I recently became the manager of a very small group of people and I want to set a positive tone, while at the same time establishing my role as leader. This is my first management position and I would like to start off right and deal with the situation effectively.
My position was vacant for a long time before I got here - that's a different story - but in the meantime there is a person here who has appointed herself the boss. She bullies the other nurses by being rude and abrupt. When they confront her she retaliates so everyone is afraid of her. She acts like a martyr - "I do everything around here!" - and anything that goes wrong it's a REALLY BIG DEAL! Every morning starts off with her fuming about something, stomping around, rolling her eyes, slamming things around and being physically and verbally intimidating. She works hard and she does a good job but she is making everyone miserable.
She is brown nosing me like crazy. I've only been there about three days, and every day when I first walk in she jumps at me, ranting about some horrible problem or other. She is trying to get to me before everyone else and try to be the "beta" person. Sort of like teacher's pet. She wants me to see what's going on from her point of view and try to stay in control and keep everyone from having access to me. I know the rest of the staff are watching her brown nose me and they don't know, or aren't sure, that I can see through it.
I need to do is get her to back off and at the same time, build up the morale of the rest of the staff. I know this person is seething with envy that she didn't get the job, but they wanted someone with a BSN, which she doesn't have. i feel that once I start exercising more control and coordinating things she's going to get really angry and try and retaliate against me somehow. I'm not too worried about it except that she might go to HR and try and make me miserable too. I'd rather have her cooperation if possible, but that might not happen. I want to work on building up the confidence of the rest of the staff. She will see that as me undoing all her hard work of getting them in line. I'm afraid she'll go behind me and try and tear them down again. I want there to be open communication but that's going to take time. They don't trust me yet. I want the team to feel empowered to do their jobs because she has them feeling like they're incompetent and she's the only one who can do anything right. Hopefully she'll let go of the illusion that's she's the boss and let me run the department, but I doubt it. I might have to let her go.
What at are you thoughts? Can this situation have a happy ending or am I expecting too much?
