What exactly is the personality of Elon Musk?
Everyone looks at billionaires with curiosity. How did they get at the height of success? What do they do that makes them different? Why are they geniuses?
Today, I’ll share with you the breakup of the personality of one such billionaire — Elon Musk.
Knowing Musk’s personality would give you a real picture of what he is. This will unveil a simple and easy to know Musk — not that hazy and fabulous Musk who exists in our mind.
Let’s know Elon Musk!
Is Elon Musk an Extravert or an Introvert?
Elon Musk is an introvert. An introvert takes interest in his own world of thoughts and ideas than the external world of people and places.
If you watch Elon Musk when he is giving a presentation or talking in an interview, you’ll come to know he doesn’t speak comfortably. By observing carefully, you can notice he doesn’t move around the stage, rather keeps his arms close to his body, and uses a lot of filler words — um, uh, er, etc. Moreover, he doesn’t modulate his voice to emphasize nor engages the audience with emotions. If he had been habitual of socializing, communicating, and meeting people — indicators of extraversion — his presentation would have been different.
The witty talk and quick thinking of Musk sometimes gives an impression of extraversion, but his careful listening, depth in discussions, and elaborate nature show his introverted aspects (introverts have the ability to stay focussed and explore depths).
In contrast, if you watch the videos of Steve Jobs, you’ll notice he wasn’t only interested in informing but was also exceptionally skilled in communicating — a skill which was both natural and learned. His comfortable speech shown engaging the public was his passion.
No doubt Elon Musk expresses a lot and has a massive public presence, he mostly talks about his ideas and thoughts. His communication is informative, full of deep and highly technical knowledge, about a lot of research, his future vision, theoretical principles, the progress of his adventures, etc. You will even find such complicated terms and figures — neurons, escape velocities, wavelengths, micro-chips, 8ch per threads, 27.5 um, stim resolutions, die size, which are difficult to be understood by those not having physics background. His penchant for thoughts and ideas confirms his introversion.
You’ll also notice Musk doesn’t talk about his personal life — he is a private person. Though he faced a lot of upsets from his early childhood to being a man — abuse, divorce, and bullying — his talks mostly stick to his professional life, his ambitions, his reading and working habits.
This opinion of Jayson Demers in Entrepreneur endorses the introverted nature of Elon Musk:
“It might be strange to think that a man who’s been described as the “next Steve Jobs” was once a reserved, introverted engineer”.
Is Elon Musk a Sensor or an Intuitive?
Elon Musk is intuitive. Intuitives indirectly perceive the world through impressions and patterns that exist in their minds instead of directly perceiving the world through their senses.
If Elon Musk were a sensor, he might have been a top athlete, a focussed employee, a veteran soldier or an expert accountant. Or at least he would have some interests in sports and physical activities. Instead, since childhood, he has never taken an interest in sports.
Musk was always passionate about reading books and seeking higher education. His brother Kimbal Musk told a journalist that Musk used to read 2 books a day relating to various disciplines. Book reading is a strong indicator of both intuitives and introverts.
Intuitives are fond of physics because it feeds their intuition. They study and apply operating principles underlying inanimate objects. Elon Musk did a bachelor’s in commerce and physics. He started PhD. in physics and material sciences from Stanford University which he dropped to pursue his business venture. In fact, Musk’s passion for creating self-driving cars, electric aircraft, conquering Mars, developing hyperloop, and neural lace technologies by exploring the principles of physics and relating sciences also speaks volumes of his imagination and creativity which sensors lack.
The strongest indicator of Musk’s intuition is living in the future. In this race, he is ahead of the whole world. This future orientation tends him away from effectively managing the routine and usual matters of his personal life and drives him towards seeking change in the world.
(Intuition is a common trait of most entrepreneurs e.g Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, etc.)
Is Elon Musk a Thinker or a Feeler?
Elon Musk is a thinker. Thinkers take their decisions based on thinking instead of emotions. Though you’ll notice a lot of smiles and expressions on the face of Musk, and you may also be aware of the emotional turmoil of his life, this is an indicator of extroverted feeling but not feeler (FJ and TP are extroverted feelers).
Thinking is a clearly visible trait of Elon Musk. Thinking helps him to subjectively make sense of things and understand the underlying principles. It enables him to differentiate relevant from irrelevant, useful from useless, and workable from non-workable. In fact, Elon Musk is a spontaneous and fast thinker due to which he can understand almost everything that he encounters in his field. He knows the complete science of cars, space vehicles, artificial intelligence, computers, and programs.
Elon Musk himself describes his way of thinking,
“It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang onto.”
If you want to understand the difference between thinkers and feelers watch the video of Simon Sinek: why leaders eat last. Simon Sinek is a feeler. He is fond of telling about the sacrifices of leaders for the people and investigating underlying biological science that promotes such actions. His works are on motivation, empathy, compassion, and courage. He incredibly uses emotions and inspiration in his lectures to inspire and persuade people.
However, Elon Musk doesn’t talk about people, teams, and society instead he talks about technologies and inanimate objects which is a strong sign of thinkers. Even when he talks about people, a fun fact to share, he talks in terms of physics. When Dharmesh Shah asked Elon Musk for a piece of advice, Musk said:
“Every person in your company is a vector. Your progress is determined by the sum of all vectors.”
Elon Musk is notoriously known to be a rage firer. He often becomes rude and fires staff who do not come up to his expectations. This is a sign of thinkers because they are strong-willed and thick-skinned as compared to feelers who are gentle (for feelers firing people is always a tough challenge).
Is Elon Musk a Judger or a Perceiver?
This a bit controversial trait about Elon Musk. Most people think that every successful entrepreneur is a Judger because he has the ability to plan, decide and execute. But perceiving function has its own advantages.
Elon Musk is a perceiver. Perceivers like to process new information as it comes their way while the judgers prefer to get things decided.
Let’s read what Kevin Loria and Jake Kanter in Business Insider says about Elon Musk,
“It’s clear that Musk is clearly not a fan of meetings, bureaucracy, hierarchy, or any system that impedes immediate communication. He prefers people apply common sense to the task at hand. And if employees don’t meet his expectations, he can be ruthless.”
Elon Musk dislikes meetings, brainstorming sessions, rules and procedures, hierarchical structures, and systems, which he thinks tend to impede his effectiveness to deal out things quickly.
When Jonathan Nolan asked Elon Musk do you have any business plans: Musk replied: “I don’t really have any business plans”. This shows Musk isn’t fond of advance planning.
Elon Musk is known to be the hardest worker amongst the entrepreneurs -working more than 80–90 hours a week. This is another indication of his perceiving function. Instead, Judgers have proper divisions of their time — they allocate time for rest, for family, for the outing, for learning, etc.
Another aspect that relates to perceiving is dressing.
Both Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg wear signature dresses — Steve Jobs used to wear a black mock turtleneck, blue jeans and new balance sneakers and Mark Zuckerberg wears a plain gray t-shirt and black Jeans. One reason these entrepreneurs prefer an unvarying signature look is to reduce the burden of choice and show consistency.
However, Elon Musk likes variety. For formal he wears a plaid grey suit, tie, and black oxford shoes while for casual he wears a black t-shirt and blue jeans. He also appears in a sleek blazer and button-down shirt. Same is his attitude towards knowledge — he doesn’t say no to any kind of knowledge — he is madly in love with inquiring unknown and learning a diverse range of skills.
So Elon Musk is perceptive, spontaneous and adaptable which makes him different from judgers who are consistent, orderly, and systematic.
Personality Type of Elon Musk
Based on the above traits, Elon Musk is INTP (Introvert, Intuitive, Thinker, and Perceiver).
INTP’s leading function is introverted thinking and secondary function is extraverted intuition. Introverted thinking helps Musk to make sense of information and subjectively organize it, while extraverted intuition drives him to change the world through the application of refined knowledge. Other famous INTPs are Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson, Socrates, and Abraham Lincoln.
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