The Crying CEO: The Risk and Reward of Performative Vulnerability

Maybe you heard about the latest drama on LinkedIn beginning two days ago with a CEO talking about laying off employees and feeling at his lowest.

Or maybe you haven’t, but you’re wondering why so many people are posting selfies of themselves crying with a satirical story about loss.

Either way there is no denying that this week a man named Braden Wallake (now dubbed The Crying CEO by the media) demonstrated how a single post from a personal account can go viral on LinkedIn illustrating the risk and reward of performative vulnerability.

But that wasn’t the only thing Wallake revealed.

Braden Wallake, CEO of HyperSocial, provides marketing services for B2B companies. After making cuts to his own salary and other budget cuts, he decided to let two of his 17 employees go.

“This will be the most vulnerable thing I’ll ever share,” begins the post that now has over 33,000 reactions and 7,000 comments.

“I’ve gone back and forth whether to post this or not.

We just had to layoff a few of our employees.

I’ve seen a lot of layoffs over the last few weeks on LinkedIn.

Most of those are due to the economy, or whatever other reason.

Ours?

My fault.

I made a decision in February and stuck with that decision for far too long.

Now, I know my team will say that “we made that decision together”, but I lead us into it.

And because of those failings, I had to do today, the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do.

We’ve always been a people first business. And we always will be.

Days like today, I wish I was a business owner that was only money driven and didn’t care about who he hurt along the way.

But I’m not.

So, I just want people to see, that not every CEO out there is cold-hearted and doesn’t care when he/she have to lay people off.

I’m sure there are hundreds and thousands of others like me. The ones you don’t see talked about. Because they didn’t lay off 50 or 500 or 5000 employees.

They laid off 1 or 2 or 3.

1 or 2 or 3 that would still be here if better decisions had been made.

I know it isn’t professional to tell my employees that I love them.

But from the bottom of my heart, I hope they know how much I do.

Every single one. Every single story. Every single thing that makes them smile and every single thing that makes them cry.

Their families. Their friends. Their hobbies.

I’ve always hire people based on who they are as people. People with great hearts, and great souls.

And I can’t think of a lower moment than this.”

Reactions ranged from calling Wallake out on his self-victimization…

… and self-centering…

… to identifying his privilege and performance…

… to addressing the intersection of class.

Some people chose to satirize The Crying Ceo with memetic posts like this guy…

… and this guy…

Soon, everyone had had enough…

and by Thursday it had become apparent the tide had turned with someone saying, “this is the beginning of the end for LinkedIn.”

Not only had people become tired of hearing about The Crying CEO, but it had become clear that some people had escalated the situation by going to his Instagram to make fun of him.

A mental health expert was particularly alarmed saying…

When asked if he regretted making the post Wallake said he only regretted posting a selfie, but stood by his post and a cursory glance through the comments will see him doubling-down on his statement. With features in The Washington Post, Newsweek, NY Post and more Wallake has made it clear the risk was worth the reward for him, but not every CEO would be happy with the amount of attention.

One thing is clear…

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