Maybe I'm hopelessly optimistic, but I've seen just a couple of posts here from people at least claiming to be managers/bosses. They say this sub “opened their eyes” and helped them recognize their failures as leaders. They say they want to be better. If so, that's great.
If you are one such person looking here for what not to do, that's a great start, but you may not know where to begin. Knowing what NOT to do to terrorize your staff is less than a third of the battle. Knowing what TO do is everything, so I wanted to give you a starting point.
Be mindful of the fact that if you work for a company/corp that is driven by shareholder value, especially if your business unit is owned by a private equity firm, doing the right thing and being a good leader may be your quickest method of getting fired. If you follow my little bit of advice, you will be empowering and supporting your direct reports, often at the (small, even negligible) expense of your company. Rank-and-file employees might actually be inspired and encouraged to do things like suggest positive changes, and optimize workflows they understand 100x better than your bosses, and all of that jazz flies in the face of your CEO's perception that they are unimpeachably supreme. They don't want to spend any money on that, so be warned.
Without further ado:
One. If you want to learn healthy leadership, don't waste your time on business classes or MBA programs. Study nonprofit leadership.
Nonprofit leadership courses will teach you how to care for and motivate people who work for peanuts or are unpaid volunteers. That is likely a much more accurate representation of your job's constituency than what you'll learn in business school. Business classes will mostly teach you how to squeeze blood from a stone to maximize profit. Is that what you think your employees are? Some dumb rocks to squeeze?
If you want to study on your own, and have about $8 USD, buy a copy of Robert K. Greenleaf's book Servant Leadership. If you have even $40 or $50 to blow with your advanced salary and some PTO (or even a weekend day off) to use on reading, Greenleaf's got a few books that can all help you understand the huge extent to which your people are actually people and not some dumb rocks to put in a hydraulic press for company gain.
Two. Send your employees to nonprofit leadership courses and have the company pay for it. One of John Maxwell's 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership says something like “If you want steady growth, recruit followers. If you want explosive growth, recruit leaders.” Good chance those leaders already exist within your company but are so busy getting squeezed and told to do things “the company way” that they don't have time to grow. Or think. Or play with their kids.
Ironically, if you teach your people how to steal your job and do it well, they'll probably always want you to be their boss, because they like you, they feel challenged but respected, and they feel like they're part of something bigger (and meaningful) than themselves.
Your boss will say “bUt ThEy'LL tAKe THaT kNoWLeDgE ELseWhErE”. If you look at this sub, hey, guess what? Not-Rocks are already doing that whenever they can do so safely.
Thanks for reading.
TL;DR: Want to be a better boss? Don't study business leadership; study nonprofit leadership, and provide that ability for your direct reports too.