Standing up to the Bully

It starts early on.

When my daughter was four years old, she attended a Montessori school, which is the equivalent of junior kindergarten in most school systems. This was her first venture out of the closely-monitored, safe environment of daycare, and into a general school population. She came home one day not long after starting at her new school, quiet and withdrawn. When asked what was bothering her, she finally said, with tears streaming down her face, that a group of little girls, following the lead of one particular girl, had been mean to her. “How were they mean to you?”, I asked. My daughter had worn a blue dress to school that day and the leader of this group of four year-olds told her, “We don't play with girls who wear blue.” “Seriously?!”, I thought, “this crap starts at the age of four???”

Parents hope and pray that peer pressure, social stigmatism, and bullying will never be inflicted upon their child(ren), but we all know our kids will be subjected to one or the other or all, sooner or later. Bullying comes in various forms, and can be subtle and insidious, or in-your-face and violent. And in recent years, it's taken on a whole new dimension now that we live in a world where everything is “insta’ed”, snapchatted, tweeted, shared, posted and texted.

Some people navigate their way through the world relatively unscathed, but those who fall prey to bullying (of the cyber or any kind) can suffer very serious and damaging consequences. I have always aimed to teach my children to be confident and strong, to love who they are, and to persevere through the challenge of growing up, while not-so-secretly just keeping my fingers crossed behind my back that all will just work out. I thought I had more time to prepare for the inevitable, but we started dealing with it in our house pretty early.

On that day when my daughter came home from her first bullying encounter, I explained, wanting to make her pain go away with grown-up logic, how people try to exert power over others to control and intimidate them. Realizing how ridiculous I sounded rationally explaining this to a four-year old child, I just stopped and said to her plainly and simply, "You know what we are going to do about this? You are going to wear blue to school every day next week." Perplexed, she asked why. To which I answered, "If you don't stand up to a bully, they will just keep picking on you."

I took my own advice - Kind of.

I started as a woman working in tech startups almost twenty years ago now. My very traditional Asian parents, like a lot of Asian parents, wanted their daughter to be a doctor, lawyer, or accountant. At least to work in a big company with a well-known name, or marry a nice rich Asian man so they'd have something to brag about to their friends. I tried their route and it wasn't for me. I experienced the thrill of my first high-risk tech startup early on in my career. I was hooked and I never looked back. Sorry Mum and Dad.

Back in those early working days, my plan was to just blend in. Not stand out. Work my ass off, prove myself on merit, and I figured success would come along naturally. I'm female. I'm not a developer. I'm an ethnic minority. Hell, back then, that was a trifecta of things I didn't want to be known for. I told myself to just fit in with the boys, and to not stand out as a woman. I could write SQL scripts, setup a database, and hold my own talking about the Leafs, the Jays, along with many other sports, so it came easy to me. And hey, I sometimes enjoyed the perk of having my own private washroom because there were no other women on the floor. Life was good. My plan would work.

For a while, it did work. But as I progressed in my career, I made less effort to conform, and just the opposite, I spent more time being myself and focusing on excelling at the things I did best. I knew my priorities: Learn the business. Speak up. Know when to sweat the details. EQ over IQ. Execute. Execute. Execute. Along the way, I've been undermined. I've been ridiculed. I've been bullied. I fought back often, but there were those times when I didn't. It is exhausting and often brutal to fight back. But you do what you have to do.

I rose to be the most senior woman at my last company. We went public. We went global. We scaled to $34M and 200+ people. We built an incredible team. It was a bumpy ride, but we got there.

As I reflect back on that initial plan now, would I do it that way again? Probably not. I should have taken my own advice sooner. I would have conformed less, and focused more on what I was the best at. I would have spoken up sooner.

It doesn't stop until you stop it.

What is bullying? Like I had started to explain to my daughter many years ago, it's the attempt to control and intimidate others through the abuse of power. Bullies prey on people they perceive to be weak and vulnerable, and they hide behind some veil or mask. In business, they can hide behind their titles, their authority, their threats, their cohort, their gender. And now, a faceless, nameless online medium.

Once more in my tech career, I find myself facing a bully. But this time, my bully is not a software exec. It's an anonymous cyber bully. And like every bully, they know where to hit where it hurts. For me, that’s around leadership and who I am as a person. It doesn’t get any more personal than that.

Multiple online sites exist to review products, events, companies, or professionals. A review of me as a manager went up on a little-known site, which only receives 200 hits/year. Across multiple postings, this reviewer accused me of pretty much being the worst manager ever.

The thing is, the accusations from this review were not even plausible, because the products, clients, and regions provided as examples of my poor management didn't even exist in our company and were blatantly made up. The reviewer even called out my interracial marriage. What, exactly, does my interracial marriage have to do with my management abilities? And why is my marriage of any interest to this bully? It was clearly a personal attack by someone who is upset with me about some thing, for some reason; by someone who derives a twisted pleasure from abusing the power that anonymity gives them when they humiliate and inflict pain on a person they assume is powerless to defend themselves.

Of course I was upset and angered by this review. My reputation was at stake. I debated on what to do. After I reviewed the site’s “fair practice” policies, I saw that my choices were to post a response, to write my own review, or to request that the review be removed based on a breach of the site’s objectives, in addition to being defamatory and racist.

Given the ludicrous nature of the review, the first option seemed like I would be engaging in a pointless debate. But I certainly had a case for the latter option. I chose this third option, and crafted a response challenging each point in the review with straight facts. It took getting through a bogus email address and the help of CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority) to get the review removed, but it worked. Relieved, I thought this was now behind me and I could move on. But I hadn’t yet stood up to the bully.

So now, I've decided to wear blue.

The same bogus reviewer has now posted a review of me on Glassdoor. When Glassdoor first emerged, I used to call it "Glasshouses" because that is what it seemed like to me. People could throw stones at companies who had little recourse to defend themselves, because the anonymous nature of reviews meant there was no way to validate the content or the reviewer. That said, I do believe that Glassdoor offers a valuable service. It takes an enlightened reader to navigate through the content and form a valid opinion of what's true, what's not, and what has been taken out of context, but the website does provide insight into certain truths about a given employer, and if you are a company leader, I implore you to pay attention to it.

Since I was successful with having the previous review removed on the other site, I started down the same path with Glassdoor. But with the advice of some very smart and inspiring friends and colleagues, I realized that was the wrong approach. If this bully has decided to pick on me, for whatever reason, it will just keep happening again and again.

So what to do? I couldn't just pretend it wasn’t there. I had to take action. I've just started at an incredible new company on an exciting new mission. In no way did I want my new company and team to be affected negatively as a result of personal attacks against me. Like many companies do when they face a Glassdoor attack, we could ask our team to post their own positive (and genuine) reviews in response, but again, this would not be standing up to the bully.

So that's what I am doing now. I'm not going to hide or be intimidated or threatened by what you are doing. Instead, I am going to call you out. You are a bully. Plain and simple. You are a coward hiding behind a keyboard and a website, abusing the fact that you can post whatever you want for your own agenda (https://www.glassdoor.ca/Overview/Working-at-OneEleven-EI_IE1703858.11,20.htm).

I'm happy to take constructive advice from people that I've actually led or managed, because we've all got room for improvement. I care deeply about people and talent. I've witnessed first hand how companies live and die by their leadership and their people. And I've had the privilege of working with some pretty amazing people and teams.

Focusing on the Good.

To employers out there, don’t let yourselves be defined by anonymous reviews. If you or your managers are consistently getting bad reviews, go through them carefully and identify the underlying issues. Better yet, proactively lead the message of who you are by being clear about your values and your culture, instead of reactively responding to what someone else is saying about you.

To employees, if you are unhappy with your company, don't throw rocks at glass houses. It doesn't help you or your team. Raise your issues directly with your company. It's often tough to raise issues, but learning how to have challenging conversations is something that will serve you well in business, and in your career. It’s part of becoming a mature professional.

To our amazing OneEleven startups, my goal at OneEleven is to help you scale your company in a critical area of your business that I care very deeply about - your talent and your people. This is what I have spent a good part of my career doing, and I intend to live up to that commitment once again with you all.

To the incredible OneEleven team, we’ve only known each other for three short months. You could have taken what was said in these reviews at face value, and thrown me under the bus. Instead, you provided your feedback based on your own objective assessments, which is all I or anyone could ask of you. You then provided the support I needed by confirming that you don't agree with what's been written by this reviewer, and you didn’t give that bully any credence. You made your assessments based on facts and evidence, and not the public ramblings of an anonymous and unvalidated public posting. I truly thank you for that.

To the bully who is posting these reviews, I thank you for reminding me to be courageous, and the importance of speaking up.

To my happy and confident daughter who is now 12, I look forward to wearing blue with you for many years to come.