Where does Elon Musk fit in the new archetype of leadership?

I am currently writing a book, A New Archetype of Leadership, which is underpinned by a simple argument: good leaders create value for the world and bad leaders destroy it.

Based on years of research with Sa?d Business School, including for my Leadership 2050 podcast, the book sets out the type of business leaders the world needs to transcend the existential threats facing it.

On the one hand, it needs leaders with the imagination to disrupt the unsustainable 20th century ways of doing business. At the same time, those leaders also need to inspire people by serving something greater than themselves.

Which brings us to Elon Musk: an incredible disruptor of traditional business models, but someone who is also a polarising figure. But given he is arguably the world’s foremost business leader, where does he fit in the new archetype that I have been exploring?

Amid the controversies, there are positive sides to his leadership. Appearing on Alissa Kole’s Governance Dialogues podcast a few months ago, I set out a phrase I often use when assessing the corporate landscape: strategic laziness.

Look at many companies and ask yourself a question: are their executives and boards strategically lazy? And by lazy, I don’t mean they don’t work hard - I mean they don’t voluntarily disrupt things. They are stuck in the status quo.

You can argue Musk, especially when you look at his work at Tesla, is the antithesis of strategic laziness. He was way ahead of the established car manufacturers in implementing lower emission vehicles at scale. He turned Tesla into a brilliant brand which has kicked the entire Western car industry into action in terms of accelerating electric vehicle production: 5.1 million sales in the US and Europe are forecasted by the International Energy Agency this year, compared to 0.9 million in 2019.

Even as I write this newsletter, I am doing so using Starlink, the internet provider which is a subsidiary of Musk’s SpaceX. The reason? None of the traditional internet providers could offer good coverage in the remote location where I live. It’s another example of where Musk gets things done that other leaders don’t. He has the vision to either create something different or reinterpret a known product as something better. He has a disruptive way of working which is frankly needed in most industries.

But on the other hand, Musk appears to thrive on conflict and controversy, and that’s a huge problem when his companies play a role in society.

Last month, for example, experts said the image generation tool added to Grok, his AI chatbot, was unleashing a “torrent of misinformation”.

Amid the controversy, Musk simply said: “Grok is the most fun AI in the world!” It’s hard to imagine any other senior business leaders responding like that. Compare it to Google's CEO Sundar Pichai’s apologetic response to the Gemini debacle earlier this year, after the AI tool generated offensive results: “I know that some of its responses have offended our users and shown bias. To be clear, that’s completely unacceptable and we got it wrong.”

Meanwhile, concerns were also raised about the impact of content on Musk-owned X, formerly Twitter, during the recent UK riots. Even Musk himself shared inflammatory material, including reposting (though later deleting) a false claim about the UK government setting up detainment camps in the Falkland Islands. He also declared civil war is “inevitable” - something which was widely rejected.

This is the side of Musk’s leadership which doesn’t work, in my opinion. At companies like X, the consequences are not just localised - in January, it was reported it had lost 71% of its value since he purchased the company in October 2022 - but is there a recklessness which also has a broader impact on society?

Andrew Winston , an expert on corporate sustainability, told last year’s Thinkers50 conference that misinformation on platforms like X “is driving a wedge, it’s making us miserable, it’s making us angry, it makes it impossible to solve things like climate change”. Winston, incidentally, co-authored a book with ex-Unilever CEO Paul Polman in 2021 entitled Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take. Can we say X, under Musk’s leadership, is giving more to the world than it takes?

So when I think of the new archetype of leadership, I think of people like David Katz, Audette Exel and Jack Sim, who have all featured in these newsletters. Katz pays people in poverty-struck coastal communities to collect plastic waste which he sells to consumer goods companies for packaging. Exel runs an investment bank which exists to fund a development agency. Sim personally pressures governments to install safe sanitation.?

Like Musk, these leaders are disruptors. But there is a key difference: they bridge polarities and inspire at scale. That is the leadership the world needs.

So, what are your thoughts?

A message from the author

Thank you for reading the 66th edition of the Leadership 2050 newsletter. As CEO of Transcend.Space and senior fellow of management practice at the University of Oxford’s Sa?d Business School, my work, research and teaching focuses on how leaders transcend 21st century challenges such as disruptive technology change, the climate crisis and creating diverse and inclusive environments… alongside the ongoing challenge of delivering profitable growth. Through Transcend.Space and Sa?d, where I direct the Oxford Advanced Management & Leadership Programme, I have worked with leaders from many geographies, industries and governments. All this has given me a deep understanding of how good leaders create value - and bad leaders destroy it. Never before has this topic been so important on a global stage, hence why I am undertaking this work.