A Former Employee’s Exit Interview

At this point, I need to digress to explain what Jeff was talking about when he said council was concerned about “personnel issues” in the SEDC.

The CEO had hired Ben Walker (name changed to protect his anonymity) a few years earlier, I think in early 2018, to take some of the smaller items off of the CEO’s to-do list so that she could focus on more of the executive functions in her role as CEO. It’s important to note that Ben (and the CEO) work directly for the SEDC, under the complete authority of the Board of Directors. 

In February of 2020, the CEO notified me that Ben had submitted his two-week notice, as he had found a new job.  The CEO conveyed to me that she and Ben hadn’t been in-sync and that his departure was probably best for everybody. 

The CEO had a “going-away” event for Ben and conducted his exit interview, where he brought up some things that he was unhappy about during his employment with the SEDC, but nothing that caught the CEO by surprise as she had known that they weren’t really jibing well.

In the week after his departure, I got a call from Jeff Bickerstaff that Ben had raised some issues about the CEO in a separate exit interview which was conducted by the city’s HR Director, Melinda Walter.  Jeff said that Melinda was writing up a report about the issues Ben had raised, and they (Jeff and the City Manager, Gina Nash) felt the issues were serious enough that the BoD should be made aware of them.  Coincidentally, the CEO’s annual review was scheduled for Thursday of that week.  While waiting for the report from Melinda, and with no idea what kind of allegations Ben had raised, I called Gina to get some information.  Gina said it would be best for me to wait to read the report but she did tell me (I think this is an exact quote) “If this was one of my department heads they would be gone.”  Whatever was in the report seemed to be a serious offense, or at least Gina wanted to bias me to believe it was.

I received the reports from Jeff, and distributed them to my fellow directors.  When I distributed the reports to my fellow directors I advised them that we all needed to keep an open mind until we could hear the CEO’s response to the issues. I also gave a copy of the report on Ben’s exit interview to the CEO and let her know that it would be a primary topic at her review that week.  I advised her to be prepared to explain her side of the issues.

In addition to that report, Gina had told me that she had asked Melinda to write up her own assessment of the CEO’s performance.  That report was also distributed to the BoD, but I decided to not share that report with the CEO until the board could make a decision on sharing it at the board meeting.  I received different guidance from Jeff and Gina on this, as Gina preferred that the CEO not be made aware of the report as she said she didn’t want to poison the relationship between the CEO and Melinda.  Jeff thought the CEO should see it.  I decided to leave it to the board to make that decision.

When I read the report on Ben’s exit interview, the issues did not strike me as severe.  I don’t recall all of the issues, but most of them were minor gripes, the airing of annoyances rather than severe shortcomings.  A few of the issues Ben complained about were:

• The CEO micromanaged him, constantly reviewing his work.
• That the CEO often gave vague instructions, then critiqued his work not being exactly what she wanted.
• That the CEO changed her mind on issues, sometimes at the last minute.
• That the CEO waited until the deadline to submit the EDC’s expense reports to the city treasurer, causing stress as they rushed to meet the deadline.

I had no concern about the CEO changing her mind, as business often requires adapting to new information, and it did not bother me that the CEO was waiting until the deadline to file expense reports with the city, as long as the city wasn’t complaining. The complaints about vague instructions and micromanaging did register as issues to me, though they seemed fairly minor.  I would hope that the CEO would give clear instruction and encouragement to her employee. 

Ben raised one other concern, which was more of an issue to me.  He stated that on one occasion the CEO had pressured him to work late to handle some mundane task, like shipping something out, even though Ben had told her he had a family event to attend that evening.  I don’t recall if he even went into detail about what the task had been or if he had missed the family event to do it, just that he had been frustrated that she put him in a tough spot by asking him to work late in disregard of his personal life.

In the CEO’s review that week, the CEO addressed Ben’s issues one-by-one.  In my opinion she did an adequate job of taking accountability for issues, and conveying her side of the situation.

For the “vague instructions” and “micromanaging” issues, she explained that Ben wasn’t performing as she had hoped on the tasks she needed done.  (In fairness, I didn’t feel that the CEO was trying to point a finger at Ben—I think he just didn’t have the skillset that the CEO had hoped).  She had brought emails which showed that she was laying out tasks and expectations for him in a clear manner, and she was setting up regular check-ins to make sure he was on the right track.  As I recall, she had emails where she had laid out what seemed like a growth-plan to help him develop in the areas she needed him to improve in.  Ben was working on things like press releases and social media posts, and it was important to the CEO that they had to be done to a high standard as developers and citizens were going to see them.

As for changing her mind, she admitted that it happened on occasion.  One example that I think Ben complained about was while they were preparing a booth for a trade-show.  With only a little time to spare the CEO felt the TV/Monitor was too small and tasked Ben with quickly purchasing a larger model.  To me, adapting on the fly and exercising her best judgement are what I expected of the CEO and I won’t fault her for it, though I have no doubt it added stress to Ben.  Ben wasn’t complaining that the CEO had treated him badly in the situation (she wasn’t yelling or barking orders) so as long as she kept her cool and was polite and professional I had no issue with changing her mind.

The CEO also admitted that she tended to procrastinate on filing her expense reports and promised to get better about having them in well in advance of the deadline.  (As Ben wasn’t there to get stressed about it anymore I don’t know that it mattered, other than showing good time management skills.)

The City Manager was in this meeting and did not say anything about this issue that I recall.  If she had said that the finance department was stressed about the late filing of expense reports I would have taken that issue more seriously.  As the city’s representative at the meeting wasn’t voicing concern, I didn’t see it as a concern.  Ben wasn’t saying that the reports were late, only that the SEDC staff was often getting them turned in under some stress near the deadline.

On the bigger issue of Ben being pressured to work late on that one occasion, the CEO professed that she had no recollection of ever pressuring Ben to work late, though she couldn’t say that she had never asked him to stay late.  As I recall she was certain she had never pressured him to give up his private life for a work task.  Ben had not given enough details in his exit interview (or Melinda had not transcribed them well enough) for the CEO to give any account of a particular event.  I suspect the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, that Ben had felt “pressured” and the CEO felt she had simply “asked”.  I would have been concerned if the CEO had been rude or unprofessional toward Ben, but again there was no allegation of that level of mistreatment. 

As for Melinda’s separate review of the CEO’s performance, Melinda didn’t have any particular insight into the SEDC, other than times when the CEO or Ben had asked her for advice or help.  As I read over the minor issues in Melinda’s report I think I had already been familiar with every situation she was recounting (as the CEO often called me for advice on issues) and from my knowledge of the full story I was able to fill in the gaps in Melinda’s report to explain why the CEO did things the way she had. 

One criticism Melinda raised was that the CEO had given Ben a bonus for putting in extra effort in getting the SEDC’s “Backyard on 5th” project up and running.  At that point, the CEO had already mentioned to Melinda that Ben was struggling to meet her expectations and Melinda felt it sent a mixed-signal to give a struggling employee a bonus.  The CEO disagreed because she wanted to show Ben that she really appreciated the huge effort he had put in.  She was trying to build a supportive relationship with him.  She had called me to get my advice on the bonus and I had told her if she felt he had earned a bonus (and she had the money in the payroll budget) that it was her call to make.  That was how the finances worked.  The board (with the council’s approval) approved the annual budget, and the CEO (and corporation) were then free to spend the money without oversight of specific expenditures, as long as the money budgeted was sufficient to cover the outlays.

There were other issues raised as well which I don’t recall in detail.  I could see that if Melinda only knew the pieces which were in her report that she may have not have understood why the CEO made certain decisions.  It wasn’t that I didn’t believe Melinda, it was that I knew the full story rather than just the pieces in Melinda’s report, things I knew from first-hand conversations with the CEO as the events were playing out.  Melinda’s report did not raise issues with misconduct or unprofessional behavior. It was just things that the CEO had done (like giving Ben a bonus) which Melinda (as an outsider) had disagreed with. 

The board discussed Melinda’s report without the CEO present, and we decided that none of Melinda’s issues were serious enough to raise to the CEO.  As such, we had no need to share Melinda’s report with the CEO, thereby honoring Gina’s wish to not harm the CEO’s relationship with Melinda by sharing it.

The outcome of the the CEO’s review:

• We gave her advice on handling similar employee issues in the future.
• We mandated that we needed to get regular reports from her about employee performance so we wouldn’t be caught off-guard if issues arose again.
• We advised her to seek training on employee management.
• We advised her to rely heavily on the city’s HR department for addressing issues.
• We made it clear to her that if similar concerns were raised by an employee in the future it would carry a lot of weight.

Gina and Jeff were both involved in the CEO’s review.  I recall Gina was asked to weigh in, and she advised us to “take the issues seriously”, and I assure you I felt that we had.  In the end, all of Ben’s issues seemed to be minor gripes by an out-going employee who just wasn’t a good fit, and Melinda’s issues seemed like a lot of issues where she had half of the story.  I felt at the time that Gina’s concerns had been addressed, as the CEO explained herself well and had documentation to back up her actions.  At the meeting, Gina hadn’t asked the board to remove the CEO, (as she had told me she would have done for a department head) so I thought that she had also been convinced by the CEO’s explanation of the issues. 

Nobody in the CEO’s review had been advocating for discipline or removal, though there were various viewpoints in the room.  It would have been an injustice to remove the CEO for the one-sided issues raised by an HR director who didn’t know the full story and the minor issues raised by an unhappy former employee, when even Melinda acknowledged Ben was struggling in the role.

That is basically all that I recall about the “personnel issues” which Jeff said had been a concern to the council.  I was just one of the seven directors who was involved in the review, and if anyone wants to dive deeper into the issues I’d encourage you to reach out to the other 6 directors at the time.  I’m sure they all have somewhat different recollections and opinions which would be helpful in understanding the whole topic.  I can tell you we spent hours discussing the issues that night, so long in fact that we were unable to complete the CEO’s review that night, and we had to continue the review at a later meeting.  At that second meeting we again went over Ben’s issues to make sure we all felt okay with how we had left it in February.  There was still nobody in the room calling for the CEO to be disciplined or removed over the issues, and we had spent hours going over them, and dwelling on the issue for months between meetings.

I feel the board gave appropriate weight and attention to the issues that Ben and Melinda brought up.  The board of directors consisted of people from across a broad range of leadership positions in businesses and agencies who used their experience to come to a just conclusion, and I stand by the outcome. 

The City Council has never seen these reports, and never discussed the issue with the board, the former employee, or the former CEO, so they have no factual basis on which to question the board’s handling of these issues. 

At the time I had no reason to doubt the accuracy of what was reported in the exit interview report, or what Melinda had written in her separate report on the CEO.  To date, it's not clear why the city's HR director felt compelled to conduct an exit interview with an employee of the SEDC.  If that was the policy at the time, I and the former CEO were not aware of it, and I'm not aware of the city's staff conducting exit interviews for any other SEDC employees.  The former employee was hired, managed, and paid by the SEDC, under the sole oversight of the corporation.  

Throughout the emails and recordings which will be released about Jeff's misconduct you will see numerous times that the council had concerns about "peronnel issues" within the SEDC.  This exit interview was the basis for all of those concerns, but it will be very clear that the councilmembers were never presented the facts about the employee's departure or the issues he allegedly raised in his exit interview.  All they have heard were rumors about the reports, and they were manipulated into believing that the issues were much larger than they really were by the board liaison and City Manager, who used the rumors to have the former CEO forced out and to have the City Manager appointed to the position she wanted.  Remember, the council has no ability to judge the severity of the issues because the reports have never been presented to them.