In his 2023 bestselling biography, Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson dissected the extraordinary success and equally shocking personal history of one of the world’s richest men, the billionaire innovator behind Tesla, SpaceX, and X (formerly Twitter).

Much of the glow around Musk faded after Fidelity Investments, the company that helped Musk acquire Twitter, reported in January that X had lost 71.5% of its value since Musk paid $44 billion for the platform in October 2022.

Nonetheless, Musk’s track record of dramatic risk-taking and obsession with “saving humanity” through, among other endeavors, creating a human colony on Mars continues to fascinate the public and reaffirm his creative business foresight.

What drives Isaacson’s analysis is a personality theory. Musk’s entire persona and manic desire to dominate, according to Isaacson, can be traced to bullying incidents. He endured brutal verbal bullying by his father and was severely beaten by playground bullies as a child.

His drive to not only overcome these experiences but to calm his “inner demons” arises in his quest to outperform even those few tech innovators who once exceeded him.

The trouble with this theory is twofold: 1) It lets the adult Musk off the hook for the way he treats his own employees, and 2) it suggests that the demons (including past bullying) that drive Musk are perhaps “what it takes to drive innovation and progress.”

Musk’s first ex-wife, Justine, recalled to Isaacson that Musk often told her, “If you were my employee, I would fire you.”

Isaacson’s firsthand observation of Musk the manager? “Ruthless in his criticism of subordinates and fond of humiliating them in front of their co-workers.”

Such behavior precisely fits the definition of a bully by the Workplace Bullying Institute (WBI), a “social purpose corporation” studying the phenomenon and fighting for new laws since 1997.

The WBI website cites its own exhaustive surveys (and methodologies) to assert that 80 million U.S. workers—almost one in two—are affected by bullying on the job, including remote workers.

The institute researchers note that colleagues who witness bullying feel the toxicity and pain almost as much as the targets do.

Classic bullying behaviors include “being purposely misled about work duties, like incorrect deadlines or unclear directions” and “criticism meant to intimidate, humiliate, or single someone out without reason.”

Unlike racism, sexism, ageism, or national origin discrimination, there is no federal law prohibiting abusive on-the-job behavior of this sort. 

But in the institute’s latest survey, the negative reactions of American employers to bullying sound familiar: a) Encourage it: Necessary for a competitive organization; b) Defend it: When offenders are executives and managers; c) Rationalize it: It’s an innocent, routine way of doing business; d) Deny it: It doesn’t happen here; and e) Discount it: The personal impact is really not that bad.

Much of the research on bullying and its harmful, often tragic, effects has focused on teenagers, particularly during the Covid crisis and especially on social media.

But adult American workers seemingly able to “defend” themselves and call out workplace bullies get little support. In fact, popular culture encourages the opposite, by glorifying the concept of bullying to win.

One of The Athletic/New York Times sports staff’s coverage of the latest Rose Bowl game illustrates this very phenomenon. The Michigan Wolverines’ 27-20 win over vaunted coach Nick Saban’s Alabama Crimson Tide engendered prolonged and classic reportage on the Big Ten vs. SEC (Southeastern Conference) rivalry.

In a post-game interview with several Michigan players, The Athletic reporter Nicole Auerbach recounted how the Wolverines had to endure the constant refrain of “not big enough, not strong enough, and can’t keep up with the SEC.”

Michigan defensive lineman Kenneth Grant gleefully explained his team’s win: “We had to bully the bully. Everybody talks about how SEC ball is different. What it says on paper and what they look like out there are two totally different things. We just had to come out there and bully the bully.”

It’s hard to imagine winning Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh—subsequently hired to coach the NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers—yelling from the sidelines, “Get in there and bully them back, boys!” But he could have.