MGT420 Individual Assignment PDF

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Summary

Title : A Famous Contemporary LeaderSubject : Principles and Practice ManagementLecturer’s name : EN. Latif Haji BachoStudent’s name : Muhammad Firdaus Bin ZulkifliGroup/program : M3CS2552A / CSTable of Content Introduction................................................................................

Description

Title

: A Famous Contemporary Leader

Subject

: Principles and Practice Management

Lecturer’s name : EN. Latif Haji Bacho Student’s name : Muhammad Firdaus Bin Zulkifli Group/program : M3CS2552A / CS255

Table of Content Introduction....................................................................................................................... 1 Background of The Leader................................................................................................. 1

Leadership Traits and Skills................................................................................................ 2 Leadership Behaviour........................................................................................................ 3 Leadership Power.............................................................................................................. 4 Conclusion........................................................................................................................ 5

Reference......................................................................................................................... 5

Introduction As my first assignment for the subject Principles and Practice Management (MGT420), I need to identify and write a report about one of the famous contemporary leader of any organization whether the individual is from local or international organization. There are a few main characteristics that need to be identified on the famous contemporary leader which are their leadership traits and skills, leadership behaviour, and leadership power. The person that I choose for this report is the famous multimillionaire, Elon Musk.

Background of The Leader Elon Musk or his real name Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa . Maye Musk, who is her mother, was a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada but raised in South Africa. His father is Errol Musk, a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer. Elon Musk has two younger siblings. One is his brother, Kimbal Musk and the other one is his sister, Tosca Musk. At age 10, Musk developed an interest in computing and he learned computer programming using a manual that usually needs six months to finish but he stayed up for three days straight to finish the whole six months course. By the age 12, he sold a BASIC based video game he created called Blastar to a magazine called PC and Office Technology for $500. According to him, his childhood was not a happy one. He even described his father as “A very terrible human being”. Aside that, he also got bullied and once hospitalized because of it. Elon musk then graduated from Pretoria Boys High School. He then attended the University of Pretoria for five months to avoid the mandatory service in South Africa military. In 1990, he attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. After two years, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania and graduated with a Bachelor of Science, degree in economics from the Wharton School and a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics in 1997. In 1994, Elon Musk held two internships in Silicon Valley. In 1995, he was accepted to a Ph.D. program in energy physics and materials science at Stanford University in California. Afterwards, he deciding to join the Internet boom and launch an internet start-up after dropped out of Stanford after two days.

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Leadership Traits and Skills One of Elon Musk leadership traits that had been identified is he is someone who bias towards action. Musk does not suffer from the analysis paralysis in any way. Throughout the book, he’s depicted as extremely decisive. He acts quickly because he can process a lot of information simultaneously. His decisiveness gives him a competitive advantages. He is a person who uses science, physics and rational thinking to come up with solutions as quick as possible without the interference of ego and political ideas into the equation. If an employee if his was right and held his ground, Elon Musk would concede, implement, and move on. During an interview on Bloomberg Businessweek’s, Ashlee Vance had discussed that Elon Musk is someone who would accept any rational opinion from his employee in decision making and decide it very quick. That is why the best way to describe this action as bias towards action. The convenience in this leadership trait is that he would go through the experience quickly and along the process he would immediately earned the feedback on whether the decision was the best one or not. Afterwards, once he made his mind, he goes all out. In that decisive process he receives the immediate feedback. This action also goes with a quote “Action leads to clarity. Inaction leads to doubt”. Next, Elon Musk is a person who have an aggressive optimism. In 2003, Elon Musk decide to built another start-up company based on electric - automobile. In its initial stages, Tesla was having a hard time to find auto parts suppliers because the companies he approaches did not believe Tesla would ever get far enough to actually building a fully functional electric car. The experts at that time said that it would be impossible to have an affordable mass market electric vehicles. He consistently heard from suppliers, investors and even his own employee that the company would fail. This is the same when he start SpaceX, a company that designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft with the aim to build it with cost that two or three percent cost of the usually build rockets. Without aggressive optimism, these two company would be a failure. Musk does everything possible to ensure that things work out the best without relying on hope because hope is not part if his aggressive optimism.

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As for Elon Musk’s leadership skills, one of them is being very good at problem - solving issues that arise upon any tasks completion. He has the skill to monitor the problems and to identify a step by step solution. Musk himself recommends three simple steps in order to solve different problems. At first, he identifies and defines the assumptions. When he faces a familiar problem or challenge, he simply writes down his assumptions about them. Secondly, he breaks down the problem into its fundamental principles. Elon Musk once said regarding this simple step, “It is important to view knowledge as sort of semantic tree. Make sure you understand the fundamental principles,the trunk and big branches before you get into the details or there is nothing for them to hang on to.” Finally, once he identifies and breaks down the problems or assumptions, he begins to create new innovative solutions from scratch. Other than that, people management skills is one of the skills possessed by Elon Musk. He has the skill when doing the right thing for the sake of achieving success. Musk hire the right person for his company, not to just filling the positions in his company. He has the skill of finding the talent by putting the employees in roles that are natural to their behavioural attributes.

Leadership Behaviour To be an effective leader, one must have an effective behaviour in order to influence the their subordinates. As for Elon Musk, he is innovative in his own ways. According to a documentary done by a youtuber SunnyV2, ever since his child, he will not blindly follow the trends. He always make a question and challenge the status quo about something. That way he could think for more innovative ideas and alternatives for something. With this kind of behaviour, he also expects each and every members of his team members to be innovative alongside him. As a matter of course, when you work under Elon Musk, you would not rely on existing procedures because you will be expected to think out of the box and quickly turn those ideas into action. This type of leadership behaviour would definitely bring influence to the employees to ensure that the tasks get done, the employees perform their job acceptably and the company is being efficient and effective.

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The other behaviour of Elon Musk is he is very obsessive. This type of behaviour could be not a great behaviour to have as a leader but this is one of the reason why Elon Musk is an extraordinary leader. According to an interview with the Wall Street Journal he said that he have an OCD on product - related issues. He also said that he can only sees what is wrong about something like a car or rocket or spacecraft and he is not happy with it. This mean he could be a bit of micromanager. According to himself, during the production of Tesla model 3, he only sleeps on a couch in the Tesla factory and work 80 to 90 hours each weeks. This type of behaviour would definitely pushing his employees to be better on what they do and sometimes this behaviour would rubs people the way but for Elon Musk, it works out perfectly fine. This why being a very obsessive person could be the behaviour that makes Musk a very effective leader to his company and employees.

Leadership Power Position power refers to others having control over what we do at work. Someone like manager. The problem of this power is that it is usually overused or abused by managers who lack the social and personal skills to carry it off effectively. This is why power comes with negative connotations. Personal power is the person who have both position and required level of social and personal skills. Personal power leaders are person centred. They focus on the people around them understanding that successful outcomes lie within these relationships, not in instructions, tasks and orders. Personal power leaders achieve authenticity through knowing their own strengths and weaknesses, and those of their team members. As for Elon Musk, he would certainly be the one who have the personal power. Based on interview on Bloomberg Businessweek’s, Ashlee Vance, he explained that Elon Musk who is a person who do not mind to have his hand dirty, in other words, altogether with his employees to get the job done. As a proves, he is the chief designer of SpaceX, but he focused on his employee’s understanding about any projects in order to bring all their talents and skills to the table and use them to get any tasks done acceptably. This is why Elon Musk’s leadership power is more to personal power than position power.

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Conclusion In conclusion, Elon Musk is one of the famous contemporary leader that could have a big impact to humanity. His leadership traits and skills are arguably effective to other leaders but it is very efficient and effectual to his employees, company and Elon himself. This is same goes to his leadership behaviour that is balance in his task orientation and relations orientations. This type behaviour is to make sure that the company and his employees doing an excellent at sustaining the profit and get the jobs done perfectly. As for the leadership power, Musk is more to personal power than position power because he is the one of the most driven person ever lived in this world. This is what makes him one of the famous contemporary leaders in this world.

Reference 1.

Laurent, N.P(2015, March 26). Elon Musk: Transformational Leadership in Action. Retrieved from https://sites.psu.edu/leadership/2015/03/26/elon-musk-transformationalleadership-in-action/

2.

Ashlee Vance. (2015). Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. HarperCollins.

3.

Richard Walls - Career Dev & Finance. (2020,Oct 17). Elon Musk's Leadership Style // Can

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[Video].

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSPY9H94rYk 4.

Bloomberg Technology. (2018, Aug 23). Behind Elon Musk's Leadership at Tesla [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPT6xNS9Pb8&t=26s

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SunnyV2. (2020, Oct 30). Becoming Elon Musk (Full Documentary) [Video]. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vai3Vh234EE

6.

Venture City. (2020, Sept 27). Elon Musk: The Scientist Behind the CEO (and How He Teaches Himself) Documentary [Video]. Youtuber. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg7BPdSmP4&t=275s

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