On a Mission to Demotivate? Become a Micro-Manager

Working with a cross-cultural, diverse group of leaders recently, I asked them to share their biggest sources of demotivation. Micro-management was a universal winner.

Micro-management is giving frequent, unnecessary guidance to a person who is perfectly capable of doing the job themselves.

Micro-managers demotivate people because their actions:

Signal a Lack of Trust

Trust is the cornerstone of high-performance. You know yourself that when feel trusted, you are inspired to deliver fully in line with your capability. You also know that when you don’t feel trusted, you deliver sub-par work. You might be worried you aren’t meeting expectations, you may resist sharing ideas or trying something new, and you fundamentally question your worth within the team. Micro-managing a competent team member signals a lack of trust - and then the feeling becomes mutual – and with destructive effect.

Provoke Intense Emotions

Think back to a time you were fully engrossed in your work, maybe handling a project that you were completely engaged in, and your boss or colleague started frequently asking about the status - beyond the already agreed check-in points. Or maybe they made detailed and specific suggestions, about how to proceed with a plan you had already communicated and gained sign off for.

How did you feel?

Possibly angry? Perhaps scaling from a degree of annoyance to outright fury. Typically, the more capable or experienced you are, the more intensely you feel the anger.

You may recognize your thought process as being along the lines of: You hired me to do this job. I’m eminently qualified to do it - and now you want to stick your nose in. Just get out of my way!

Anger isn’t the only reaction. People can feel dejected, suffocated, or even disgusted. The feeling is often intense, and it can take a lot of focused breathing, distraction techniques and overall self-management to bounce back from a bout of micro-management.

Crush Interest

You probably have a fundamental need to take ownership of your work, deliver it, and be completely accountable for it. When a micro-manager keeps checking in on you, making comments, asking for updates, and suggesting revisions to a perfectly sound approach to the task, you likely find your drive and zeal diminishing rapidly and you lose interest and enthusiasm.

Your thinking may run as follows: I was really keen to work on this and your constant questioning and unsolicited inputs is killing my interest.

Foster Low Performance

Once interest is lost, poor performance quickly follows. If you feel a micro-managing boss is going to anyhow check the work, why bother investing time and effort in doing a great job in the first place? From being vested in delivering strong work from the get-go, you may find yourself deferring to a ‘this will do’ attitude.

Destroy Value

The intent of a micro-manager may be to add value, but too much of anything is a bad thing. Too much ‘value add’ is no exception – ‘value add’ being suggestions on how to make something perfectly fine, even better. There is a point of deflection in a relationship with a micro-manager, when that latest additional value-adding comment destroys value by killing your drive and vision, and with that, your respect for the person.

Cause Attrition

As a competent, self-driven person, you will likely flee micro-managers, because self-motivated high-performers want the freedom to lead their own projects and forge their own destiny. When good people go, others follow.

Micro-managers attract people who prefer being spoon-fed, resist taking accountability for their work and are reluctant to take the initiative to try out new ideas.

Are You a Micro-Manager?

You probably already knew the impact micro-management has on people. You yourself may detest being micro-managed. Still, do you ever slip into micro-management mode? If you recognize yourself in any of the following, you might want to modify your less than motivating instincts to micro-manage.

You Don’t Trust the Person

Why don’t you trust them? Is it because you don’t feel they are competent? If this is the case, be sure that all evidence points to them not being fully competent to handle the project without guidance. If they need additional support, then this isn’t a real case of micro-management, it’s a question of supporting the person - so discuss and agree how you are going to monitor and engage with your colleague during the project. Remember, people tend to rise or fall in line with your expectations – if you show you have complete faith in them, and they have shown competence and potential in the past, extend accountability. And be there as an encouraging presence, rather than an interfering one.

You Are Being Micro-Managed

Perhaps your predilection for micro-managing others stems from the fact that you yourself are being micro-managed. Maybe your boss is keeping a close eye on you and telling you to keep a close eye on your team. Perhaps here, you need to manage upwards more effectively – rather than perpetuate the cycle of micro-management. Tough, but just because you are suffering at the hands of a micro-manager, do you really want to cascade the behaviour?

You Like Control

Many leaders have a need for control. They like to know the detail and get into the nuts and bolts of everything that is happening. This behaviour prevents them from scaling, as a constant focus on what their team is delivering limits their ability to create impact beyond their team’s deliverables. Whilst this is easy to understand logically, it can be a hard habit to release.

If you are delving into the details of a project that you’ve appointed a team member to handle, you know you are wasting your time and their time, you’re demotivating your team member (and disengagement costs money) and you’re limiting your own career growth.

You may be concerned at handing over full control, as that might result in failures - but with appropriate checks in place, you can catch issues before they arise or course correct before they cause damage.

Maybe let go of controlling others and focus on controlling some of your less constructive behaviours.

Setting Vague Goals or Expectations

If you are setting the objectives, are you clear of the outcomes you are seeking – and are these aligned with your colleague’s understanding? If you find yourself redirecting efforts and giving detailed instructions, your micro-management may stem from the fact that you need to first be clear of the goals. Rather than frequently changing course, perhaps discuss the goals with your colleagues and team members upfront – and then hand over control.

Remember, guiding a colleague or team member who isn’t fully confident or doesn’t have the full suite of skills or knowledge isn’t micro-management. Micro-management is a destructive habit that diminishes creativity, enthusiasm and trust. If you recognize micro-management as one of your default behaviours, be start practicing some of the tips above – and enlist your colleagues to signal to you when you are beginning to venture into micro-management territory.

?

Andrea Stone is a leadership coach and consultant working with global leaders and teams to facilitate change in fast-paced environments.