Elon Musk’s leadership style: Brilliant or reckless? 🤔

The answer isn't simple. From PayPal's early days to Tesla's electric revolution and SpaceX's ambitious space exploration, Musk has consistently pushed boundaries in ways that both inspire and concern. He's also ventured into neurotechnology with Neuralink and infrastructure with The Boring Company, showcasing an almost relentless drive to tackle humanity's biggest challenges.

Those who've worked closely with him paint a complex picture. "He's highly intelligent. He's already 10 steps ahead of you," a former Tesla manager revealed to Business Insider.² Another senior employee noted, "I feel like I'm 10 times smarter now than when I first joined." Yet these transformative experiences come with intense demands and unprecedented pressure.

Let's explore what makes Musk's leadership style so distinctive, examining both its groundbreaking strengths¹ and notable challenges - and most importantly, what practical insights we can apply to our own leadership journey.

What is Elon Musk's leadership style?

Let’s get academic for a second. When you think about the defined leadership styles, Elon Musk’s style is best defined as transformational.

He believes there’s a better way to do everything, and he sets his sights on constant improvement. He has big ideas and wants to unite his team around his (sometimes outrageous) vision and objectives.

From running an aerospace company that manufactures rockets and other spacecraft to disrupting the electric car market, it only makes sense that a core pillar of Musk’s approach involves out-of-the-box ideas.

Elon Musk’s transformational leadership style

Now that you have a high-level overview of how Musk prefers to run his teams and companies let’s dig into the details of Elon Musk's leadership abilities and traits.

We’re breaking down five of the most important elements of his transformational leadership style, as well as how these relate to different Marlee work style motivations.

⚡️ Curious how your leadership style compares to visionaries like Musk? Take our free motivation assessment and unlock your leadership potential.

1. Elon Musk is innovative

Other advice I would give is to not blindly follow trends. Question and challenge the status quo. Make sure you understand the fundamental principles of what you’re trying to do before you get into the details, otherwise you could be building on faulty ground.
- Elon Musk

Relevant motivations: alternatives, difference, evolution, future, indifference

He builds rockets, disrupts the automotive industry, and has his sights set on colonizing Mars. To say Musk is innovative would be an understatement.

He’s known for being bold with an eye to the future. He sees past current capabilities to create ambitious projections that the average person can't envision. And he expects each and every one of his team members to innovate alongside him. Musk’s grandiose view and ambitious goals can be intimidating but awe-inspiring.

Most of us can’t conceive these things working; he can’t conceive it failing. Period.
- Jim Cantrell, the first engineer at SpaceX³

Needless to say, when you work under Elon Musk, you won’t rely on existing procedures and a “we’ve always done it this way” attitude. You’ll be expected to be a big picture thinker—and quickly turn those ideas into action.

2. Elon Musk is inspiring

The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.
- Elon Musk

Relevant motivations: internal reference, indifference, alternatives, low focus on procedures

Many former and current employees admit that working for Musk is rigorous and demanding, yet many point to it as a formative experience in their careers.

There’s a reason for that: Musk is a highly-inspiring leader. While some of his ideas are unattainable, he has the ability to get people excited about his ambitions, projects, and plans.

The thing that makes Elon Elon is his ability to make people believe in his vision.
- Dolly Singh, the former HR head at SpaceX³

Musk is also said to have contagious enthusiasm and energy for his work, which means employees often share his commitment and passion for pursuing their next big idea or source of inspiration.

3. Elon Musk is fast-acting

Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.
- Elon Musk

Relevant motivations: activity, automatic, initiation

Another word that’s often used to describe Musk? Erratic. He’s known for being opinionated and occasionally even short-tempered and has gone off on his fair share of rants on Twitter.⁴

His seeming lack of impulse control has gotten him into some hot water every now and then. Still, it also enables him to move quickly in his businesses—to jump on ideas and nuggets of inspiration without stifling the flame with too much strategy and detail work.

His fast-acting nature offers some benefits in business growth and innovation, but it can also be a point of frustration for his team.

As Fast Company reported, “An engineer might spend nine months working 100 hours a week on something because Musk has pushed him to, and then out of nowhere Musk will change his mind and scrap the project³.”

4. Elon Musk is ambitious

I always have optimism, but I’m realistic. It was not with the expectation of great success that I started Tesla or SpaceX. It’s just that I thought they were important enough to do anyway.
- Elon Musk

Relevant motivations: achievement, goal oriented, future, present

You don’t become a billionaire without a hefty dose of drive and ambition, and Musk is no exception. He’s known for setting aggressive—and sometimes even seemingly impossible—goals for his teams and employees. Yet he also creates an office culture that values failure.

When Elon says something, you have to pause and not blurt out, ‘Well, that’s impossible.’ You zip it, you think about it, and you find ways to get it done. I’ve always felt like my job was to take these ideas and turn them into company goals, to make them achievable.
- Gwynne Shotwell, the President and Chief Operating Officer of SpaceX^5.

While Musk sets a high bar, he also recognizes that his team needs a high degree of psychological safety to pursue those stretch goals.

Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.
- Elon Musk⁶

5. Elon Musk is obsessive

Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40-hour workweeks and you’re putting in 100-hour workweeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing, you know that you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve.
- Elon Musk

Relevant motivations: depth, doing, internal reference, activity, use, place

There are plenty of legends and tall tales about Musk’s obsessive personality and workaholic tendencies. He’s been said to sleep on a couch in the Tesla factory⁷ and work 80 to 100-hour workweeks (sometimes even more).⁸

I have OCD on product-related issues. I always see what’s...wrong. Would you want that? When I see a car or a rocket or spacecraft, I only see what’s wrong. I never see what’s right. It’s not a recipe for happiness.
- Elon Musk (in an interview with the Wall Street Journal⁹)

That means he can be a bit of a micromanager—or even a “nanomanager” as Musk described himself in that same conversation with the Wall Street Journal.

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A Marlee "My Results" board showing motivational strengths

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What you can learn from Elon Musk’s leadership style

Elon Musk is a complex person, and his leadership style has its intricacies too. In many ways, he’s exhilarating and motivating. In other ways, he’s demanding and intimidating.

Like any other leader, his approach has its upsides and downsides—and there’s plenty to be learned from the way he leads the charge for his employees and numerous companies, including the following lessons:

• Believe in yourself. Plenty of people are quick to write off Musk’s ideas as crazy, but he believes strongly in his vision and ambitions. He relentlessly pursues them, regardless of the naysayers.
• Set boundaries. Musk pushes himself to the limit, and in many ways, it’s a great lesson in what not to do. Set healthy boundaries for yourself—so you don’t end up working 100 hours and sleeping on the floor of your office.
• Make it safe to fail. One of the many reasons Musk’s companies can innovate the way they do is because Musk is a big believer in psychological safety. He knows his employees need to feel like they can fail without fear of repercussions or reprimands. That’s a valuable lesson for any leader who wants to spearhead an innovative and boundary-pushing team.

Elon Musk is by no means a perfect leader, and really, there’s no such thing.

But, with numerous successful companies on his resume and a reputation for developing some of the most groundbreaking products and technologies today, he’s a leader worth examining—but not necessarily emulating.

Start for free with Marlee today - your leadership development journey awaits!