Automotive Industry CEOs

ELON MUSK VS. Mary BARRA

Based on the Big 5 Personality Traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism), the two automotive CEOs are compared.

Openness: Both are in the 95% percentile, however, Barra has higher scores in the subcategories under openness such as emotional awareness, adventurousness, and artistic interest.

Conscientiousness: Barra scores in the 80th percentile and Musk scores in the 30th percentile. This is a big difference between the two CEOs. Barra has higher self-efficacy, dutifulness, achievement-seeking, and self-discipline scores than Musk.

Extroversion: Assertiveness, activity level, cheerfulness, and warmth are all associated with this trait. Again, Barra scored higher on all of these and Musk scored pretty low.

Agreeableness: The female CEO scores higher again with this personality trait as well. She scores higher in all subcategories such as straightforwardness, cooperation, and trust.

Neuroticism: Emotional range, control, and self-consciousness are higher for Barra in this category. Overall, she scored in the 90th percentile whereas Musk scored in the 80th.

High personality trait scores = better performance!

Female CEOs can be rewarding not only to company’s revenue, but to the work environment. Employees want a leader to be emotionally aware, prone to stress, energetic, enthusiastic, trusting, a problem-solver, and performance-driven.

{1}: CEORater. Retrieved from: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uq4SEnNdQ05mFQZXfz0zXZudEeDq2vox/view.

{2} Bromels, J. (2018). Better Buy: General Motors vs. Tesla. Retrieved from: https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/09/10/better-buy-general-motors-vs-tesla.aspx.