Controversial Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has landed himself in hot water again after it was revealed that supposedly ordered company executives to track encrypted Snapchat user analytics in 2016.

News about Zuckerberg’s unconventional instructions came after a California federal court ordered for Meta emails to be unsealed as part of a case between the company and a group of advertisers.

In June 2016, Zuckerberg told Facebook's head of growth, Javier Olivan, and two other executives to give him a better answer regarding the usage and strong growth of Snapchat, which was one of the company’s closest competitors.

“Given how quickly they're growing, it seems important to figure out a new way to get reliable analytics about them,” Zuckerberg wrote to Olivan. “Perhaps we need to do panels or write custom software.”

The Meta CEO then ended the email by giving his team a stern warning that they should “figure out how to do this”.

Not an uncommon behaviour among bosses

Zuckerberg’s message to his team is drawing a lot of mixed reactions from people, including experts on human behaviour.

Claremont McKenna College Professor Ronald Riggio said that Zuckerber’s instructions in the email were strictly focussed on the task, and that they did not have any niceties at all. He pointed out that such an order is not uncommon among bosses.

However, Riggio, who is an expert on leadership and organizational psychology, also said this example of shame-based tactics can have a negative impact on employers and backfire on the company in the long run.

While providing context to such instructions can help clear things up, Riggio said it is not necessarily the case.

Reacting differently to toxic behaviour

In an interview with Business Insider, licensed therapist Annie Wright gave a slightly different assessment about the potential impact of Zuckerberg’s instructions.

Wright said that business leaders often send urgent and condescending emails because they want to use fear to motivate their teams.

The therapist explained that some people may be more prone to hyperarousal of the nervous system when they are subjected to stress. Emails such as the one sent by Zuckerberg might spur these workers to take action and have more determination to “soothe and please the boss”.

Wright said these kinds of behaviour from business leaders might achieve immediate results. However, it can also lead to high employee turnover for the company. She pointed out that bad bosses are one of the main reasons why workers leave their jobs.

There is also the possibility that workers might not react positively to such treatment from their bosses. Instead of experiencing hypoarousal of their nervous systems, Write said these individuals might freeze under pressure and shut down.

Some workers might also need therapy to cope with such toxic treatment from their co-workers, especially if it comes from the head of the company themselves, as seen in Zuckerberg’s email.

Building a negative work environment

For Riggio, what made Zuckerberg’s email very troubling was the tone that he used. While the nature of his instructions was unethical, the manner in which the Meta CEO wrote to his executives made it seem like they could not say no to them.

Business leaders with such status and power as Zuckerberg often make it difficult for their employees to stand up to them, according to the behavioural expert.

Riggio said this is why many of these bosses find themselves in trouble, such as the case with Boeing recently.

Because of the strict, top-down, and non-collaborative workplace culture that they build, when these business leaders do things, their employees have no other option but to “look the other way or just continue”.