Are you a micromanager?
Micromanaging is not new when discussing leadership and the different styles to it. Micromanagers often have good intentions, but they usually forget or don’t have a full grasp of their impact in their team.
Great leaders share their final goals, provide guidelines, give space and then get back to check on the results. Micromanagers are on the opposite side, being picky about small decisions, and bugging more than helping. One additional dangerous trait is trying to be perfectionist and trying to address every possible issue a project can face. Besides being impossible, it darkens the mood of a project by bringing the sense that there’s always something being missed. The opposite and much better scenario is of course being diligent about tasks, and if something is missed, to have accountability and address it openly.
Requirements and variables change all the time, and since we just can’t forecast them, it’s better to go with it and get comfortable with all the change.
The same things that change all the time also take time to mature, and it’s unrealistic to assume that big and important projects will come out flawless from the very beginning. There are several strategies to mature changes before they are live, but today we’re talking about micromanagers only.
How to spot a micromanager
One usually isn’t aware they are a micromanager. Most of the times they feel pressed for certain accomplishment and fail on handling the pressure, passing it in the wrong way to their teams.
Micromanagers often think they are ensuring quality or some portion of success by taking a look at every detailed outcome – but in fact they are forgetting the big picture and being picky about small decisions – high quality is attained by having good people in the right positions, coaching them, and constantly raising the bar and providing them trainings so they can perform better. That same good people have to be motivated, and when the right time comes they will push that extra mile to ensure the success of a project.
If you are suspecting you are a micromanager, I also suggest you start taking notes and comparing how many times people get to the very specifics of your work versus the number of times you get to details of other people’s work. And if you have somebody nitpicking your work, there’s a high change you’re being micromanaged as well.
The effects of having a micromanager around
Micromanagers are a big blocker for any organization success, so let’s clarify how they impact the people they interact with.
Lack of trust and commitment: because of the constant revisions and sometimes pointless changes required, if your team stays around, they’ll lose trust in you. Having one’s work constantly unraveled creates an insecure sentiment across the team, because people can’t predict when the auditor of small items is showing up again. And a consequence of that is the lack of commitment. When we focus too much on small stuff, the sight of the big picture fades away, and we forget why we’re doing what. People have to have a clear point of view about the big picture goals, this is one of the basics for motivation at work.
Lower quality outcome: if you have a senior team comprised of you and 2 or more people, it’s already humanly impossible for one folk to know more than other two. If those people were hired it means they have something to bring to the table. So if you assume you know better than their decisions and keep asking for revisions for things to be done your way (like cosmetic changes or different points of view), you’re imploding their quality. Soon they’ll start thinking “why am I stretching/researching/improving for this task? My manager will have me redo it either way”. This way you loose the potential of three (you and your two folks) thinkers, and is reducing to just one thinker.
Bureaucracy: the easiest way to spot a micromanager is the excessive documentation. Documentation is good and very helpful. And there’s a thick line separating useful documentation from useless registers. A good strategy to apply is to think about the documentation you’re going to write: is this doc being read in the next few months or so? If not, is there a person’s routine getting benefit from this new doc? If you have a no for both of the questions, or you know that document is being written “just in case” we need to show somebody why we took a certain decision, this is bureaucracy.
Lower performance: a basics of micromanaging is that you review everyone’s work in your team. If you have to look after and check boxes for everyone, you’ll burnout eventually, and the work of your entire team has to go through your funnel, creating one single lane for shipping work out. And instead of having a strong team supporting you and taking initiatives, you end up babysitting them and reducing their capacity.
Act now
Remember: an important factor for people development is making mistakes. Of course if a manager sees a relevant one, they’ll stop it as this is their role. But giving space for people to learn by themselves is the only way to achieve peace of mind and a team that trusts you.
So the next time you hear a dry “sure” after asking for the fifth revision of something, I encourage you to take a step back and think through it with time to understand what that means and how your team perceives you in the long run.
