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City official resigns following controversial training

City manager Marc Ott is facing backlash because of a March training session that included the topic of women leading in government.
An Austin official resigns amid an investigation into a controversial training session.

AUSTIN -- Assistant City Manager Anthony Snipes resigned Tuesday following an investigation into training for Austin city employees in which presenters made comments members feel are degrading toward women.

Snipes had been placed on administrative leave on May 14 pending the investigation. City Manager Marc Ott said he was presented with the initial findings of the evaluation on Friday. After speaking with Snipes, Ott said he has accepted his resignation and his last day will be Aug. 10.

On March 27, the city hosted an employee training open to all staff. It was one of the hundreds of professional development training sessions the city sponsors each year.

City leaders say Snipes organized the training, called "The Changing Dynamics in Governance; Women Leading in Local Government," at the request of affinity groups, made up of city employees, who wanted learn new strategies for working with the city's historic new leadership. Austin switched to geographic representation and the new 10-1 council is mostly female, with seven women out of 10 council members.

Video of the training recorded by the city shows more than 75 employees attended the training and most of them were women.

Jonathan Allen, one of the speakers hired to come in from Lauderdale Lakes, Florida, where he worked as a city manager, spoke about his experience transitioning from working with a mostly male commission, his city's version of a council, to an all-female commission. Some of his comments raised concern from the community after a story about the session surfaced in a blog article by the Austin American-Statesman. The blog stated Allen told city staff women ask a lot of questions and don't want to deal with numbers.

In video recorded by the city, Allen started talking about the training future city employees receive in college.

"We were predominantly taught how to govern in an environment that, at that particular time, was predominately male. And there was not a lot of diversity within these organizations," Allen said to the crowd. "Over a period of time, it has absolutely changed. So although we will talk about the changing dynamics in governance, women leading in local government, it very well can be a more diverse conversation of how you have different populations, coming into government roles which change, changes the way we have to interact with the governing bodies."

Allen went on to talk about community activists transitioning into public official roles and the change in communication style city staffers may have to do to effectively communicate with them. Then he laid out the outline for the presentation. The topics included:

  • Barriers to Communication
  • Communication Styles
  • Managing Communication Conflict Between Sexes
  • Top Take-Aways for Effective Leadership and Governance in the "New Normal" Environment
  • Q&A

As he laid out the topics, he said, "Do men and women speak the same language? And I'm going to tell you up front, no."

Allen then told attendees women ask more questions, even when the information is provided to them in background information. He likened it to his 11-year-old daughter as he told a story about her asking him questions in the car as he stressed the importance of being patient with council members.

"We go to an all-female commission with a mayor, for the first time, having to deal with all female commissioners, and with a city manager for the first time having to deal with all-female commissioners," Allen said. "My wife told me, 'Don't be going down there telling folks that just because you have an all-female commission, you have to deal with all these emotions, because you're going to offend me.'"

Allen said more women becoming involved in city leadership is a good thing, and the trend will continue.

"I submit to you if Hillary Clinton just runs...you are going to see even greater numbers [of women leaders]," Allen said.

He also told attendees that communication and management techniques previously used with all-male councils would not work with an all-female council.

"The overall performance or expectations between a male elected official or public administrator and a female public administrator, that excellence, professional excellence, expectation, it does not change. But the dynamics of how you interact with that individual certainly does change," Allen said. "If you use or attempt to use the same communication techniques or management techniques that you used or attempted to use in a predominately male-dominated environment you will be making a serious error in your professional development, because they don't process things that same way."

Allen also made the generalization that women leaders are more concerned about community impact than fiscal impact in their decision making.

"Where normally I would have presented the financial argument, my elected officials said, 'Mr. Manager, I don't want to hear about the financial argument, I want to hear about how this impacts the overall community,'" Allen said.

After his presentation, Dr. Miya Burt-Stewart, a business development consultant, spoke to the audience. She touched on the "Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus" philosophy, stating the author of the popular book's assertion that men act on facts and women act on emotions is true.

"We understand that we are different, we act differently. What's most important sometimes, all of it is important to us, let me say that, but just in terms of how we receive it or how we want to act on it differs," Burt-Stewart said.

She added city staffers should acknowledge gender differences and made sweeping generalizations about the differences in men and women who are in leadership roles while reading an expert from the book.

"Men act on facts, women act on emotions. Men have egos, women have wish lists. Men interact differently than women. Men are more likely to use a dominating management style than women are. Women are more likely to use a compromising style than men are," Burt-Stewart said. "Irregardless [sic] of what you think about your female-dominated commission, the fact that it used to be all male, the fact that you used to be able to go and talk to commission and such and such whenever you wanted to, the fact that you've been with the city 25 years, the fact, you all see where I'm going, right? So what you may have been used to, I'm not going to say you have to get un-used to it , but you still must be as productive today in this environment than you were yesterday when you had an all male cast."

She also said women want longer conversations about issues, while men want to get straight to the point and alluded women are more demanding.

"From a productivity standpoint, you're probably expected to be at 1,000 percent whereas it used to be, you know, 100 percent," Burt-Stewart said.

Wednesday, a united council and mayor responded to the training. Member Don Zimmerman was not in attendance because he had a speaking engagement, but he did send members of his staff to the news conference.

The council members said they did not know about the training and learned about it from the Statesman's blog post, which also included a brief video, about three minutes of the nearly two-hour presentation.

Only Council Members Ann Kitchen and Ellen Troxclair say they watched the entire presentation before the news conference. Leslie Pool, Sheri Gallo and Mayor Steve Adler said they watched the majority of the presentation. Mayor Pro-Tem Kathie Tovo, Ora Houston and Sabino Renteria watched the clip of the presentation from the Statesman. KVUE reached out to council members Delia Garza, who organized the news conference, and Greg Casar, but did not get a response.

Regardless of how much they watched, the council said they were all appalled and insulted by the training and the fact that city leaders thought a training on the topic was even necessary.

"The characterization of women as not having an interest in financial arguments, asking too many questions and requiring different interactions than men is unacceptable," said Council Member Garza, District 2.

"The group standing before you have legal and doctoral degrees, training in psychology and the medical fields, expertise in finance and real estate. We've served in legislative halls, written treatises, fought fires and taught in universities. And we draw on this training, experience and expertise everyday to do the job our constituents elected us to do. And we do our job well," said Tovo.

"Talk about men basing their decisions on facts and women on emotions is just frankly outdated and highly unprofessional," Kitchen added.

"I personally am offended and embarrassed by what I saw on video of the training session," said City Manager Marc Ott.

Ott said as leader of the city staff, he takes full responsibility for the training. He added the training is not in line with the city's values, that the speakers should have been vetted and ensured all future speakers will be.

"In that room right there," Ott said, pointing to a conference room on the third floor of city hall, "people who are actually involved, engaged and going to be making the presentation, we'll have them make it. And we listen to it and offer feedback."

The city did not pay a speakers fee to either Allen or Burt-Stewart. It did however cover the costs for Mr. Allen's hotel lodging, which totaled $457.70.

The city removed the video stream of the training from its website and replaced it with the following statement:

The City of Austin will remove the video stream of the March 27, 2015, training entitled "The Changing Dynamics of Governance: Women Leading in Government" from its website at 5 p.m. today.

The intent of the training was to reinforce the City's commitment to diversity. Unfortunately, the training's content was not consistent with the City's culture, philosophy or management approach.

The video will still be available upon request by contacting COACommunications@austintexas.gov

Allen and Burt-Stewart released the following statement about the training:

In light of today's article by Lilly Rockwell of the Statesmen, posted to CityHall.blog covering the City of Austin's training session on Women in local government, presenters Jonathan K. Allen and Dr. Miya Burt-Stewart said Wednesday that many of their comments were taken out of context and the presentation was never intended to diminish or minimize the knowledge, skills, and contributions of women in the field of local government, nor detract from other minority groups that make great contributions across a spectrum of professional fields. During the presentation, the presenters discussed the growing trend of women assuming top leadership positions in local government across the nation and especially in Texas and Florida. Both Allen and Burt-Stewart tried to convey that emerging and established public administrators needed to be prepared to adjust their traditional leadership, communication, and management styles in order to be effective and responsive public administrators in the future. During the workshop presentation, Allen and Burt-Stewart shared useful information as it relates to professional development activities and encouraged dialogue identifying best management practices in dealing with certain trends in public administration. The Blog did not fully mention that the presentation covered other pertinent and key points as follows:

1. Stages of Team/Group Development

2. Keys to Effective Communication

3. Identifying and Improving One's Communication and Leadership Style

The duo wanted to clarify their position on comments made before the City of Austin's Affinity Groups, about women's increasing presence in leadership positions. The following is a joint statement from Mr. Allen and Dr. Burt-Stewart:

We are saddened by the negative reaction to a positive group discussion. It is important that as the global trend of Women in Leadership positions grow, that we as leaders are open to professional development opportunities which aid and prepare us for next level participation. Any interpretation that we do not support and appreciate the growing number of women executives and elected officials in both the public and private sector is absolutely not true. Furthermore, any notion that our presentation sought to outwardly present or show a disregard for minorities or any other groups that are affiliated with the City of Austin is a clear misnomer and not representative of who we are as presenters and professionals.

If our overall intent and message was not clear during the presentation, we sincerely apologize for any miscommunication. Our public presentation and comments were not preapproved and/or endorsed by any City Official at the City of Austin and in no way did we want to offend any person(s) or group(s) within the City of Austin and/or the Austin Community. As professionals, we are always open to constructive criticism and corrections on our performance and presentations in the field of public administration. Again, we extend a heartfelt apology and it is our hope that any misinterpretations are not attributed to nor reflected upon the City of Austin, its Mayor, Council Members, City Manager, or City Staff.

This is the only communication that will be shared and presented by Mr. Jonathan K. Allen and Dr. Miya Burt-Stewart concerning their presentation before the City of Austin's Affinity Groups.

KVUE News learned Allen is no longer the city manager of Lauderdale Lakes, Florida. The commission there voted on April 28 to negotiate a severance agreement with him. City staff there say Allen was not fired, but would not go into detail about why he and the city parted ways.

Before the video was removed, it and the Statesman's story about the training quickly sparked the #WhatWomenAsk hashtag on social media, with Twitter users voicing their disgust at the viral video. The hashtag trended city-wide on Wednesday.

Editor's note: This story has been updated from its original version.

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