What I Learned When An Employee Trashed Me on Glassdoor

Effective leaders should not shy away from feedback, even when it's hard to hear or read.

Having a great company culture always mattered a lot to me at Acceleration Partners (AP). We spent years developing a culture that both supports employees and helps us deliver value to customers; along the line we have built a great reputation.

Glassdoor, a website that features anonymous employee reviews, has given us several awards, including #4 Best Place to Work and #2 Small Business CEO. That’s why I was a bit taken aback when, back in 2018, a past employee posted a negative review on the site, commenting both on what it was like to work at the company and taking my leadership to task.

Based on the specific nature of the comments, I was able to check my exit interview notes and determine the review likely came from someone who left the company almost four years before the review, when we were a much smaller, and very different business. Since this employee was a top performer and well-liked by both peers and management, it was not someone I would have expected to be carrying around such negative feelings years later.   

This is one of the reasons the feedback was valuable, and I learned several important lessons from this experience that I carried forward during my tenure as CEO.