Failure of Virtual Leadership: An Analysis of Ellen Pao

To start we should focus on CEO who was in charge at the time of this event and was the one looked toward when the users revolted. Pao, previously a lawyer and most heavily known for her loss in a gender discrimination lawsuit, had a checkered history as CEO of Reddit. This is an example of a leader who’s goals didn’t align with their user base. Several issues occurred over the course of her leadership that upset the order of the website’s users, moderators, and administrators. One issue included banning salary negotiations in order to close the gap between the wages of the men and women of her staff. She also received scrutiny when implementing the bold move to ban subreddits that she deemed attacked other people. It was this decision the banned subreddits like /r/fatpeoplehate among a large list of hateful pages ranging from race to gender. The major issue had here was the sense of lost autonomy that the user’s felt. Regardless of what the ethical move was, decisions like these didn’t sit right with many of the users, but were the foundation of commercializing the website. It was at this point that Reddit users began creating their own subreddits that directly addressed Ellen Pao. These subreddits such as /r/PaoMustResign even generated change.org petitions to remove her as CEO with thousands of signatures. (Nguyen, M. D. 2015)

In the summer of 2015 the popular website Reddit.com underwent a website-wide crisis following the termination of popular Director of Talent Victoria Taylor. Taylor was in charge of the way that the subreddit /r/IAmA functioned. /r/IAmA is a facet of the website dedicated to Q&A sessions with notable people from an average Joe with an interesting job to famous celebrities, to President Obama. Under the username /u/chooter, Taylor was respected among users and moderators for her ability to fairly assess the validity of AMA’s as well as her efficient coordination of said AMA’s. Her role was essentially to make sure that everybody answering questions was who they said they were and that the subreddit wasn’t being abused. Even those outside of Reddit had only positive things to say about Taylor’s work in maintaining valid content within /r/IAmA. In her analysis of the digital crisis Gawker Journalist, Ashley Feinberg, described Taylor’s value on the Reddit by saying ”coordinating and verifying all those celebrities takes a massive amount of work, which is why Victoria Taylor, the site’s Director of Talent, seems to have been so immensely beloved by the site’s many, voluntary moderators—she was good.” What followed was a website wide protest against Reddit’s leaders, administrators, and staff. The unwarranted termination of Taylor acted as a catalyst for users to voice all of their issues with the site’s current management. Even when it was found that the termination of Taylor wasn’t even directly issued by Pao, it was far too late in the uproar for users to notice or care. Hundreds of popular subreddits either shut down or went private in order to protest the direction that the website was taking and particularly the failure of efficient leadership from the website’s CEO Ellen Pao. It has still never been officially determined the reason for Taylor being removed from the website, although it is somewhat clear through Ellen Pao’s statements and previous actions that Taylor didn’t align with administrative desire to commercialize the subreddit. (Feinberg, A. 2015)

(Above) As of July 3’rd 2015, most posts on the website were related to the controversy.

In his analysis of the website's crisis Gideon Grudo said it best "The blackout didn’t happen because one person got fired. It happened because mods were sick of being ignored."(2015). One example in which Pao displays significant leadership incompetence was when she intervened in a Reddit thread in which users were looking for alternative websites to move to. Her response to the protestant users was as follows.

User, endoflevelbaddy, had the highest voted response to Pao in which they speak for the users by teller her that their issue isn’t entirely with the adjustments, rather the lack of transparency the websites administrators were offering. Users throughout the thread then begin to trace a lot of the drastic changes on the website as methods to monetize more rather than provide better content. Karen Lojeski states in ‘Leading the Virtual Workforce’ that,

“transparency goes hand in hand with… authenticity. Those in charge, with the power and authority to lead, need not only be true to themselves and others but also willing to share information that may or may not be seen as favorable.” (2010)

At the end of the day transparency is what the Reddit Community was really looking for from Pao. They wanted to understand why some of the most why the most influential moderator was being let go and why they were making the changes to the site that they were making. Users even call Ellen out in the thread that she started by pointing out that on top of them terminating Taylor, they also got rid of the employee in charge of the Reddit gift exchange program. These are some pretty concerning points from the communities perspective, and like Lojeski states it is important to followers to have these sorts of questions answered In addition this thread highlights that Pao lacks vital communicative competencies. In ‘What Leaders Need to Know and Do’ Ruben asserts that the abilities of listening, attention, question asking, and learning are all vital to being communicatively competent. Pao never made a significant effort, in her many scandalous episodes as Reddit’s CEO, to opening communicate with the either the websites’ users or moderators. In fact under this administration open communication with the Reddit community took a back burner to commercial gain. (Ruben 2006)

The crisis eventually came to a close with Ellen Pao's resignation and apology to the Reddit community.

The resignation of Ellen Pao marks the beginning of Reddit’s transition from a Benevolent-authoritative style of leadership to a consultative style. This means that instead of retaining a style of leadership in which orders are issued from top down with very little input from the users and moderators they moved to one where consultation with subordinates is seen as productive. When operating a website that’s revenue is dependent on a thriving participatory community there really is no other way to effectively lead a website. The success of both user and moderator collaboration to overthrow the website’s leaders is an excellent example of how websites like Reddit thrive off of the pluralist model of power. In this model power is views power as non-hierarchical and as something that is ubiquitous throughout all interactions. (Mumby 2016)

In conclusion this case study grants insight as to the sorts of shortcomings certain leaders can have when attempting to lead an online community. The best advice one would have for somebody in the position of leading a community like Reddit would be to communicate and be as transparent as possible. Communities like Reddit can greatly improve the lives of its members, but leaders must truly reach out and communicate to best suit toward their users' needs. While its understood that at the end of the day Reddit is a business and has investment in making money, it stands no chance without users that want to participate. Along with communicative competency it is equally important to make sure your active community understands the reasons things are being done, or you will lose them entirely.