Elon Musk
Identify a significant career challenge the leader faced and how the leader handled the challenge. Did the response align more with a managerial role or a leadership role?
While Elon Musk's achievements are boundless, it came with many challenges. A significant career challenge Elon Musk faced was a combination of business issues as well as personal matters. The financial crisis of 2008 almost bankrupted Tesla (Davies, 2013) and the first three SpaceX rocket tests failed, all while Elon Musk was in the middle of a divorce. In conjunction with the financial crisis of 2008, Tesla also had trouble with the inability to match supply with demand due to issues on the assembly line. Elon Musk handled the challenge by putting his money where his mouth is and invested his last 35 million dollars from prior successes into Telsa to keep the business from failing (Davies, 2013). Elon Musk also went as far as keeping a sleeping bag in his office so he could sleep near the assembly line. (Debord, 2016)
What power base did the leader use in handling or resolving the challenge?