I work in a nonprofit in a fast paced field. I've worked with my boss for over four years now, and a year ago I was promoted to a management role. My role is one part subject matter expert and one part management of my direct reports and one part thinking about how the team works together, implementing processes and policies, and trying to prevent burn out in a high burn out field. It's an awkward spot to be in because...
My boss is the problem that leads to turn over and burn out and I am at my fucking wits end.
He does shit like assign things out and then he does it anyway and does not communicate this to his team, regularly creating duplicative work. He completely rewrites everything because he's concerned about us having a uniform voice...but that voice is just his voice and speaking frankly, it's not always better. And it's a waste of everyone's time for him to completely rewrite everything, even the work of strong writers.
He has significant FOMO and absolutely cannot just... delegate stuff. So he insists on being all up in the business of every project. Jumps in, does stuff, doesn't communicate what he did to the person who is leading on the project, and then expects folks to pick up the pieces behind him while running to catch up. We've described it as a runway train and we're just running alongside trying to jump on the car while it's moving.
At the same time, he complains to me that he's doing too much. But he's doing too much because he can't let go of anything. He acts like a one man department chaos goblin who cannot be contained by policies or systems, even the ones he came up with himself.
He has a team of smart, well qualified people and his inability to trust his team is actively hindering people from doing their job, and actively hindering people's professional growth, and is actively making the entire department worse off on all fronts from product development to efficiency to burn out to job satisfaction. The second most knowledgeable team member after me is halfway out the door. If I wasn't trying to not upend my life anymore than it already has been recently, I would also be looking for a new job because I feel like I've done what I can and staying much longer will just professionally stunt me.
I am the only one on the team that he hears feedback and "no" from, so I'm often in the position of being a buffer between him and the rest of the team. It's bonkers how off the rails it gets when I am out of the office. The turnover rate would be significantly higher without me and even with me as a buffer, well. I hate hiring.
I *have* given him feedback, specifically on the impact of his habit of assigning things and then doing them anyway. For my own projects that I'm working on with him, I've started stepping out when he gets all up in my business. For example, this morning he joined an external call that he did not need to be on for a project I am leading on. I said we didn't need both of us on this call, and I was happy to stay so he could use this time to do other things. And when he insisted on staying, I left and indicated that if he didn't want that time, I would be using that time to do other things for the same project.
I am ready to yeet him to the moon. Is there literally anything else I can be doing to manage up this chaos goblin of a manager? It'll be awhile before I can leave.