A Rallying Cry or a Rant? ‘Pity City’ CEO Comments Show Perils of Video Meetings

“‘You can visit Pity City, but you can’t live there.’ So, people, leave Pity City,” the CEO said, before mouthing the word “boom.” MillerKnoll designs and sells office chairs as well as home furniture under the brands Herman Miller, Knoll and Design Within Reach.

The company confirmed that Ms. Owen later apologized to staff in an email. MillerKnoll and Ms. Owen declined to comment further or make the letter available. The saga shows the challenges business leaders face in lighting a fire under their workforces, especially in virtual and hybrid workplaces. 

Executives continue to do a lot of leading via video in the postpandemic era, and the format, less intimate and interactive than a conference-room huddle, holds pitfalls. As numerous leaders from online mortgage lender Better.com to digital-marketing firm Clearlink can now attest, technology also allows Zoom clips to be easily recorded and shared far beyond their intended audience. 

What might come off as a punchy rallying cry in person can seem like a rant on-screen, a problem compounded when the boss can’t read the gallery of faces on his or her laptop, leadership and communication advisers say. Social media only makes it worse. 

“You’re always on, there’s no time off, and you have to assume that you could be recorded,” said Peter Rahbar, a New York-based lawyer who advises companies and executives on employment issues. 

Some managers he works with are hiring high-level crisis and communication consultants to avoid missteps when speaking on “what I’d consider basic employee issues,” he added. 

Bosses’ and employees’ shifting expectations of one another doesn’t help, he said. Leaders want to stoke motivation and productivity amid recession fears but feel staff are focused on flexibility, work-life balance and pay. Meanwhile, plenty of workers still feel burned out and overworked.

“Many CEOs are really frustrated and angry and tired,” Mr. Rahbar said, adding that he’s hearing bosses make similar remarks to Ms. Owen’s, albeit behind closed doors. “They just want things to go back to the way it was, with employee engagement, commitment and being back in the office.”

James Clarke, CEO of Clearlink, a Draper, Utah-based digital marketing and advertising firm, also had a leaked internal meeting video go viral this week. In it, he praised one employee who he said had sold the family dog to return to the office, disparaged others for “quiet quitting” and suggested it was unfair for parents to take care of children while on the clock. 

In his speech, Mr. Clarke thanks employees who are working hard, while calling out others for not pulling their weight.

“In one month of this year alone, I got data that about 30 of you didn’t even open or crack open laptops,” he said.

Some employees took to Glassdoor, the job-review site. “James Clarke needs to step down,” read one entry. “Good leaders care about their people, and he clearly doesn’t.” 

Clearlink spokesman Layne Watson didn’t comment on Mr. Clarke’s specific remarks but said the town hall took place earlier this month and was about the company’s recent mandate for most Utah-based employees to return to the office four days a week.

Bill McGowan, who coaches executives in both public and internal communications, said that when leaders do have to deliver tough news on-screen, they should make sure to make eye contact by looking into the lens of their laptop camera. But it’s also important that they can view the full gallery of people in attendance. It becomes easier for leaders to forget their empathy otherwise, he said, just as it’s easier for staff to submit terse questions or grievances in the chat function of the video call. 

“These are real human beings you need to connect with,” said Mr. McGowan, founder and CEO of Clarity Media Group.

Recently he advised an executive who had to calm and motivate staff worried about layoffs. He suggested that she share her own, previous experience dealing with turmoil at work, a time when she lost focus and later regretted it. 

“You have to validate what people are feeling,” he said.

In late 2021, leaked footage of Better.com CEO

Vishal Garg

laying off 900 employees via a videocall was viewed by millions. In an apology posted to Better.com, Mr. Garg admitted to poorly communicating the news, adding, “I embarrassed you.” 

Some employees later said they noticed a new feature on Zoom calls: their work email addresses were watermarked and splashed across the video, meaning that anyone recording and sharing the video would have their email attached, the employees said. 

Better.com said the watermark wasn’t in response to the viral video and is used in meetings where private financial information is shared.

Meanwhile, MillerKnoll is considering how to handle future town halls. “It’s too soon to know what that looks like,” a spokeswoman said. 

Write to Vanessa Fuhrmans at [email protected] and Joseph Pisani at [email protected]