Zuru vs Glassdoor lawsuit: A failure to lead?
I first read about the Zuru vs Glassdoor lawsuit in WebWorm, David Farrier’s newsletter:
It reminded me of the experiences I’d had with Glassdoor reviews as an executive leader. I understand the very human kneejerk reaction from leaders to try to rationalise that such reviews as coming from “bad actors”. The reality is if you have repeated negative reviews on Glassdoor odds are that you have a leadership problem.
In that initial gut punch where anonymous reviews hold up a mirror to things that are uncomfortable truths, there are irrational responses very much rooted in denial. “Who are these people?”, “A few bad apples” — all classic rationalisations that are likely wrong. I am not sure any leader in our team ever fantasised about suing Glassdoor though. Seems like quite the detour to avoid actively leading and engaging with the reported issues.
This move by Zuru also seems to me to be an awful move, brand reputation-wise. For this reason, it doubly has me suspect it’s an action driven by pride. Time will tell what impact it will have on their ability to acquire and retain talent moving forward and whether they ever do shift towards a more introspective approach to handling feedback.
In our own experience, we got over our own bruised egos, our bruised pride faded and cooler heads prevailed. When we could more objectively look at the situation a few things were clear. When multiple people are making anonymous complaints logic suggests it’s more likely to be the motivated % of a larger population of dissatisfied employees than a coordinated conspiracy by ‘“bad apples”.
Focus on outcomes is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Writing a review takes effort. It’s similar to a 1 percenter activity. 1 percenter is the idea that 1 in 100 people takes the time to write a review of a product on social media. I think it likely holds true in this case. When you think of this situation through this lens, it’s not a few bad apples — maybe the same complaints by 5 unique reviewers represent the feelings of 500 people in your company!
And so, egos back in check, our leadership team saw the rational response was to engage and to actively listen and to have a cadence of engaging, listening and acting. And initially, we heard, even more, confronting truths as we engaged. The work is hard — to create the safety for honest dialogue. To understand the feedback and to begin by looking through the lens of what you have failed to do, failed to communicate or have, frankly, just not done well. This to me is the most important part of leadership. This cycle, this dialogue can be used for corrective action but also can be used for all aspects of change in the organisation.
So with all this in mind when I hear of a company that has sued Glassdoor I wonder whether this is a leadership team who were unable to do the introspection required. Were they unable or unwilling to engage with internal criticism with a view to understanding how they can improve?
Actively engaging, actively listening, following through on commitments and communicating authentically throughout are all skills that leaders need to develop to engage and support their teams. People can rise to leadership positions without many of these skills or even the experiences necessary to test them. Unfortunately, often employees are subjected to the worst instincts of human behaviour and insecurities.
Leaders with humility and a desire to improve will through experience, and hopefully a good dose of supportive leadership development, will acquire the behaviours and tools to do this well. But in my experience, it’s also true that some never do.
What do you think about the Zuru lawsuit? Is this a failure to lead by the Zuru executive team? Or is this really just some “bad apples”? Sound off in the comments.
Originally published at https://wioota.substack.com on July 21, 2022.
