (Conger & Kanungo, 1988;
Thomas & Velthouse, 1990) along with advanced levels of
psychological empowerment (Spreitzer, 1995), which can
contribute in enhanced performance in the workplace. The
participative leadership behavior shows that the leader has
the confidence in, and contiguity and admiration for the sub-
ordinates and this type of leadership behavior fosters high
amount of trust towards the leader (Dirks & Ferrin, 2002, p.
614). For that consequence, the subordinates are liable to give
something back to their leaders along with the organizations
by serving better work performance (e.g., Cohen, 1992;
Zellars & Tepper, 2003).
Creative leadership
Creative leadership is a philosophy to act, expand and appre-
hend innovative ideas through mutual ambition of civilizing
the world through formation of enterprise. Creative leadership
is employed to counterfeit an environment that supports inno-
vative thoughts and mission-oriented entrepreneurship (Dijk
J Glob Entrepr Res
et al., 2017). Leaders can exercise creativity as a planned tool
to direct their organizations to attain adaptability. Kabanoff
and Rossiter (1994) described applied creativity as a method
which works in a real-world to find or to solve complex prob-
lems; by having an authentic behavioral creative plan as the
final answer.
Change leadership
Change wants to craft a new system, which always needs
leadership (Kotter, 1996). The concept basically explains
why thriving, and sustainable organizational advances depend
on the successful change in leaders who recognize how to
produce and publicize a vision, overcome battle to change
and handle conflict. Lewin’s (1947) theory of the change pro-
cess has three stages of unfreezing, freezing, and refreezing.
Since then, both researchers and administrators have centered
on the significance of change in execution processes for shap-
ing employees’ behaviors and attitudes towards changing en-
vironment. This prominence on change-process can be origi-
nated in the fields of justice (e.g., Shapiro & Kirkman, 1999),
democratic decision-making (e.g., Schweiger & Denisi,
1991), and organizational development (e.g., Quirke, 1996),
Intelligence leadership
Intelligence leadership is found to steer the future by clasping
ambiguity and reorganizing problems as opportunities just
like a proactive attitude in enchanting their organizations into
the unexplored territory. According to Goleman (1998), emo-
tional intelligence (leadership) is the ability to recognize per-
sonal thoughts as well as of others, for managing emotion and
for motivating ourselves and to fit in us and in our interaction.
For leaders, emotional intelligence is vital for team success.
All the same, who is more likely to thrive?—a leader who
yells at his/her team when s/he is under anxiety, or a leader
who settles in, controls his/her emotional rush and tranquilly
evaluates the situation.
Multicultural leadership style
A multicultural leader is able to apply multicultural lead-
ership by assessing the value of various cultures. A good
multicultural leader expresses excellence in talents includ-
ing patience, listening, admiration, and helpfulness while
remaining polite. A multicultural leader will demonstrate
admiration for and make accommodations to permit indi-
viduals of diverse cultures to work together and contribute
snugly with those of other beliefs and cultures (Dave
Strathmann, 2016).
J Glob Entrepr Res
Pedagogical leadership style
The concept of pedagogy is transferred by its Grecian sources
(Heikka & Waniganayake, 2011). Pedagogical leader is a per-
son who by his acts, speeches or else promotes pedagogical
action. Pedagogical leadership demands extraordinary keen-
ness and aptitude based on the secret attitudes of the leader.
The leader’s responsibility includes the sentiment of leader-
ship and influence, such as an educator or pedagogue, never-
theless the forms, methods, and techniques are different. The
idea of pedagogical leadership conveys leadership nearer to
people’s interface, as contrasting to the earlier hierarchical
leadership style. The administration of pedagogy is nothing
but the management as a whole – how the worker can put his/
her whole hearted effort in their work as a teacher and also
develop and learn his/her work. But on the other hand,
Pedagogical leadership is the art of employees’ learning, and
the execution is cleared by each leader’s own learning percep-
tion. (Lahtinen, 2017).
Servant leadership style
Robert K. Greenleaf (1904–1990) commenced the concept of
servant leadership among contemporary organizational theo-
rists (Spears, 1995, 1996). In Greenleaf’s (1977) view, lead-
ership must mainly meet the demands of others. The spotlight
of servant leadership is on the others instead of on one’s own
and on understanding the task of the leader as a servant
(Greenleaf, 1977). Egotism should not stimulate servant lead-
ership; rather, it should lead to a higher flat of motivation
(Greenleaf, 1977; Pollard, 1996).
Bridging leadership style
Bridging leadership focuses on creating and maintaining suc-
cessful working associations among stakeholders and key
partners. “Bridging” various perspectives and views often ini-
tiates a good extent of diverse stakeholders, and a general
agenda which can embark on sharing and developing things
in order to discover resolutions to societal and economic trou-
bles. The “bridging leadership” concept was developed by a
worldwide group of development practitioners and re-
searchers assembled by Synergos (2017). Bridging leadership
assists nurturing synergy and emphasizing motivation and be-
havior through the exercise of communication to construct
climate of trust and buoyancy.
Methodology
The study is qualitative type in nature which is based on struc-
tured observation research method. The observational ap-
proaches are usually used where the investigators or
researchers attempt to examine the result of factors related to
the risk, investigative action, test, or some other associated
interference without upsetting the changes which are or are
not unexposed to it (Institute for Work & Health, 2015). In
addition, observation includes an investigator to track all the
related phenomena without providing information beforehand
(Malhotra & Dash, 2016). In case of structured observation, it
denotes an important process in which a research obtains data
without the direct participation of the respondents. It also en-
ables the investigator to gather information which could not be
obtained utilizing traditional research methodology, such as
survey questionnaires as well as interviews, either structurally
or non-structurally. Structured observation applies to a coding
system for the purpose of processing the collected data and
information (Mintzberg, 1970). Observational study collec-
tively denotes the studies of case, cohort, along with cross
sectional analysis (Mann, 2003). Observation method refers
to an insight into an association between the groups as well as
dyads, which explains the overall scenarios, processes, and
captures situation and then notifies regarding the impact of
physical environment (Mulhall, 2003). The approach and ap-
plication of observational method normally diverge based on
the research philosophical orientation along with the role
(from the perspective the researcher observes the situation or
participants) of that particular researcher (Walshe et al., 2012).
Observation method is most commonly used in social sci-
ences, more specifically in case of anthropological researches.
The basic aim of that method is to uncover the unconscious
events or annoyances which may have some potential interest
in emerging markets (Wimmer et al., 2001). The data has been
assembled from the secondary sources such as from different
newspapers, journals, blogs, websites of Tesla Inc. and some
other related secondary sources which contain information
regarding Elon Musk and his leadership attributes along with
Tesla Inc. Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), in their study, have
recommended two types of tactics to clarify the data of qual-
itative research. Firstly, to identify the exact research ques-
tions, which are the best fitting for that particular research
and then assemble the details and specific solutions or answers
of the investigated events? Secondly, to evaluate the partici-
pants’ responses under thematic design as well as to restore
that thematic design towards a background that generates the
thoughtfulness and elucidates the stories’ components.
Elon musk and Tesla motors
About Elon musk
Musk is a South African entrepreneur born in 1971. In 1989,
at the age of 17, he evaded his obligatory service in the South
African military and moved to Canada for attending Queen’s
University. In 1992, he studied in business and physics at the
University of Pennsylvania. He completed both of his

undergraduate and graduate degrees in economics and contin-
ued for a second bachelor’s degree in physics. After leaving
the University of Pennsylvania, Elon Musk started his journey
as a PhD student in energy physics at Stanford University in
California.
Elon Musk started his business career by launching X.com
in 1999 which is widely known as PayPal (Online money
payment system across the globe), then launched SpaceX in
2002, Tesla in 2003 (Biography.com, 2018); Musk himself is
an entrepreneurial leader. He attacked the traditional environ-
ment (Khan, 2019) where people were scared for an eco-
friendly vehicle along with good speed like a gasoline car,
Mr. Musk and his Tesla made this possible for the world.
The electric vehicle is a wonder of the century in transporta-
tion industry which precisely means change leadership.
The Tesla motors
Tesla was originated in 2003 by a cluster of engineers who
dreamed to demonstrate that community did not require to
compromise to drive slower version of electric vehicles in
comparison to the gasoline vehicles. They can avail the faster,
better, adventurous, smooth driving through electric cars than
the gasoline cars. At present days, Tesla builds considerably
scalable clean energy generation and storage products through
creating all-electric vehicles. This means, green vehicle,
which shifts towards a zero-emission prospect. In 2008,
Tesla launched Model S and the car accelerates from 0 to
60 miles per hour within 2.28 s. In 2015, Tesla added a new
model in its product line named Model X. The model was the
upgraded version of Model S, which holds five-star safety
ratings from all categories. The certification was given by
the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
In 2017, the company came up with another new model
named Model 3 and the model was considered the CEO’s
(Elon Musk) “Secret Master Plan” of 2016, a high-volume
electric vehicle with comparatively low price. Shortly, Tesla
produced the most comfortable and the safest truck named
Tesla Semi. The truck can save a great number of fuel costs
of its owners.
All the vehicles and majority of the vehicles components of
Tesla are produced in its own factory located in Fremont,
California. Tesla is captivating a proactive approach to safety.
For that consequence, the company entails the employees,
who gets engaged in the production, to join in a multi-day
program of training before the very first day of entering into
the factory floor; because, the company wants to achieve the
goal of having the safest factories across the globe. Tesla had a
total amount of 37,543 full-time employees until December
31, 2017 (Annual Report, 2018).
To construct a completely sustainable energy ecosystem,
Tesla also invents exclusive set of power energy solutions
such as Solar Roof, Powerpack, and Powerwall. The solutions
J Glob Entrepr Res
facilitate businesses, dwellers, as well as utilities to deal with
storage, renewable energy creation, and consumption. The
Tesla considers all of the abovementioned efforts as just their
beginning. After that, Tesla attempts to introduce eco-friendly
and most reasonable cars, and energy production (Tesla,
2019).
Financial performance and products of Tesla
At the very beginning of incorporation on June 29, 2010, the
IPO (Initial Public Offering) was $17.00 per share. The fol-
lowing Table 1 shows the latest scenario of share price.
Total revenues were generated on 31st December 2014 as
$3,198,356; 31st December 2015 as $ 4,046,025; 31st
December 2016 as $ 7,000,132; 31st December 2017 as $
11,758,751; and 31st December 2018 as $21,461,268.
Until now, Tesla Inc. is offering the following products:
• Model S • Model 3 • Model X • Model Y • Cyber truck
• Tesla Energy Service • Roadster • Tesla Semi
Critical analysis of Musk’s leadership (2003–2018)
Elon Musk, the other name for Tesla motors, is considered a
visionary leader who has the ability to see the future. Musk is a
mastermind and thus discerns that, it values him while he pays
attention to what his critics, customers, observers, and fol-
lowers have articulated. And he utilizes this collected infor-
mation to the best advantages (Galek, 2018). Some transfor-
mational characteristics have also been observed from Musk’s
leadership, He is constantly optimistic and tranquil even when
at the edge of bankruptcy. After a breakdown in 2008 of the
rocket launch, employees were tired and emotionally broken
down. Musk tackled the situation saying:
“We are going to do this. It is going to be ok. Do not
freak out.” An observer named Dolly Singh remem-
bered “It was like magic. Everyone chilled out immedi-
ately and started to focus on what just happened and
figuring out how to fix it.” (Gromov, 2017; Blazek,
2016)
Mr. Musk has not directly affirmed that he applies any one
specific theory of leadership, rather his leadership styles run
across a diversity of circumstances. Musk employs supportive
as well as participative leadership (distributed leadership) stat-
ed by (Williams, 2018) which supports the path-goal theory of
leadership (Snyder, 2018).
Musk is a genuine risk-taker; he started his business with
X.com in 1999 and the business was flourishing on that time
and is popularly known as PayPal. However, the dream was
J Glob Entrepr Res

Table 1 Consolidated financial data from 2014 to 2018

Year ended December 31

2018 (2) 2017 2016 (1) 2015 2014
Consolidated statements of operations data:
Total revenues $ 21,461,268 $ 11,758,751 $ 7,000,132 $ 4,046,025 $ 3,198,356
Gross profit $ 4,042,021 $ 2,222,487 $ 1,599,257 $ 923,503 $ 881,671
Loss from operations $ (388,073) $ (1,632,086) $ (667,340) $ (716,629) $ (186,689)
Net loss attributable to common stockholders $ (976,091) $ (1,961,400) $ (674,914) $ (888,663) $ (294,040)
Net loss per share of common stock attributable to common $ (5.72) $ (11.83) $ (4.68) $ (6.93) $ (2.36)
stockholders, basic and diluted
Weighted average shares used in computing net loss per 170,525 165,758 144,212 128,202 124,539
share of common stock, basic and diluted
As of December 31
2018 (2) 2017 2016 (1) 2015 2014
Consolidated balance sheet data:
Working (deficit) capital $ (1,685,828) $ (1,104,150) $ 432,791 $ (29,029) $ 1,072,907
Total assets 29,739,614 28,655,372 22,664,076 8,067,939 5,830,667
Total long-term obligations 13,433,874 15,348,310 10,923,162 4,125,915 2,753,595

Source: Annual report Tesla, Inc. 2019

bigger and he sold his business in 2002 to liquid money for
starting other remarkable businesses like SpaceX and Tesla
motors. According to Forbes, Musk owned his earliest
billion with the trade of PayPal in 2002 (Biography.com,
2018). Musk has also a good concern for his men. He priori-
tizes on the safety of the workers. The following is what he
said in an email to his employees in reaction to a lately report-
ed high injury rate at one of his Tesla stations (Muoio, 2017).
He said, “It breaks my heart when someone is injured…
I’ve asked that every injury be reported directly to me,
without exception…I would like to meet with each in-
jured individual so I can understand, from them, exactly
what we need to do to make it better…Then I will go
down to the production line and perform the same task
that they perform…[Managers at Tesla] lead from the
front line, not from some safe and comfortable ivory
tower”
The statement reflects Musk’s concern for employees as per
the management grid (Blake & Mouton, 1964). Musk is by
born a change leader, always tried to attack the environment,
took big risks, and proved that he is true to his vision.
Musk has a great intention for socialization. He spends
some of his time tweeting, one of his tweets “Am considering
taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured” made a huge
impact on Tesla but went against the company policy. Few of
the directors were unhappy about the post and he was also
sued by U.S. Security Exchange Commission (SEC)
(Lekach, 2018); however, the tweet raised Tesla’s share up
7% after a few hours of posting. It may be considered positive
leadership from his tweet as either he had a plan to raise capital
for a new project like intelligence leadership or a part of mar-
ket positioning (inverters’ mind) for Tesla.
Although he was very busy at his work and very work-
aholic: for instance, he could not manage time to celebrate
his brother’s wedding reception, but he always spends
some time for socialization and talk back in tweeter
(Galek, 2018); it is amazing and the purpose is nothing
but to draw the attention of customers along with their
minds for future growth of his business. That trait can also
be considered the marketing mind leadership of Musk.
Some former Tesla workers who personally worked or col-
laborated together with Musk on several instances
expressed their experiences with him as follows. Few ques-
tions were asked to them about their experience and opin-
ions to work with Elon Musk (Matouesek, 2019).
Several workers who served or associated with Musk
observed his intellect. Almost everyone from the nine
people said, “He is very much intelligent and believes in
change management. He is always ten steps clearly
ahead of any others”
One of the participants who worked as a manager in
Tesla said, “You have to think 10 times more audacious
than he does to be able to be successful. If Musk liked
your idea, he wouldn’t hesitate to put it into action”
During the interview, participating employees were asked
about Musk’s leadership skills regarding how he could prop-
erly utilize his employees to become a better manpower in
Tesla Inc. Most of the participants said,

No one is better than him to properly utilize employees
in organization. One of the senior executives who
worked for Tesla motors shared his opinions as, “90%
of the time I disagreed with Musk, I later realized Musk
was right. I feel like I’m 10 times smarter now than
when I first joined,”
This statement proves Elon’s quality and ability to practice
the transformational leadership trait (Ivana Simic, 1998) to his
employees. Two of the senior workers who worked under
Musk claimed that, “he would not hesitate to adjust the team’s
goals if the social networking message of the consumer cap-
tured his attention.” He also added that, “What ultimately
triggers him to act and make a decision is what he reads on
social media,”
Another one said regarding the issue as, “When you’re
in a business meeting with him, he will pivot the direc-
tion of the organization literally overnight. So
manufacturing could be a problem today, and as soon
as it stops being reported on social media, as soon as it
stops being reported in the news, he’ll move on to what-
ever the news is claiming the new problem is.”
An engineer who worked in Tesla as a production engineer
has shared her opinion about the high level standard in Musk’s
leadership.
The engineer explained that, “Musk sometimes
took that impulse too far, increasing costs and re-
ducing efficiency, but the quality of Tesla’s vehi-
cles is a testament to Musk’s perfectionism. Tesla
is an engineer’s paradise where the pencil is liter-
ally never down.”
During the interview, a former manager talked about
the goal-setting abilities and techniques generally
adapted by Musk in Tesla. He said, Musk occasionally
set impracticable enlarge targets instead of a reasonable
goal in an effort to accomplish it. That means, sometimes
Musk believe in the “Think Big” concept of goal setting.
Through this concept, the employees and organization
may set highly optimistic stretch targets to motivate
greater levels rather than a typical goal-setting strategy
(Brown, 2009).
The manager also added, “He thought way outside the
box. The first time he met Musk, the Tesla CEO asked
him and a group of his coworkers what they saw when
they looked at a soda can. Musk said they could see a
spaceship if they multiplied the soda can size. Musk said
that 85 hours of work per week is the optimum amount.
It is very much contagious”
J Glob Entrepr Res
Nevertheless, some darker side of Musk’s leadership is also
obvious. Some fluctuations of his manners and preferences in
decision-making may downsize his leadership. Mr. Musk is
suffering from an age-old problem. He endeavors to do the
whole thing by himself. Unluckily, his choice to do so exhibits
a basic mix-up of what leadership means (Enderwick, 2018).
The physical health of Musk is also a part of his changing
behavior. As he is a workaholic he could not sleep well and
suffered from insomnia that may affect his leading ability as
well. Two of his employees talked about him as,
Employee-1: “Elon’s worst trait by far, in my opinion, is
a complete lack of loyalty or human connection,”
Employee-2: “Many of us worked tirelessly for him for
years and were tossed to the curb like a piece of litter
without a second thought. Maybe it was calculated to
keep the rest of the workforce on their toes and scared;
maybe he was just able to detach from human connec-
tion to a remarkable degree. What was clear is that peo-
ple who worked for him were like ammunition: used for
a specific purpose until exhausted and discarded.”
A retired manager who had been on numerous phone con-
versations with Musk has now said that he assumed Musk had
not ever learned his name—something that he enjoyed, be-
cause when somebody’s name did come up for the first time
throughout a phone conference, he would sometimes leave a
job shortly thereafter. Two retired senior employees said peo-
ple were afraid to say Musk that they argued with (Matouesek,
2019).
One of them shared that, “Because of the pressure that
he puts on his entire executive team, his senior leader-
ship team, even if they have the experience, they
wouldn’t dare speak up against him,”
The above comments for a leader from his subordinates
may undermine the leadership quality of Musk. A leader must
have the ability to understand his men and also some human
skills in all cases but Musk is falling apart from those types of
traits. So he has a lack of servant leadership style (Greenleaf,
1977).
Nonetheless, People who are engaged in the technology
industry have declared that Musk’s impulse and the extent
of his aspiration match that of both Steve Jobs and Bill
Gates. Edward Jung, who is a child genius and worked for
both Bill and Steve Jobs, said that,
Elon has that deep appreciation for technology, the no-
holds-barred attitude of a visionary, and that determina-
tion to go after long-term things that they both had, and
he has that consumer sensibility of Steve along with the
ability to hire good people outside of his own comfort
J Glob Entrepr Res
areas that are more like Bill. You almost wonder wheth-
er Bill and Steve had created a genetically engineered
love child and, who knows, maybe we should genotype
Elon to see if that’s what happened.
A venture capitalist named Steve Jurvetson, who is a share-
holder of Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity, and also worked un-
der Jobs’ leadership, and was familiar with Gates very well,
also expressed:
“Musk is an upgraded mix of the two. Like Jobs, Elon
does not tolerate C or D players,” But I’d say he’s nicer
than Jobs and a bit more refined than Bill Gates.
Result and discussion
The CEO and co-founder of Tesla, Elon Musk has been ad-
mired globally for both of his leadership and entrepreneurial
skills. Musk is an effectual sequential entrepreneur having
good standing as a creative mastermind. His roles as CEO
and Product Engineer have been exemplary behind the rapid
growth of Tesla. Musk was considered a successful creative
thinking leader accredited with the fruitful launch of Tesla
Roadster in 2018, which was the first lithium-ion battery cell
electric car. Later, Musk supervised the launch of the Model S,
Model X, and Model 3 eco-friendly electric vehicles along
with the acquisition of SolarCity Corp (Dudovskiy, 2018).
Nevertheless, the recent leadership and role of Musk in
Tesla have considerably made concern to investors and stake-
holders. His one tweet about privatization of Tesla and
funding sent the company into a big turmoil. The company
has been constantly deteriorating its declared targets of num-
bers of vehicles to be produced by huge margin. In addition,
monthly billions of dollars are being spent without any profit
in view. In the very first quarter of the year 2018 alone, Tesla
annealed through a record amount of USD 710 million losses
(The Guardian, 2018). The above turmoil was blamed by the
stakeholders just for Musk’s exhausted physical health along
with 120 h of work per week and he stayed three/four days in
factory without departing outside (Steward et al., 2018).
Figure 1 shows the overall outcomes and interlink between
theoretical aspects of leadership and Elon Musk’s leadership.
Few recommendations should obviously be made about Elon
Musk and his leadership. Firstly, Musk needs to set a standard
company culture of freedom and trust along with accountabil-
ity ascertained. Secondly, Musk should distribute some of his
work-load for his physical as well as mental health. Though it
will really be difficult to find a better replacement for Musk’s
workloads, Musk can apply the champion approach or
Corporate Intrapreneur Approach (Thompson & Strickland,
2003) like “He is nowhere but everywhere.” Thirdly, he needs
to take care of his physical and mental health. He is suffering
from insomnia for his workaholic attitudes, so he needs per-
fect sleep or good rest. Because, insomnia may be the reasons
for reduced judgmental ability, depressions of work, forgetful
behavior, accidents or many more (Peri, 2014). Fourthly, lead-
ership is all about human skill where the leader has the ability
to cope up with people, understanding their demands, and
work for mutual interests. The forgiveness along with peda-
gogical mentality has a big impact on leadership style. For
those certain criteria, Musk had fallen short in many cases.
So, Musk needs to work on his human skill (Katz, 2009) as
well. Finally, the personality is also a huge issue in leadership.
Personality in talking, in decision-making, in behavior is al-
ways evaluated by people who are surrounded by true influ-
ential characteristics like Elon Musk. But, the tweeting, mock-
ingly referring SEC as “Shortseller Enrichment Commission”
(Bloomberg, 2018) is not coherent to the personality like Elon
Musk. Musk also needs to work on his public speeches ap-
proach as well.
Conclusion
The remarkable achievements of Tesla have caused the world
to become more interested in Musk’s leadership and how he
finds so many people, diagonally in numerous organizations,
and the public, to turn into more motivated and interested in
attaining the goals he is situating. He was also listed as
“World’s Greatest Leaders” in 2017 among the top fifty of
Fortune Magazine’s (Fortune.com, 2018). This particular
research basically tries to understand the certain leadership
characteristics of Elon Musk in Tesla motors. In the
literature part, the study points out some conventional
leadership traits, such as charismatic, transformational
leadership style, participative or distributive leadership,
creative leadership, change leadership, intelligence
leadership, multicultural leadership, pedagogical leadership,
and servant leadership, along with bridging leadership style.
In analysis, the study has tried to match those leadership
characteristics in comparison to leadership practices which
are implemented by Elon Musk in his Tesla motors. The
findings and discussion show that Elon Musk has
incorporated the participative or distributive leadership,
pedagogical leadership style, creative leadership, change
leadership, and intelligence leadership; however, he has
some shortcomings in servant leadership style. While some
other leadership style like multicultural leadership and
bridging leadership are found absent in his leadership trait.
In addition, Musk has followed entrepreneurial leadership in
his organization. However, few mistakes or leadership faults
of Musk have caused Tesla to suffer huge losses in recent
times.
 J Glob Entrepr Res

Conventional leadership Elon Musk’s leadership Recommendations

Charismatic Leadership
Entrepreneurial leadership
Transformational Leadership
Charismatic Leadership Champion approach
Participative or
Transformational Leadership or Corporate
Distributive Leadership
Participative or Intrapreneur
Creative Leadership
Distributive Leadership Servant Leadership
Change Leadership,
Creative Leadership
Intelligence Leadership
Change Leadership,
Multicultural Leadership
Intelligence Leadership
Pedagogical Leadership
Pedagogical Leadership
Servant Leadership Servant Leadership
Bridging Leadership

Fig. 1 Interlink between theoretical aspects of leadership and Elon Musk’s leadership. Source: Authors’ observation. ★Elon’s added leadership besides
conventional leadership approaches. ✵Recommendations to add these approaches. ⇒Has found in Elon’s leadership but need to improve (fall short)

Though the study has tried to assess the leadership traits of

Elon Musk in Tesla, yet many things can be done in future
works. As the research is qualitative in nature and the out-
comes of the research have been drawn based on secondary
sources with the support of observation methods, but the fu-
ture research can explore these things based on quantitative
techniques. More specifically a structured questionnaire can
be made based on this current research to survey Tesla’s em-
ployees who undergoes through the direct leadership of Elon.
Besides, the future research can be tested through the face to
face interview of Elon Musk and his employees. The implica-
tion of the research will have a huge impact on the leadership
practice in Tesla motors and its policy makers. Additionally,
some other organizations or leaders can take some lessons
from this research as well as Elon’s leadership characteristics
to improve the quality of leadership practice in their respective
organizations.
Abbreviations SEC, United States Securities and Exchange
Commission; USD ($), United States dollar; IPO, initial public offering;
CEO, Chief Executive Officer; TL, transformational leadership
Acknowledgements I first acknowledge Allah’s kindness, who has given
me strength and wisdom for learning. Then, I acknowledge my parents’
and wife’s full support of my work and finally the anonymous reviewers
who have helped me to outline the paper to a publishable shape.
Availability of data and materials Data of that research has been col-
lected from secondary sources, journal articles, newspaper, magazines,
blogs, etc.
Author contribution The author prepared the full article based on the
secondary data.
Declarations
Ethics approval and consent to participate Not applicable.
Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests.
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J Glob Entrepr Res
Md. Rahat Khan is a Ph.D. fellow at Jagannath University, Bangladesh,
and working as an Assistant Professor in Management under the
Department of Business Administration, City University, Bangladesh.
Mr. Khan is a researcher and academician in business concentration; more
specifically in the field of disruptive innovation in business along with
psychological and behavioral issues in HRM, management, and market-
ing. Till now He has 3 books, 22 journal articles, and 5 conference papers
(one of those having the best paper award). He is also professionally
serving as an editorial board member and reviewer for 27 international
indexed journals of SAGE, Emerald, Springer, Inderscience publishing,
and so on. Amongst those, 13 journals are indexed and listed in SCOPUS,
ABDC, and/or WoS.