By Jonathan Landay, Rachael Levy
(Reuters) -Former Tesla officials who oversaw the automaker’s diversity, equity and inclusion office say they regret not standing up to billionaire CEO Elon Musk. Now, they want U.S. federal workers to take heed and fight back against Musk’s sweeping federal spending and personnel cuts.
Kristen Kavanaugh and Mike Randolph, speaking in a Reuters interview, said their experiences at Tesla prompted them to write a new book, “Courage over Fear,” which they described as a guide for navigating the “fear-based leadership” that they say they encountered at Musk’s company and that increasingly characterizes other U.S. corporations and government.
“I was scared – of him, of being fired, of being humiliated. I felt like I had too much to lose to speak up, no matter how strongly I disagreed with what I saw from him,” she said. That realization inspired the pair of five-year Tesla veterans to write their book, they said.
Musk’s management style has always been a lightning rod. His focus on speed and impatience with regulations and protocol allow him to advance technologies at a breakneck pace, from developing new electric cars to rockets to brain implants, supporters say. Critics, including those of his recent work in the U.S. government, say he lacks empathy and respect.
Kavanaugh and Randolph described a culture of chaos at Tesla involving tactics mirroring the drive by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to shrink the federal government, such as requests for bullet-point emails to justify jobs.
They said federal employees can find their own way to stand up for themselves, such as sharing information in the public interest with journalists.
Tesla and Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
Musk has never denied his hard-charging style and believes that his work building electric cars and rockets is crucial for the health of the planet and the continuation of the human species, and that his DOGE work responds to threats of U.S. bankruptcy.
Kavanaugh ran the DEI office but did not report directly to Musk. She found him curious and lighthearted in a long meeting early in her tenure with other human-resources colleagues. She said he voiced no concerns about DEI. “He seemed genuinely interested in getting to know us,” she said.
But Musk did offend Tesla staff, she said, such as the time in 2021 when he tweeted that he was thinking of launching a university with a name that referenced women’s breasts. She said Musk never apologized for that comment or others – and now she wishes she had called him out.
Kavanaugh, who is Black, gay and a Marine, found her identity became inseparable from that of the company, she writes, adding that she spoke in “short punchy sentences, three bullet points max.” Spiraling anxiety, declining health and watching Tesla’s DEI commitment crumble, though, led her to quit.
In the book, Kavanaugh writes that her decision to leave Tesla was “one of the hardest of my life.”
(Reporting by Rachael Levy and Jonathan Landay; Editing by Peter Henderson and Matthew Lewis)
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