I can sense the eye rolls already. “Haven’t we read enough about Elon Reeve Musk over the past couple of weeks?”

Yes, you have but I want to explore not so much what Elon has done but the responses to his action and the consequences I believe could result.

Just in case that space under the rock was too cosy and you missed what has eventuated, here is a summary.

It was reported on 1 June 2022 that Elon Musk had demanded that his workers return to the office. He sent two similar emails to his workers at SpaceX and Tesla. He told workers that they were required to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office each week and those that did not would be fired.

The response to the revelation broadly fell into three camps. Camp 1, whilst agreeing that Elon’s view was outdated expressed the opinion that at least Elon was 100% clear about his expectations and therefore employees were under no illusion as to what he was demanding of them. Therefore, they had a clear choice. Camp 2, whilst also agreeing that his view was outdated, declared that as he owned the business, he could do whatever he liked. Camp 3, which was the majority camp, stated that Elon was out of touch and forgetting that employees are people first and foremost and the organisations most valuable asset. As Bryce Hoffman wrote in this Forbes article, “Too many CEOs are acting like it’s 1922, not 2022, when it comes to the question of how and when to return to work. Elon Musk is one of them.”

Consequences

Whilst all those camps have sound arguments, I fear consequences from the action of the business magnate worth 203 billion USD.

Role models

Most employees in our organisations tasked with leading people, have had no training, development, coaching, or support to become a people leader. Jack Zenger reported in an article for Harvard Business Review back in 2012 that on average managers receive their first leadership training at the age of 42 – about 10 years after they had been in the role. This means they have been trying to be a people leader without any development for over a decade. For most, the only role model within the organisation they have is the bad boss that led them who learnt from the bad boss who led them. The cycle perpetuates.

In his 2022 book, The Future Leader, Jacob Morgan talks about most leadership development programs being too late. He says that most people don’t enter leadership development programs until they are in their 40s, yet they actually become leaders of people in their 20s and 30s! So once again, these people have had in some cases two decades without any development and the only role model within the organisation they have had is the boss that led them who had little or no leadership development.

Without any role models for good leadership within the organisation, it would make sense to look outside the organisation. Remember that these people have had no leadership development, so it is highly likely that they are not aware of what constitutes good leadership.

So why not use Elon Musk as a role model? He is apparently a very successful businessman. He was Time’s Person of the Year in 2021. His Wikipedia introductory paragraph is a neat wrap.

Elon Reeve Musk- born June 28, 1971, is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer at SpaceX; angel investor, CEO, and Product Architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; and co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI. With an estimated net worth of around US$203 billion as of June 2022, Musk is the wealthiest person in the world according to both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and the Forbes real-time billionaires list.

Dictatorship

This opens the door to bosses struggling to know what to do about remote or hybrid work models to follow suit and demand everyone returns to the office or face being sacked.

Easily done!

We can just go back to the way it was before March 2020 and not have to worry about anything else. We just need to be dictatorial. After all Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon also demanded employees return to the office calling remote work “an aberration.” Morgan Stanley boss James Gorman said, "If you can go into a restaurant in New York City, you can come into the office” making his position on the return to the office clear.

Surely that all can’t be wrong. Can they?

Now whilst employees can vote with their feet and find an employer that will allow them to work where they want, when they want, and how they want, there is the impact on their mental health and wellbeing in being forced to do that.

This approach allows bosses to avoid what Apple CEO Tim Cook has called “the mother of all tests.” Speaking at the TIME 100 symposium in New York he said, "We're running the mother of all experiments because we don't know," in response to a question about the biggest changes taking place in the workplace right now.

As Bryce Hoffman said in the article I mentioned earlier,

“Apple, in contrast, is doing what I and other decision-making experts recommend as the best practice when dealing with complex problems such as this one: it is probing, sensing, and learning. It is setting up experiments and using critical thinking to carefully analyze the results. And most importantly of all, it is engaging with its employees and listening to them, rather than simply telling them what to do.”

Listening

The other message this behavior sends is that you don’t have to listen to your employees. In fact, don’t listen because then you can feign ignorance about what they are saying.

The research, the analysts, the commentators are all in agreement that employees want both flexibility and autonomy about where they work, when they work, and how they work. They are stating it loud and clear.

If these bosses want to ride out The Great Resignation and retain the talent they currently have and attract the talent they will need, they must start listening. I mean really listening.

It’s not rocket science. Ask employees want they want regarding the future of their work and then decide whether those desires can be met whilst still achieving business outcomes. Business outcomes and employee preferences must align. Employees are not stupid. They understand that. They will work with a model that underpins business success.

Impact

The impact on existing employees at the likes of Tesla and SpaceX cannot be underestimated. When the boss behaves the way in which Musk is behaving, he or she is just saying “I do not value you. I do not trust you. I do not care for you. You are just a worker.”

Employees can go elsewhere but not everyone can walk out today and into another role tomorrow. Whilst they are seeking an alternative employer, they may have to stick it out with the current one.

Meanwhile employees echo the words of Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner “I am not a number. I am a person.”

Just put yourself in the position of a `Musk employee. You will work at least 40 hours a week. You will work from the office. You will do as I say else you will be fired.

I dread to think of the impact that would have on my mental wellbeing.

How would you feel if you were the employee saying this?

“Do yourself a favor and stay away from this place; you will be run into the ground.”

“If you're over 50, they use you and when they burn you out you become expendable.”

“After working here for a while, you realize that you aren’t appreciated as an employee. You’re just a number to generate vehicle production.”

“No clear direction and huge bureaucracy.”

“Worst place to work and they don’t care about their employees.”

These are real quotes from Tesla employees. Say no more.

Call it Out

Despite the responses from Camp1 and 2 saying at least employees are 100% clear of Musk’s expectation and he can do what he likes as he owns the business, this does not mean we should cast this behavior aside.

We need to call it out for what it is. This is the behavior of bosses who are out of touch, handing on to command and control and hierarchical power, operating without any form of care or compassion for their people. These are organisations devoid of empathy and any form of emotional intelligence.

Unless we call it out for what it is, the behavior will continue to pervade our organisations, as those who know no better, use it as an excuse for their bad behavior.

I have an upcoming newsletter entitled “Bad Bosses Are Not Bad People.” Most people want to be the best they can and do not go to work to be the worst boss they can be. They do not set out with the one and only intent to build a toxic culture. They do not proudly attribute themselves with the characteristics of being disrespectful, noninclusive, manipulative, cutthroat and abusive. 

When we talk about bad bosses, we attribute them with all these traits, intents, and dispositions mentioned above. Yet if they actually exhibited these characteristics, they would be a megalomaniac, a tyrant, a narcissist, a dictate, bully, and despot.

We have all had bad bosses at one time or another. Would you really label your bad boss in that way? I don’t think so. In most cases, the bad boss does not have any deep-seated personality disorders. They are just in the wrong job or unsupported.

Or they have the wrong role models such as Musk, Solomon, and Gorman.

Summary

Whilst bad bosses and bad role models may be on notice because of The Great Resignation, I don’t think we will see their demise any time soon. This behavior is so deeply rooted that it will take some time to eradicate.

We can speed up the process by calling it out as unacceptable behavior regardless of whether they own the company or not.