About roughly a week ago, give or take a couple of days, I conducted an exit interview for a staff who resigned. She is one of my more difficult employees, submitting mediocre work, comes to work late, and disappears for hours at a time. She is, actually, someone I recommended for redundancy, because she is one of three people in my department doing the same type of work, for a position that's similar to a territory manager, and I'm only supposed to keep two of them. So instead of say, one person handling 6-7 territories each, I'll have two people handling 10 territories each. On the basis of work output, the other two are heads and shoulders above her. Just days before we were supposed to talk to her about the redundancy, however, she submitted her resignation letter.
During the exit interview with me, she indicated several reasons for her decision to leave. I won't detail the other two reasons, which would reveal something about the company I'm working for. I will however, state the 3rd reason. She checked the box that says that she is "unhappy with supervision", meaning my supervision. Face to face with me, she prefaced her answer thus:
"Ms. Jen, let's be honest. I don't like you and I know you don't like me."
Which honestly left me very surprised, though on hindsight, it shouldn't. I said okaaay, asked her to elaborate. She said a lot of things, but the gist of it is that she found me very strict, overly OC, and that I don't know how to go down to "our level" because I was always in my room. She said that yes, she learned a lot from me and I'm very good with marketing and brand management, but that I knew nothing about motivating people. Then, she added, perhaps it has to do with my "age", because the people who used to supervise her were nearer her age (she's in her early twenties).
"Anything else?" I asked.
"No, that's it," she said.
Then I said. "So it's you." I told her I've been hearing that someone in my department had been saying bad things about me to other people. She said that it's not just her in the department and starting saying "we feel" and "we think" and "we believe", etc.. She also said a lot of people from other departments didn't like me. I let her finish her point and calmly said, "let's take this one point at a time, shall we?"
"First," I told her calmly. "Honey child (I actually did use this term, because I felt I was talking to a tantrumy kid, though I think I shouldn't have), I am not here for a popularity contest. I do not have to justify my behavior to you. Given that, however, I do socialize, perhaps even more than you do. I have lunch in the pantry with people from other departments. I joke around and have lunch with people from this department too, until you came along, whereupon nobody else here seems to want to lunch with me. Now I know why."
"Because we don't like you," she began.
"Second," I said, still talking calmly. "Please stop using the word 'we' because I do not believe that you can speak for anybody else in this department except yourself. I have talked to each of the people here and we all have a good working relationship, even if we're not friends." I didn't tell her, of course, that a certain reserve will always be there given that I am their boss, and it's something I encourage. I myself didn't become real good friends with former bosses until after they stopped being my direct supervisor. It's just not done.
"Honey child," I said (again, I know I know, silly of me). "This is not the first group I have supervised. I have supervised other people before. I am friends with every single one of my direct reports. I am also friends with every one of my former bosses. So it's really not a matter of my 'going down to your level'.
"And then, you mentioned that I'm very strict, OC, and do not know how to motivate my staff," I continued. "How can that be? Everybody else submits excellent work; everybody else scores very high on initiative, and they give me project briefs above and beyond what I ask of them. Are those the actions of de-motivated people?
"I don't think the problem is me," I said, still speaking softly, going in for my final point. "I think the problem is you. You don't submit reports or you submit bad ones; you come in late; you don't tell me where you're going and where you've been."
"Because I'm not motivated," she said.
"Granted that you don't like me," I interrupted. "You should have stayed professional and did your job, but you weren't doing your job." I rattled off all her "sabits" that were now appearing out of the woodwork.
She stayed quiet.
"I think it has to do with the fact that we didn't have one-on-one sessions like the others," I told her, trying to be fair. "I have three month evaluations for everyone else where we have a chance to talk about expectations and issues. But you and I never had that chance because you are a regular employee and your next evaluation is at the end of the year."
In the end, we ended the interview in a cool but professional tone. I wished her luck and told her we might see each other again. She extended her hand for a handshake and I took it and shook it. Then we said our goodbyes.
So what's the point of this post?
I am trying to think back to the time when I was her age. Did I want my boss to be my friend? Not really. I wanted he or she to be fair, that was all. It was a bonus if we were able to have a personal relationship.
But I was very emotional back then, just like this former staff is right now. There was a time a work post didn't work out for me in part because of a difficult relationship with a boss, which was why I always make sure I was never that kind of a boss. I'm the kind of boss that I would like to have -- approachable, a little bit of a mentor, not very difficult with leaves or undertimes, empowering, and most importantly, very fair when it comes to evaluations.
So this is a first for me -- my first staff who, in HR parlance, can be labeled as a "disruptive employee." To be honest, she was wrong about the fact that I disliked her (though NOW I do dislike her), but I didn't really like her either. This person is a tall, willowy beauty who just never pulled her weight at work. And who, now I find, have been been spouting her displeasure with me in the workplace.
No, I'm not angry. I find it funny, an interesting experience to dissect and delve into and think about for lessons.
Last Friday, I logged onto her PC to get her electronic files, including her email files. I found that she has already drafted a resume. In the resume, she listed her job description, and guess what? She's claiming to be the one that does my job -- i.e., in charge of corporate marketing plan, etc. Tsk, tsk, tsk, she's something else, isn't she?
So tell me, what would YOU have done?
