Starting over

Things haven't been going so well with my RA staff this semester. Several of them have gotten written warnings. I hadn't been able to establish the best relationships with some of them. Staff meeting were usually painful.
I think part of it was that I've felt very confined in how the departments wants me to supervise RAs. Everything seems to be mandated - staff meetings every week (we have to ask our supervisor when we want to cancel a staff meeting), weekly one-on-one meetings. If an RA wants to miss an in-service (regular training workshops for all RAs), they have to go to my supervisor to ask for permission, not me - and it's usually a no. When I gave my RAs the written warnings, my supervisor decided to also pull them into the office and talk to them. And and and. I just haven't felt like I've actually had the opportunity to SUPERVISE my staff. It feels like I'm just here following the department's orders, without being allowed to think for myself.
But anyway, so between that, my frustrations with the department and just the RA staff that I've inherited, things haven't been going well.

Last week, I decided it was time to start over. My supervisor had "offered" (or really highly recommended) that she could come to my staff meeting and have a conversation with my staff. I didn't feel like that would be helpful - AT ALL - as that would just confuse my staff more about who is actually their supervisor. If I can't get their respect on my own, I can quit right now. (But that's not what our department wants - supervisor who actually work with their RAs and earn their respect - we're just supposed to be puppets that do whatever our supervisor tells us to do...haha...okay, going off on a tangent.)
Anyway, I decided to talk about the job responsibilities (with a handout based on the job evaluation) and either had them discuss the job responsibilities and why they were important, review policies and procedures, write a quick paragraph about how they've been working on a certain aspect of the position, share strategies, etc. After that, we talked about our staff dynamics, since there's also been a lot of issues between different staff members. There was an open floor where they could bring up any issues they had - and some of them used that to share some of their frustrations with me (some justified, some not so much - but at least they got it out) and finally we shared what we liked about the staff team (to end on a positive note).

That was a week ago. Tonight's staff meeting was a lot better. The atmosphere was more relaxed. RAs actually participated in discussions. It also helped that we didn't have much to talk about and got done after a little more than an hour.
So maybe things are getting better.... at least with my staff. (I'm still not feeling much better about the department, but that's another story for another day.)