Hey Everyone,
I told myself I wouldnât write anything new this month. Then the Crying CEO came along. I got a few notes about it, thought about why it bothered me, and, long story short, decided to write a post.
Back to school,
Ben
How Not To Be A LinkedIn Influencerđ
Last week the CEO of a small company that helps businesses develop LinkedIn marketing content posted a selfie of himself crying after laying off a âfewâ employees.1 The post received a lot of engagement - not all positive.
In this post, Iâll write about what we can all learn from his regrettable decision.
The Doâs
Letâs start with the positive. What can we learn from Braden Wallake, the Crying CEO of HyperSocial?
He took responsibility - He said the layoffs were "my fault," and he's right. He owns that decision. They were his fault.
The Donâts
And now, letâs learn what shouldnât be done after a layoff. Please note that this list is not exhaustive.
He posted about the layoffs. You donât have to announce layoffs on your personal LinkedIn profile. Even if you run a company that generates LinkedIn content, the news will get out without you. Things can happen that you donât have to post about.
He used âBroetry.â In his excellent âWhy is LinkedIn so cringe?â, Trung Phan discusses broetry, the annoying LinkedIn posting style that has taken over the platform. Broetry is designed to boost the âengagementâ of a LinkedIn post - which is in horrible taste considering the context here.Â
He took responsibility (but not really). I despise apologies that lack a commitment to change. Itâs easy to say that youâre sorry, but itâs much harder to commit to not making the same mistake again. Wallake offers no âhere is what Iâm going to do about it.â
He concludes his post by displaying a complete lack of empathy. Wallake ends his post with, âI can't think of a lower moment than this.â Really? Wallake doesnât even have to deal with the full consequences of his decisions (thatâs for the people he canned to worry about), and he canât imagine a lower moment? Is this man a sociopath?
It is all about him. Of all the bad calls he made, the saddest is that Wallake made this post about him and didnât even realize it. After his original post attracted criticism, he posted this the following day:
[M]y intent was not to make it about me or victimize myself. I am sorry it came across that way
This is the same person who:
Posted a selfie of himself crying.
Used âIâ sentences in three of the first four sentences of his post.
Told his employees that he loved them but made zero effort to use his considerable platform to ensure that those same people landed on their feet.2
How else could it have possibly come across?
The Worthless Currency of Attention
Wallake has built a career off of social media engagement. For him, there is no better virtue than virality, thousands of likes, and a rapidly growing audience.Â
What Wallake doesnât realize is that the engagement he worships is cheap, easy, and meaningless without action. It is easy to click âLike,â or fall victim to engagement-bait posts. It is much harder to drive action and change behavior - awareness and engagement are the first steps, but without causing action, what good are they?
I keep asking myself, âwhat is Braden Wallake trying to accomplish?â Heâs not using his audience to find opportunities for the former employees who just entered the job market. Heâs not sharing his learnings about misappropriating capital, nor is he committing to do any better in the future. Thereâs no furthering of a mission, no expression of vision, and no point of view that could, you know, help someone. The only thing Wallake accomplishes is drawing attention to himself - because attention, particularly on him, is all that matters. Braden Wallakeâs brain has been broken by the very engagement that he peddles.
The obvious lesson here is that your actions after a layoff define you. Good people own their mistakes, learn, and do what they can for those affected - broken ones seek attention and cry about it.
Iâm not going to link to the original post because I donât want to give bad influencers engagement. Iâm sure you can find and read the whole post if you want to (though I wouldnât recommend it).
It took him several days, but Wallake learned his lesson here. Heâs now trying to get the affected employees new gigs.
"Prose before bros" is my phrase of the month, or year!
I imagine broetry is something that -- when bros get up and look in the mirror to pump themselves up for the day, they recite some broetry out loud đ𤨠like a cheesy movie montage with Rambo music in the background