Being a genius does not make you an effective CEO.
Getting someone who founds a company and builds it through sheer force of will and power of ideas to step aside is difficult, to say the least.
Sometimes that someone can simply be smart enough that they overcome their own leadership deficiencies. You can argue that Steve Jobs fits that bill, as he was both notoriously difficult tot work for and very good at bringing out the best in people.
Jobs "was not the world's greatest manager," Walter Isaacson, who wrote a biography of the former Apple (AAPL) -) chief executive, said in an interview with 60 Minutes. "In fact, he could have been one of the world's worst managers."
Many really smart people are bad managers for the same reason many Hall of Fame athletes make terrible choices. When everything comes naturally to you, it’s difficult to show people how to do anything. Just be better (or smarter) is not a useful instruction.
Jobs kept his job, however, and was beloved by the public even as he was “petulant, rude, spiteful, and controlling, a man who thought nothing of publicly humiliating employees, hogging the credit for work he hadn't done, throwing tantrums when he didn't get his way, or parking his Mercedes in handicapped spots,” Isaacson’s book showed.
The difference between Jobs and Tesla (TSLA) -) CEO Elon Musk is that the former Apple boss’s bad behavior occurred behind closed doors. Musk’s petulant, rude, spiteful and controlling actions are playing out on Twitter – a platform he owns – and his actions there suggest he may not be fit to run a public company.
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Musk Goes to War With Mark Zuckerberg
Recently, Musk has been pushing the idea of a mixed martial arts fight between himself and Zuckerberg. That would be a unique interaction between two CEOs, but both men train in the sport and a potential bout put together by Dana White and Ultimate Fighting Championship would be a massive spectacle that could raise tens or hundreds of millions for charity.
Now, however, the battle between Musk and Zuckerberg has become a business one, not just a potentially physical one. Meta's Facebook and Musk's Twitter were competitors in that both are social media, but they served very different audiences.
That's no longer true now that Meta has launched Threads, a Twitter knockoff that grew to 100 million users in under a week. The quick success of Zuckerberg's Twitter rival seems to have pushed Musk's fun rivalry with his counterpart into a dark place.
Musk Goes to a Dark Place
"Zuck is a cuck," Musk posted on Twitter.
That's the Tesla CEO invoking a term that has frequently been used in the alt-right world that Musk flirts with.
"Its literal meaning references a submissive man sexually cuckolded by a woman. Now, it is a catch-all among the alt-right, in the dark corners of the internet where #feminismisacancer hashtags are a badge of pride and the real enemy is PC culture, where “cuck” has become shorthand for any perceived weakness, or rather, perceived reluctance to exploit strength," GQ reported.
That's likely what Musk is going for -- playing to high right-wing fans -- rather than implying the literal definition:
"A man who finds arousement in watching his girlfriend/wife having sex with another man," the Urban Dictionary reported.
Using either meaning in a business setting seems wildly inappropriate, but Musk's follow-up tweet suggests that he fully has no filter when it comes to posting.
"I propose a literal dick-measuring contest," he wrote.
Musk isn't just a colorful character or an eccentric genius who gets results. He's like Jobs behind the scenes, but he's also showing who he is very publicly -- and that's someone who should not be the CEO of a public company.
This isn't Musk breaking the mold or setting a new standard for CEOs. It's someone who has shown that he will put his own desire for people to be talking about him above the interest of his company
That's fine for the owner of Twitter, which isn't public, but it's wildly irresponsible for the CEO of a publicly traded company.
Tesla shareholders should be questioning that, but history shows they won't. Even if Musk proves over and over that he's not just a bad boss, he's also a bad representative for the company he runs, nothing is likely to change.
Read More: Musk's Feud With Zuckerberg Just Hit a New Level of Immaturity
