update: our new boss is ruining the organization and is upset that I’m pushing back

It’s a special “where are you now?” season at Ask a Manager and I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer who was concerned their new boss was ruining the organization, and the boss was upset that they were pushing back? The first update was here (in which the new boss left the organization), and here’s the latest.

I wrote in a couple of times about my director who was not a good fit for our organization and whether or not I should talk to the board of trustees about her. I know the general consensus from the comments was that I and the rest of the staff were wrong and should have handled things better but now, six months later, I think it was not a good fit.

I don’t know that my going to the board made a huge difference. Several board members over the past few months have expressed that they had some serious concerns about her ability to continue in the position, which has helped me to feel a little better. I don’t know that the board and I will ever fully agree on whether or not I should have brought my complaint to them, but they are looking into how they can incorporate informal staff feedback into their director evaluations (since they do not observe the day to day work) and I have learned a lot from the experience.

After she left, I became interim director and another employee was appointed interim assistant director. We were given a fairly strict guidelines by the board as far as what was considered in and out of our scope, and we gave a lot of thought to how we could make the interim period go as smoothly as possible.

Over the past 5 months, we have spent considerable time and effort in working through some of the challenges the staff had been facing related to communications, scheduling, and job roles. We have worked to clarify expectations and to prepare staff for potential changes under the next director. We took the things that went wrong last time and used that information to create systems and strutures that will make the both the daily operations and new director onboarding process smoother and hopefully prevent some of the same issues from coming up again. I have also particpated in several trainings for managers around staff communication and conflict resolution because I know those areas are not my strong suit. Staff are all more relaxed and productivity has increased, and I am feeling good about where we are headed.

Finally, we have a new director starting in about a week and I am looking forward to working with him. We have already had several conversations and I think he will be someone that I can learn from and who will respect our past and present while pushing us to be even better.

Fingers crossed!

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