I realize this is the anti-work subreddit, so delete if not allowed, but I figure the best place to find ways to be a better boss is by asking the people that have been treated poorly by bosses/employers.
I possibly have an interview for a big promotion. The manager leaving said I should expect a round of interview questions, but this boss also tends to talk out of two sides of her mouth and is definitely one of the worst managers I have ever had.
That said, it's her job I might be taking, as she plans to retire soon. I've been a manager before, but it was some time ago, and this would be overseeing a much larger team with multiple departments. I've always been pretty laid back, fully letting my staff control their employees and manage their priorities as they saw fit – unless I genuinely needed to step in to assist or handle a problem between two employees. I tried to take care of the back-end stuff so my people could focus on their actual tasks, go home, and not think about work until their next shift. So. Yeah. I'm pretty hands-off as long as staff are productive and compliant with whatever guidelines we need to adhere to.
But if I get this promotion, I want to be better than the woman that is leaving. She micromanaged to no end, wasted our budget on “beautifying the office” and looking good to auditors/our Board when it could have been used to help our consumers and staff members immensely. Morale has deteriorated horribly while she was the head honcho, taking with it mental health and the collective will to live purely by her inconsistent policy changes and her need to reinvent the wheel.
If you could give a prospective boss legitimate ways to improve a depressed office, what would you say? What would you change, or what would make your work day a little easier? We're a non-profit, but I already know the pay scale needs to be adjusted because everyone works so damned hard, which I plan to apply for grants and donations to cover if I get this. But what else you got?