What can I do as a small business owner to display better leadership and engender better office morale
Not firing half your staff on a whim might be a good start. Now instead of half your staff being against you, you have half your staff, and they’re all probably against you. If I were working for you, I’d be spending this weekend finding another job, and where I am, I know that’s an industry where staff is in high demand, I doubt I’d be looking long. I might even be inclined not to give you notice, especially if you didn’t give my colleagues any.
I don’t think you can fix this. Your staff, according to your own words were delivering what you wanted. Quality of care was good, satisfaction was good. If there was someone in that group that wasn’t you should have handled that the correct way through performance management, instead you showed a distinct lack of leadership and pulled a purge.
If you’re going to stand half a chance, you need to own up to your mistake, because that’s what it was, a mistake. You meet with your staff at opening time Monday (don’t you dare expect them to come early for this) you admit it’s a mistake and will try to rectify it. You call those you dismissed and either offer them their jobs back - again admitting your mistake - or a generous severance package and it’s the dismissed staff members choice which they prefer (tell the staff that do remain that you are doing this too to try to put it right).
Then you put in place new policies and procedures that will prevent this happening again. Have your staff work with you to create this policy.
Leaders admit when they make mistakes and try to correct them; managers just try to manage the situation. It’s time to decide, are you a leader, or a manager?
Leaders lead.
Managers manage.
It sounds like you’re a manager who doesn’t understand how to lead, and just expects people to follow.
You reaction tells me which one of us is the know nothing,