Will Elon Musk Ever Become A Leader?

"Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It's about impact, influence and inspiration. Impact involves getting results, influence is about spreading the passion you have for your work, and you have to inspire team-mates and customers." Robin S. Sharma

One of the most iconic persons of our time is Elon Musk. Rising from a young South African boy to becoming the richest man in the world is a great feat. I believe that he never had the vision to become the richest man in the world. He just wanted to be relevant and useful to the world. He is a company builder.

When motivational speakers talk about starting with a vision when building a business, it is a waste of time to me. Startups should not be started even with why. You should start with a problem. The problem of the people. You start with the people. The goal of an entrepreneur is to find a way to be useful to the market segment they want to serve.

As a business builder, most entrepreneurs fail at the base of what I called the founders’ Pyramid. Many who rise through it are unable to reach the pinnacle of the pyramid where they change the world. Only very few founders have gotten to the top. At the base, which is the starting point of being an entrepreneur is the entrepreneur as a problem identifier. And at the peak is the entrepreneur as a transformer.

Elon Musk is the richest man in the world because he has been able to move up the pyramid. He started by:

1. Identifying a problem that many people have that they don’t know they have; energy. He came up with his energy companies Tesla and Solar City. He identified internet problems all over the world and founded Starlinks. He identified the need for travel to space and came up with SpaceX. Each customer segment was large enough to serve what he will create. His creation here is a solution that solves people’s problems.

2. He then design a business model that worked for each one of those segments and ensured that the solution (value proposition) meet the exact needs of the segment and solve their problems in the best way possible. His creation here is the validated business model. He created market value

3. Then he created a system and started recruiting people to help create sustained value, deliver the value proposition, and capture revenue. He is so good at this that he became the richest man in the world. Most founders stay at this level and keep grinding. His creation here is a company (a self-managing company as Dan Sullivan calls it). His focus is to create and sustain shareholder value

4. Despite all his success, Elon Musk remained a company builder, not a people builder. Judging from the email he sent out to his employees, he was operating from the position of a CEO and not a leader. As a leader, he would have built influence with his people. There would have been no need for the mail he sent out if he had focused on building influence with the people. They would have gladly come to the office.

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

– John Quincy Adams

The greatest creation of a leader is not the company but the culture of the company. Elon Musk is stuck as CEO, using his position to direct people and not influence them. As a CEO, people follow him because they have to not because they want to. They want the job, so they will do whatever he required of them to do.

CEOs are management positions and not leaders. They rely on company rules, policies, regulations, values, rituals, behaviors, and organizational charts to use their authority. Anyone who doesn’t follow their instructions gets sanctioned.

Leaders inspire people not to use carrots and sticks to motivate them. It’s unnecessary for the richest man in the world to use threats and fear to motivate his team members to come to work. If he had grown into a leader, he would have created a culture that develops people into leaders, where they feel at home and feel valued and respected.

Calling them out through email is dehumanizing, violating their dignity, disrespectful of their power to make decisions, and not valuing them. A leader, without many words, they would have been inspired to come to the office. They would have been looking forward to returning back to work not reluctant to.

Managers manipulate people while leaders inspire them. Leaders don’t see people as the means to an end but the end in itself. CEOs don’t care how people feel because they are not interested in the people but in what the people can do for them. Their major preoccupation is shareholder value, capturing value for the company. People are simply tools to be used to make the shareholders or owners happy.

Will Elon Musk grow beyond management, position, and building a company to become a leader who builds a culture that brings out the best in people? Elon Musk, as the richest man in the world, needs to move from manipulation to influence. He needs to become a people builder and understand that the culture you create as a leader impacts the creativity and innovation of your people.

You can’t force people to innovate against their will. You can only inspire them to innovate. Elon Musk as a CEO has created great shareholder value, however, now is the time for him to become a leader and create great human value.

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