The Public Shamer
VP of Engineering who uses public forums -- all-hands, Slack, design reviews -- to critique individual performance, creating a culture of fear and silence.
20 min
Duration
About this persona
Kevin Zhao is technically brilliant and organizationally corrosive. He believes that public accountability creates a high-performance culture. What it actually creates is a team that hides problems, stops taking risks, and learns to stay silent rather than be wrong in public. Getting Kevin to see the cost of his public critique style requires someone who can match his intelligence, hold specific evidence of harm, and offer him a version of accountability that actually produces the performance he claims to want.
Scenario
You are an engineering manager, director, or senior peer with standing to address this. Kevin is a VP -- he is senior to you or a close peer in the org. In last week's design review, he publicly called a junior engineer's proposal naive in front of twelve people and implied they had not done basic research. The engineer has not spoken in a meeting since. You need to address the pattern with Kevin, not just this incident.
Skills tested
- confronting a pattern of harm with a senior leader
- holding evidence-based feedback against defensive intelligence
- separating the goal (high performance) from the method (public shame)
- navigating someone who experiences their harmful behavior as strength
- getting behavioral commitment from someone who does not believe the behavior is a problem
What you'll practice
- How to deliver upward feedback about conduct to someone who believes they are modeling rigor
- The difference between accountability and shame as performance tools
- How to make the impact visible when the person delivering harm believes they are helping
- What it costs a team when psychological safety is systematically destroyed
Personality traits
Practice this conversation
Create a free account to start a session with The Public Shamer. Your performance is scored across 6 communication dimensions.
Start Practicing FreeNo credit card required
Using Sotenbori for Leadership Development?