Public servants are expected to have values and ideologies – but they’re compensated handsomely to keep them quiet. 

Of all the bleak headlines we encounter, one of the bleakest has to be “[insert person’s name] sacked over social media post”. The fate of former Te Whatu Ora chair Rob Campbell is yet another example of someone taken out by the most banal apparatus: the “post”.

Campbell has been sacked as chair of Te Whatu Ora after making critical comments about the National Party’s water plan on social media, breaching the code of conduct for board members of Crown entities that requires they be politically neutral. Political neutrality is a concept only made real by the appearance of an absence of ideological expression. That warrants thinking about, especially in Campbell’s case. An abundance of publicly expressed ideological thought is a feature of his leadership, not a glitch. 

That Campbell’s comments were made on LinkedIn is bleaker still. LinkedIn is touted by LinkedIn as a platform where you can “connect to opportunity”. No mention is made of the wonderful opportunity to end your career in one fell swoop or the risk inherent in the very notion of mashing “social” media and professionalism together. Campbell’s argument that his comments were made as a private citizen is weakened by that dichotomy. It may be Campbell’s platform of choice but on LinkedIn, the personal is professional and the professional is increasingly political.

LinkedIn has always suffered from a slight inferiority complex when compared with other social media platforms. That’s contributed to a perception that it’s somehow duller and less risky than pacy renegade Twitter or pictorially enticing Instagram. People who train others on professional social media use often imply it’s the starter social media network — a baby step before the big leap off the cliff into more widely shared “thought leadership”. 

While LinkedIn is still used by many as a stagnant CV repository or place to trumpet news of a new job, the tenor of the Microsoft-owned platform has changed a lot over the last few years. It is no more immune to partisanship than any other online space that plays host to the many of us who yell into a void hoping to find our tribes. Your LinkedIn profile is pretty public and highly discoverable, and your activity is surfaced using algorithms that favour engagement. Engagement favours provocation.

Alongside the creep of the political on LinkedIn is a growth in the popularity of more personal, reflective posts. The embrace of bringing your whole self to work and a professional social media networking platform is wholehearted these days. The clamour for authenticity online has bled into the concept of what it means to be a leader in the 21st century just as it has the concept of being a celebrity or sports star.

All social media makes dual demands of its users. We must tread carefully, all of us individually wearing little risk-detecting black hats at all times so as not to get cancelled or fired. Simultaneously, we have to be entertaining, insightful or provocative enough to attract a following and keep the algorithm odds ever in our favour. That is what drives the blurring of lines between the personal and professional online. For people in leadership roles, that duality is further complicated by the fact that they do not speak for themselves but for whole organisations. Add to that the requirements of public service leadership and it’s a teetering, tottering tower that is prone to collapse at any moment.

In a political context, no one was better at keeping that tower from collapsing than former prime minister Jacinda Ardern. There’s an irony in her social media success also being a factor in the over-exposure equation some say played a role in her decreased popularity. We lapped up the authenticity of Ardern while watching it be weaponised against her. Ardern’s social media success also raised the bar for those in political or public service leadership roles. We have come to expect an element of public facing social media performance from our leaders and with that comes the expectation that they will know how to constantly do the risk versus reward sums in their heads. 

Up until this week, Rob Campbell would have been categorised as pretty good at meeting the demands of social media. Campbell writes well and fulfils our deepest desire of those we follow online by being interesting. His forthrightness and clear idealogical expression may not have been appreciated by all, but it would certainly have been appreciated by the algorithmic beast that requires constant feeding. But being publicly interesting and prolific is a risk in the public service. You could argue there is nothing more authentic than doing as Campbell did, and expressing your political ideologies freely. Except when your job explicitly demands that you don’t do that.

How are public sector leaders and politicians meant to juggle these competing demands? Not posting and phoning a friend instead might be a good start. As we’ve learned recently from a couple of drongos in the media, the group chat is no longer a safe space. People in leadership positions are well compensated for the sacrifices they make. That includes a reduction in their ability to freely express themselves online or in the media. It’s nothing but fair to point out that people fired from KFC for posting things on social media are not as well compensated for their silence. 

Social media professionals in the public sector may well be banging their heads against their desks right now. The guidelines on social media use for the public service in New Zealand are exceptional and incredibly clear. Many might be asking how this keeps happening. How is it that some people can clearly see the tripwires and some can’t? Why do some think they can bend the arc of the social media universe towards them and avoid what is almost always an inevitable fate?  

Maybe public service leaders should be sent to a social media academy to learn how to use it wisely and well. Increasingly, that would be a curriculum less focused on how to take a photo using the front-facing camera and more on navigating the fast-flowing river of online culture and risk. It might also include a class on the sliding scale of scrutiny based on the heights to which you’ve climbed and the balancing of one’s individual urge to post versus the collective fairness of adhering to very clear guidelines. 

As bleak as the case of Campbell and his job-ending comments on LinkedIn is, it’s also inherently sad. We think we want mavericks with views or real people in charge but that increasingly seems untenable, at least in the way that realness publicly manifests. Based on Campbell’s doubling down against his criticism and media appearances since his removal from the Te Whatu Ora job, this seems less like a case of Campbell needing training or an ignorance of the rules and more deliberate rejection of them. It’s also a rejection of his kind from roles where the articulated requirements will always come up trumps. If nothing else, it serves as a reminder that for many of us, unemployment is always just a post away.