1.

0 INTRODUCTION

The world today is evolving rapidly than ever before. New start-ups, technology and

innovations are surfacing almost every month. However, the relevancy, market threat,

consumer behaviours, productivity, economic and political factors determine the success of

the business model. Traditional success methods such as operational excellence, financial

resources, excessive marketing can never guarantee the survival of the business in the era of

globalization. Today, business success in highly competitive market requires a strong

leadership and high passion towards innovation and technology. The one thing I admire

about Musk is that, his uncompromising and unconstrained ambition disrupts the aerospace,

automotive, financial and energy industries. Elon Musk is an entrepreneur, innovator,

visionary, inventor and leader of Space X, Tesla Motors, Zip2, PayPal and others. He also

has a wide range of implemented plans including interplanetary colonization, initiating

‘Hyperloop’ to carry people and materials over a huge distance quickly and affordably,

artificial intelligence human genetics, and underground multi-level roadways in large,

crowded cities (Phelan, 2017). Along his journey, he has won many awards and recognitions

for his perseverance towards reaching to another planet for human species survival, using

renewable energy to power premises and disruption to automotive highways in the world.

He has also acclaimed to be the only person to have developed three separate billion dollar

companies (Olivier, 2003). The researcher has also mentioned that Musk is able to think and

act differently under pressure, where he is constantly passionate about getting his own way

and not compromising to get it done. Besides, he has also been praised for his long-term

vision and protecting it even during toughest times and being focused only on the goal. Elon

Musk is undeniably a captivating and inspirational figure, but how did he lead his companies

and become Forbes 20 Most Powerful Man in the world, how was his development as a

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leader influenced in his victories and can these qualities imitated by his followers and

managers across the world?

The aim of this study is to know the contributions and achievements of Elon, evaluate

the Big Five Personality Model and how is it related to Musk and find the leadership theory

qualities that Elon Musk possessed and how these qualities impacted his success.

2.0 BACKGROUND OF ELON MUSK

2.1. Early Life

According to Blystone (2019), Mair (2016), Olivier (2003), and Biography.com

(2019), Elon Reeve Musk was born in 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa to father Errol Musk,

a South African electromechanical engineer, and Maye Haldeman, a Canadian professional

model and nutritionist. He is the eldest to his two siblings, Kimbal (1972), and Tosca (1974).

In 1979, after his parents parted ways, the nine-year old Elon and his brother Kimbal mostly

spent their time living with his father, Errol at few places in South Africa. Musk attended

the private Waterkloof House Preparatory School, then later attended and graduated from

Pretoria Boys High School. Musk is noted to read enthusiastically during his school days,

often being referred to being bookworm. He was an avid fan of comics. Often being bullied

in school due to being a short and bookworm figure, he became more introvert and withdrew

himself to books and computer. He exhibited an early interest and talent for computers and

entrepreneurship. He then quickly taught himself programming and developed a game at the

age of 12, called Blastar to Spectravideo and sold it to another company for a price of $500.

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 Figure 1: Elon Musk with his brother, Kimbal Musk

2.2. Education

In 1989, the 17-years-old Musk obtained Canadian citizenship and moved to Canada

with his mother to attend Queen’s University to avoid mandatory service in the South

African military. In 1992, Musk went to University of Pennsylvania and graduated with an

undergraduate degree in Economics and second Bachelor’s Degree in Physics. After

graduation, the 24-years-old Musk travelled to California to study for his PhD in Applied

Physics at Stanford University. Barely starting his PhD, he realized the internet booming, he

dropped just after 2 days with entrepreneurial visions in his mind to start a new company.

2.3. ZIP2

In 1995, Elon and his brother Kimbal borrowed $28000 from their father to rent an

office space where they used it for both house and working space and quickly launched a

company called Zip2 in the period of computer rising. Zip2 is a licensed web software

company that provided online city guides to newspapers such as The New York Times and

The Chicago Tribune. When the company became profitable, Musk lost his control of his

enterprise, and the company board refused him and chose another new CEO saying he was

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not equipped to be a CEO as he lacked the skills and wisdom to be one. Four years later,

they sold their company to Compaq for $307 million in cash, and Elon received $22 million

from the sale (Gregersen, 2019).

2.4. X.com and PayPal

According to Fourtané (2018), in 1999, Musk and his brother, Kimbal used the

money from Zip2 and launched the first online financial services company, X.com, that

enabled people to transfer money online which later became PayPal after merging with

Confinity. PayPal transformed e-commerce sector and revolutionized financial transaction

method. Musk was once again ousted in a coup and was not allowed to be the CEO of PayPal

for the same reason. Musk then gained $165 million as the largest shareholder when PayPal

was acquired by e-Bay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

Figure 2: PayPal Logo

2.5 Space X: A Multi-Planetary Colonization Dream

According to Urban (2015), During the early 2000’s, Musk started reading about

rocket technology and space expenditure enthusiastically. After acquiring $165 million from

the sale of PayPal, he went on investing in the most unthinkable and new venture, rocket

company, Space Exploration Technologies or Space X, with the intention of

commercializing space travel with reusable building spacecraft, instead of retiring and

enjoying relaxed life with the money. The vision of Space X is to revolutionize the cost of

space travel to cheaper and to develop a multi-planetary colonization for the human species

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by colonizing Mars. After being turned down as CEO multiple times, Elon started exhibiting

his skills and capabilities by learning all the technical requirements of the role and also

showing a great leadership by carrying all-function mantle to make his company a success,

and eventually became the CEO (Olivier, 2019).

After several failures and explosions, in the end of 2015, the first stage Falcon rocket

landed back at the launch pad. Historically, it is the first time that an orbital rocket landed

back after launching, which allows the company to move towards rocket reusability,

reducing the costs of entry to outer space. This achievement was replicated several times

later on by landing an autonomous spaceport drone ship, an ocean based recovery platform

and Falcon Heavy rocket, which was most powerful operational rocket in the world. After

gaining trust of the investors, Space X received permission from the federal government to

test and launch 4000 satellites into low orbit to beam Internet services to the entire globe,

including remote regions. In 2008, SpaceX was accoladed a contract by NASA to handle

cargo transport for the International Space Station, in order to transport astronaut in the

future and to replace space shuttle missions of NASA.

Figure 3: Falcon Heavy Rocket of Space X

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2.6 Tesla Motors

Elon was already passionately active in his next launching, which would help place

him in the eye of this global and a very regulated market that was dominated by governments,

national rivalries and strategic needs. In 2004, as Space X was pacing up slowly into

becoming successful, Musk decided to multi-task by launching the next most unthinkable

and prudent venture, which is a pure electric car company, Tesla, with the purpose of

revolutionizing the global automotive industry by remarkably quickening the advent of all-

green-electric car world, in order to move prioritizing sustainable energy future (Urban,

2015). In 2008, Musk showed leadership and became Tesla CEO. In order to avoid

bankruptcy, Musk came up with strategies, including by firing 25% of Tesla employees. The

Tesla Roadster came out as prototype in 2006, then began production in 2008 and Musk

steered the decision making for the product design at a detailed level. Musk aim was always

to build bigger, faster and lasting car. Musk then decided to drop his salary to one dollar,

where his remainder of his compensation was of stock and performance-based bonuses

(Mair, 2016). Today, Tesla met its target of producing 5,000 Model 3 cars, 2,000 Model S

sedans and Model X SUVs per week. By the end of 2018, Musk stepped down as chairman

of Tesla but remains as CEO, due to the matters related to taking the firm private.

Figure 4: Tesla Next Generation Roadster

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2.7. Solar City, Hyperloop, Boring Company, Open AI
Open AI is a research company launched in 2015, by Elon Musk in 2015 exclusively

for the development of artificial intelligence. Musk is also concerned about the safety of AI

and how to curb this with specific rules in the programming of AI system, so that it will be

beneficial to everyone in a safe way.

Solar City was launched in 2016, where it is about installing solar panels to decrease

the effects of global warming and to promote and advance sustainable energy. In 2013 Solar

City became the second largest solar installation company in the United States. His three

successful companies, Tesla, Space X and Solar City invested in Solar City stocks in order

to prevent downfall of the company.

Hyperloop, launched in 2017, a super-high speed train that travels in a vacuum tube

was introduced in a way to reduce traffic. This high-tech train has outlined a notional route

where it will be able to commute passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30

minutes, whereas Boring Company is to dig a network of tunnels in the cuties of high traffic

that can be used for Hyperloop.

Figure 5: Hyperloop Transportation Model

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3.0 BIG FIVE PERSONALITY MODEL

The Big Five-Factor personality model was initiated as a taxonomy of ungenerous and

systematic combination of a wide range group of personality characteristics, where the traits

are extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experiences and

neuroticism (Costa & McCrae, 1992). To a leader as inspiring as Elon Musk, it is essential

to understand which personality is practised by Musk and which personality is dominant

above others.

(i) Extraversion

Extraverts are naturally an energetic person when it comes to interacting with others.

A person who possess extraversion constantly seek upbeat, excitement and social

interaction (Barrick & Mount, 1991). This extraversion quality is essential during

face-to-face team engagements because extraversion is related to working with others

and reflecting social skills that catalyst effective interactions, decision making and

high productivity (Cogliser et al., 2012).

(ii) Openness to Experiences

People who are open to experience are interested to master new things and enjoy new

experiences (Thiel, 2018). Examples of traits under openness prefer being intuitive

and imaginative and having a huge variety of interests. Costa and McCrae (1992),

mentioned that people who are open are imaginative, intellectually curious to try new

things, and open to new ideas and approaches. These qualities motivate the person

and the people around the person to learn more things and adapt, thus an important

quality for a leader.

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 (iii) Agreeableness

An agreeable person tends to be more friendly, cooperative, and empathetic. A non-

agreeable person tends to be more distant. According to Bartone et al. (2009), highly

agreeable person is trustworthy, truthful and concerned for the welfare of others, thus

subordinates and co-workers are more appreciative to a high agreeableness leader.

(iv) Conscientiousness

A conscientiousness person has the element of competence, order, and dutifulness.

Conscientiousness also involves being well organized, disciplines and goal-oriented,

also qualities that would be highly valued in a leader. A conscientiousness leader is

capable of organize and assigning tasks to accomplish goals related to leader

effectiveness (Judge et al., 2002).

(v) Neuroticism

Neuroticism person has a complex emotions structure, for instance, anxiety, hostility,

depression, and low self-confidence. A neuroticism person would want to avoid

central attention and responsibilities as well as leadership roles and also lack the

qualities of a leader, (Cogliser et al., 2012).

According to the media, Musk is an introverted man since his childhood and scores very low

in the trait of agreeableness at the workplace. Geddess (n.d), noted that Musk has exhibit

few undesirable behaviours, which has exposed him as self-centred, tough to work with, and

arrogant. However, he shows great leadership qualities which enable him to reach more

successes despite of his complicated personality. Elon Musk possess the personality qualities

of Openness and Conscientiousness, based on his work ethics, successes, and continuous

innovation.

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 Elon Musk’s openness to learning has been proven from his childhood. He was often

bullied, thus he retreated from social life and started reading books and learning about

computer and programming. Yauney (2018) reasoned the high natural sense of curiosity of

Musk is caused by the immense amount of independence he has gotten as a child. In addition,

the separation of his parents when he was nine-years-old has given him and his brother ample

time to learn and explore the world on their own. For instance, at the age of 12, Musk has

taught himself programming from his new computer manual book and programmed his own

game called, Blaster and sold it for $500 to a company, learning entrepreneurship. Elon

Musk's way of leading is about continuously learning, breaking through barriers, and

developing unique solutions to solve problems. This sense of curiosity has lead Musk to

launch his own space company, Space X without proper aerospace education, where all the

knowledge about advanced levels of rocket science are from his own personal study. Today,

Space X is on par with NASA from Russia, and is an official space exploration company of

the U.S. His traits of curiosity and openness to new things will promote culture of constant

learning and growth among the employees in all his companies to bring the best out of them,

which are important in the competitive edge of industry. Andrew et al., (2016), concluded

in his study that a learning culture in a company promotes job motivation and positively

impacts the performance of employees and organization.

Even though Musk is criticised of being a workaholic and bringing others to work

with him crazy hours in the companies, his conscientiousness has played a huge part in

inspiring his employees to 80-100 hours per week with him and in driving the success of his

businesses (Marsh, 2019). Elon Musk is goal-oriented and visionary, and truly believes in

every business that he ventures in. His strong vision and organizational skills gave him no

fear in facing and tackling problems from different major industries like automotive,

telecommunications and energy as well as resulted him to feel responsible to be there

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whenever a problem arises in his organization to come up with solutions (Marsh, 2019).

Employees working in his companies often complain his autocratic and offensive behaviour,

however they remain being loyal because they are attracted to the visionary and working

hard to reach goals leadership style of Musk. For instance, during bad phase of Tesla, Musk

worked 120 hours a week and slept in office sofa, has encouraged his employees to work the

same hours to meet the production target (Blazek, 2019). Being able to run multiple

companies from different industries as well as generating enormous profit and strong vision

of Musk for better future will create a sense of urgency in his companies and encourage his

workers to work harder towards a greater cause with immense focus (Fairyington, 2019).

4.0 TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP THEORY

In the era of fast-paced revolution happening in the current industry, there are

frequent innovations and technology shifts, thus a leader should be responsible of leading

the organization towards the revolution effectively. The constant changing in the work

culture and demand due to the technology agility needs a transformation leadership for the

effective management of the knowledge in order to stay in today’s market (Crawford, 2005).

In this regard, Elon Musk has shown transformational leadership quality with his strong

technical knowledge and single-minded vision for his companies. In order to be on par with

the fast changing workforce skills, technology, knowledge enrichment ways, Musk has

understood to be adaptive, energetic and interactive (Gayathri & Kumari, 2019).

Goal-oriented and transformational leader usually move from a failure to another

with ease, as they are discovering new things in their journey (Marshall, 2011). Elon Musk,

after being rejected of being CEO in both Zip2 and PayPal, and after selling the two

companies, constantly exploring and working on new ideas as he was visionary and a natural

transformational leader. According to Bass (1999), transformational leader will motivate and

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prompt their co-workers intellectually than other ordinary leaders who stresses on usual

practices. Tesla, right from its origin, has the soul of innovation. Elon Musk was the car

designing strategy chief and has hands-on in the models’ innovative designs. He also

introduced the improved battery technology which resulted in the increased sustainability of

the automotive industry. Therefore, Elon Musk’s way of bringing in change in the agile

industry and facing challenges motivates his employees to practice agility in the way they

work. The transformation style of Musk is worthy to equip his employees to be capable of

embracing seamless changes while bringing revolution in the industry.

Besides, Elon Musk’s drive has influenced his workers in a transformational way, by

setting unimaginable goals for his employees within limited time to speed up the innovation

and performances (Gayathri & Kumari, 2019). For instance, his employees shifted large

stamping presses within 16 weeks, which would normally take an annum. The persistent

strive for innovation established innovative Tesla culture, where working towards a goal,

resisting time. As a result, today, Tesla is producing world’s fastest car, Tesla Roadster 2.0

which takes 2.1 seconds to hit 60mph (96.6km/h) and Tesla is now ruling the electric car

market without worthy competition. Besides, they have also met the target of producing

5000 Model 3 cars, 2000 Model S sedans and Model X SUVs per week (Writers, 2019).

5.0 CONCLUSION

Elon Musk has exhibit many qualities which resulted in many successes and

downfalls, however critics are strongly urging him to step down from his businesses. No

matter what, Musk’s strive for constant learning, innovation and transformational leadership

resulted his companies including Space X and Tesla achieving the present position and

creating an inspirational image for himself. Learning the personalities and leadership

qualities of Elon Musk can enable us to analyse and inculcate these qualities into managers

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in today’s companies. Forecasting the rapid change of technology and work culture in the

future, employees should be agile for the success of the company and creating a positive

working environment. We should follow the culture of constant self-learning, effective

leadership, single-minded vision, innovation and sustainability to enable a substantial

growth of the company and to gain a competitive edge. Furthermore, we should constantly

habituate by perceiving our environment, evaluating our options, deciding on a path forward

without hesitating, and taking action.

Figure 6: Elon Musk

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