The Leadership Styles Used By Elon Reeve Musk & Bill Gates in Difficult Situations

Introduction

The aim of this article is to summarize the research on two different entrepreneurs with brief biographies. Moreover, the leadership styles used by them in some difficult situation to get success will also be discussed. The two leaders are bill gates and Elon Musk. The reason why I choose these two entrepreneurs is that one of them focuses on specific field and the other show his leadership skills in different businesses such as from digital payment system to space travel and further to electric cars.

The first leader I am going to discuss is Bill Gates, Co-founder and technology advisor of Microsoft Corporation.

Bill Gates (William Henry Gates III), Born on October 28, 1955 has three siblings. His father was a lawyer and mother was a teacher. Gates took admission at Harvard University as a Law student but Dropped out the college after two years and then started Microsoft business with his partner Paul Allen. He married at the age of 32 with Melinda French, who was production manager at Microsoft.

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They have two daughters and a son.

The second entrepreneur, which I am going to discuss, is Elon Musk. Elon Reeve Musk born on June 28, 1971 in South Africa and came to America at age 17 with his mother Maye Musk, a model and dietician and his father Errol Musk was engineer. He graduated at university of Pennsylvania in physics and economics. He is the CEO and co-founder of SpaceX, Tesla and PayPal. Married life of Elon Musk is very controversial, first wife Justine Wilson and Musk separated out in 2008 and then he started dating English Actress, married, and ended after four years.

He has five sons with his first wife and both share custody of kids.

Leadership style is the most pivotal thing to run an organization. So here, I am going to shed a light on the leadership styles of the above-mentioned leaders. Elon Musk follows transformational leadership, the style in which a vision is created, and work is done on the field where a change needs to be done along with his team members in his business life. It includes four tactics: Vision: he showed this strategy by replacing fossil fuels by green energy and discovering space on Mars. His vision is humble, attract the users, producing energy and comes in immensely handy for the people. These challenges are impossible for the people, but he has achieved these goals because of the clear image.

Second, Social Architect: the important thing for a team to keep going is motivation. Musk use the principle of keep going in life, he motivates his team by using a quote: never give up on your work and never means never. His third strategy is Trust: achieving the trust of the supporters is the biggest achievement for a leader and Elon Musk proved this when Tesla was suffering from loss by funding more than 90 million dollars from his own capital on electric cars. Last method of transformational leadership is Creative development of self: it means knowing your ability and giving emphases on strengths rather than weaknesses.

Musk never put the burden on his team. He always worked along with his team whether it was funding or his hard work in fitting the electric motor into smart car. He believes in moral ethics and values. Due to these styles, he is able to manage the big businesses and these styles distinguishes him from other entrepreneurs. On the other hand, the leadership style used by Bill Gates is autocratic, as he is good enough in taking the best decisions for his company, hires the genius people to work in his organisation and he don’t like to listen the complaints. Moreover, he gains the trust by involving his employees in the challenging situations and by showing that their decision also matters for him.

During the start of Microsoft, he was transactional: he poorly treats the bad work and honors the good. Afterwards he become transformational by motivating his employees and by giving a clear vision to his team about the software world. Apart from this, he was Delegate: he represents himself everywhere due to his great technical skills but later he started giving powers and rights of taking decisions to the managers. Other style is Task-Oriented: bill is very particular about the work. He keeps the check on the performance of his followers. Bill Gates is having the entrepreneurial skills, and this is the biggest reason for the victory of the Microsoft.

Important lessons leaders can learn from Bill Gates and Elon Musk

The top leaders are always role model for beginners and every new entrepreneur wants to make himself like them. Bill Gates’s leadership skills and his commitment and self- motivation towards his business creates a roadmap for others. Therefore, here are some leadership lessons that can be implemented to any business to get success. Primarily is to be vision oriented and valuing the time that means we have clear idea that what we are going to do and what is our aim. This can only achieve if we value time because we can never buy time at any cost. This applies in not only the business but other aspects of life too. Bill Gates just passed over his competitors because he always thinks bigger and then just push himself to reach that pinnacle.

Second thing is to be not distracted by the success and always be caring for teammates or juniors. Success always to be meant that there are so many others benchmark to reach and for that we need to stay on ground and to get further success by keep moving like before and be caring for people always helps you to be a best human than a good leader. Bill Gates proved this by funded many programs for human well being all over the world. Moreover, always believes in yourself and thinks you can do more and better.

Example of bill Gates leadership style

No doubt in today day and age Bill Gates is a top tech entrepreneur but besides that, he is a good human too. Therefore, humanitarian skills of Bill Gates’s always be a best example of his leadership style. He and his wife Melinda French founded a private foundation in 2000 and their prime goals are to reduce global poverty and to increase healthcare. Bill Gates left full time job and started part time job at Microsoft and now he is devoting his most of the time to their Foundation. This inspires us a lot that a leader should think out of box and there are so many other things to do other than making money. Finally, yet importantly, he is now working with different organizations to eliminate Polio and Malaria.

Example of Elon Musk leadership style

There are many things to learn from Elon Musk journey from a ZIP2 software seller to Tesla Car Company. To start with, the first lesson is always to be criticism seeker. This helps us to know about our self in a different way because we always think we are best, and we are doing best but critics provides us opportunity to do things in better way. Furthermore, always think out of box and never put making money on the top. It is important to think different and see the world with powerful vision because good ideas can arise from anywhere, anyone. This helps a leader to stay on the top and in the heart of other people. Moreover, the success of the project is because how deep we know about that field and this is clearly proved by Elon Musk at the teenage by making a software with the help of readings from books and now again by reducing car battery cost to a remarkable price.

Finally, yet importantly, always prepare for failure and therefore come up with a backup plan.ConclusionIn nutshell, we can learn many things from the above-mentioned leaders. From Bill Gates we can learn the skills that we need in technical field and how we can motivate our team to work in an effective way. In this way, we can give the new technology to the world. On the other hand, a person who have interest in various fields can learn the leadership skills of Elon Musk. He is the best role model for the person who have the clear vision in multifarious fields. There hard work and dedication is the reason of their success.

Gates and Musk have one similarity in them i.e., their transformational style of leading an organisation. They both take their team along with them. Therefore, corporation and teamwork are the two key principles for the success of any work place. Considering the views of the other person increases the more options and this led to the fruitful results. Moreover, having patience and constantly work with full dedication always pay the best results. We should always keep one thing in mind that nothing is impossible if we try.