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The Making of a Successful Leader

1. Established leadership qualities shared by some modern entrepreneurs

Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Ma all share some similar leadership traits which are worth examining.

Most of all they are passionate about what they do, and they hold values which they want to posit to others within their organization, and to the world as a whole. They are not resistant to change, and irrespective of their initial low chances of success, they are resilient to move forward, and take a huge risk to bring their goals and dreams to resolution. And, their transformational leadership style motivates and inspires people to take on new challenges. Other common themes among Musk, Ma and Zuckerberg include:

A) Organizational Change and Emotional Intelligence

Effective leadership is at the core of any form of successful change. All these leaders share an aspect of emotional intelligence. They all possess the traits, disposition and ability to understand and appeal to the mindsets of those around them. This enables them to successfully facilitate thought and change, and identify crucial skills needed to help build their businesses. For change to occur, there needs to be confidence to build an environment of open communication. By communicating a need for change to employees they can pointedly focus, process social and emotional information, and apply it appropriately when needed, benefiting themselves, and those around them.

And, for any resistors to change, they can persuade and inspire them by building better relationships, and encouraging more participation within the decision making process. This is how these leaders skillfully inculcate in others the motivation and positive purpose for change.


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B) Team Building

The three leaders are goal oriented. They all have a shared sense of enthusiasm, opportunity, and commitment, and are motivated to achieve excellence at all costs. And, they are all devoted to instilling and perpetuating these values into their teams. This contributes to successfully building and managing teams within an organization. Successful teams build successful companies.

C) Trust and Respect

Trust and respect is essential for team work and businesses to flourish. These three leaders embody these elements within their organizations and community. The trust and respect is reciprocated toward them, thereby creating a win-win environment for all parties involved.

2. Is this a new breed of leadership?

When compared to leaders of the past, Musk, Zuckerberg and Ma appear to focus on transparency of ideas, innovation at the forefront, constant adaptation to rapid change, and a conscious effort to make sustainable development all end-to-end elements of their businesses. It’s not to say these ideas were not present in the past. However, there is more emphasis on them today than say decades years ago. Part of this is due to a shift in the cultural milieu of our time. And, part because these leaders are acutely aware of the positive impact their ideas can have on the environment and world community.

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