Elon Musk and the Dark Side of Visionary Personality

Case Code: CLHR099 Case Length: 3 Pages Period: - Pub Date: 2025 Teaching Note: Available

Price: Rs.200 Organization: - Industry: - Countries: United States Themes: Leadership and Change Management, Leadership Style

Abstract

This case explores Elon Musk’s complex leadership style marked by visionary innovation, erratic, confrontational, and sometimes ruthless actions – including demanding extreme work hours and handling public criticism aggressively. Musk demands high-intensity work, long hours, and exceptional performance. His provocative public conduct, including controversial tweets and clashes with regulators, and legal battles reflect the darker side of his personality. While Musk has driven remarkable technological advancements at Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter (later X), his approach also generates ethical dilemmas and organizational instability. This case can be used to examine the dark triad of leadership – traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy – as exemplified by Elon Musk’s behavior.

Issues

• Understand and articulate the three components of the Dark Triad: Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy
• Analyze real-life leadership behaviors using psychological and ethical frameworks
• Evaluate the role of these traits in innovation, disruption, and organizational success/failure
• Develop a nuanced view of charismatic but controversial leaders

Introduction

At 2 a.m. on November 16, 2022, Elon Musk (Musk), CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Inc. (Tesla) who acquired US-based media company Twitter in October 2022, sent a mail to Twitter’s employees. The mail, with the subject line ‘A Fork in the Road’ read, “Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.” He told the employees to be prepared for 80-hour work weeks. Musk had famously declared war on weekends, and he claimed to work for more than 18 hours a day. For him, urgency was a constant state – not an exception. To many, Musk was a visionary unmatched in his ambitions. To others, his leadership style was erratic, exacting, and often controversial.

Keywords

Elon Musk; Visionary leadership; Transformational leadership; High-pressure work culture; Work Culture; Corporate Leadership; Dark Triad; Machiavellianism; Narcissism; Psychopathy

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