Are You a Micromanager? Here's How to Avoid it

It’s not easy watching an employee make mistakes, especially when you knew how to avoid them. It is even harder to stay silent while they screw up. 

However, that doesn't mean it's okay to micromanage the employee.

What is a micromanager?

A micromanager refers to someone who tries to personally control and monitor everything in a team, situation, or place. As a result, the manager often loses track of the larger picture and annoys the team by being over-controlling. 

A micromanager would either watch an employee's every move or demand progress reports more often than is necessary. The micromanager would likely chastise employees for the slightest mistake or for carrying out a job differently to how they would have done it. 

Traits of a micromanager

Here are six traits of a micromanager:

1. Unable to see the bigger picture

A micromanager is constantly drowning in low-priority tasks and/or meetings. They are so focused on managing a group of employees that they completely forget about the rest of the team. For example, a marketing manager that spends too much time reviewing the data team's work, and starts to neglect the public relations team.

If a manager is too busy with every little task of each project, they are not making the best use of themselves as a resource. The manager is also losing sight of the big-picture strategising that they need to do to help the team succeed.

2. Feels the need to approve every single task

The employees of a micromanager are frequently stalled, waiting for the micromanager's approval before moving on the next phase of the project. The micromanager is overwhelmed with status reports and updates and spends most of the day approving the employees' work. This ends with so much wasted time for the manager and their employees. 

There's a balance between managing and micromanaging.

3. Hates to delegate tasks

A micromanager does not like to delegate certain tasks because they believe they can do it better. Even when they do successfully delegate, they don't trust the employee's work and check every step of it.

As a consequence, the manager is always overwhelmed with work that does not really fall under their job scope as a manager.

4. Asks to be CC'd on even the most minor of emails

A micromanager's email is full of CC'd conversations about every single detail of every single project's progress. They are frequently becoming so overwhelmed by the volume of emails they receive. Sometimes they even miss the truly important conversations in which their feedback is truly needed.

Most employees do not like their every move to be monitored. Though a manager might feel a semblance of order when they monitor conversations, it actually hurts the team's workflow.

5. Tends to over-instruct

A micromanager has the tendency to give complex, step-by-step instructions, even for easy tasks. The employees do not get to experiment with creative troubleshooting or find new ways to accomplish assignments. 

If the team does not feel any incentive to be creative or innovative, they will start to feel like robots and less engaged with their work. 

6. Takes over the weekly meetings by being the only one talking

The weekly meetings are supposed to be about brainstorming of ideas by a productive team. A micromanager would instead use the time to read a laundry list of tasks, announcements and decisions.

The micromanager would hold brainstorm meetings to help the team feel more involved in the overall direction of the project, but their employees do not seem to want to contribute. When they actually do contribute, the micromanager always dismisses their ideas.

This will send the signal that the employees' contributions aren't valued which will affect their work performance.

How to stop micromanaging

These are the four strategies to cease being a micromanager:

1. Get over it

Most people rationalise why they do what they do and the same holds true for micromanagers. Here are some common excuses that chronic micromanagers give and what they actually mean:

These excuses lead to a disempowered, demoralised team. 

2. Let it go

In order to move away from micromanaging, one must first let go of all the trivial matters. This can be tough, but the key is to do it a little at a time. 

The manager can start by looking at their to-do list to determine what low hanging fruit they can pass on to a team member. Then, the manager needs to engage in explicit discussion with their team members about what level of detail the manager will engage in and where the team members will need to pull the manager in. 

The manager should also highlight the priorities on their list and make sure that is where they are spending most of their energy.

3.  It's about "what" and not "how

There's nothing wrong with having an expectation about a certain task. However, there's a difference between sharing that expectation and dictating how to get that result. 

A manager's task is to clearly set the conditions of satisfaction for any task they assign. They need to articulate what they envision the final result to look like, but they cannot give every little step-by-step instruction on how to get there. 

When in doubt, the manager should share the "what" and ask the team members about how they plan to get there. The manager might be surprised that the team members' approaches, while different, may yield better results.

4. Expect to win (most of the time)

Managers who micromanage are afraid of failure. Through magnifying the risk of failure, their employees will start to believe that the only way they can perform is if the manager micromanages them. 

What the manager should do is to focus on setting their team members up for success. They need to be clear on what success looks like by providing resources, information, and support needed to meet those conditions. The manager should also give credit where credit is due. Over time, the manager will realise that a loss every now and then helps build a strong record in the long run. 

Going forward, a manager can subtly change some of their behaviours, so that they can better channel their energy into supporting and leading their team. The less time you spend in the weeds of the details, the better off your team will be.

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Sources: Workzone, Harvard Business Review and process.st

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