Micromanagement is a curse word in the world of business. What is micromanagement? This article is written with the micromanager in mind, if you micromanage you are destroying your work environment. You are standing in your employee’s way. Why do managers get carried away in details? Do you know if you are micromanaging in the first place, and what are the signs to look for? I am going to take a look at the signs of micromanagement presence and the short term and long term effects of micromanagement.

Why is Micromanagement a bad thing?

First I want to discuss the problems with micromanagement. If you go to Wikipedia to look up the word micromanagement you will find the word “symptoms” in the table of contents. Symptoms are used with sickness and illness. Cancer and diarrhea have symptoms. Like cancer MM will kill team spirit and enthusiasm. High morale and enthusiasm are strong driving factors when it comes to motivation. When you MM you will end up killing those forces that really give your employees momentum. If one employee is micromanaged, several will still end up seeing you as a micromanaging boss, as rumors travel fast, and let’s face it micromanagement is easy to spot. It displays a lack of trust, and most employees need trust to thrive.

“Bad Management Behavior”, “Lack of Recognition”, “Lack of Respect” and “Management not allowing the employees to make decisions”. These are 4 out of the 10 top reasons why people quit their job. All are signs of micromanagement. I will get back to you later what you need to do when you feel the urge to micromanage someone.

Why do you Micromanage in the first place?

Let’s think about it for a minute. Most likely you feel dissatisfied with the employees’ performance or results. You feel that you could do a better job yourself, or you want to force someone out of the company by setting too high of standards. You might be under pressure yourself to get high results? Are you insecure about your own competence, or insecure about the employee’s competence?

Internal reasons for Micromanagement
Managers personality, detail oriented, emotional and job insecurity, strong drive for results, lack of trust.

External reasons for Micromanagement
Some external reasons for MM is Company culture, performance pressure, financial hardship and conscious choice of tactics.

The Effects of Micromanagement

MM is a destructive way of leadership and you will destroy trust, you will kill morale, and you will damage your line of communication. I work in Telecom and so I think that micromanaging fills your life’s land lines with noise. You will get disengaged employees and creativity will drop. Employees self esteem will drop, and over time performance will drop as well. All in all you are a large contributor to a hostile and dysfunctional work environment. You need to ask yourself if it is really worth it. I wrote earlier that the employee that is being micromanaged needs to take a look in the mirror before blaming the manager for the micromanaging behavior. The same goes for you, take a look in the mirror and figure out the true reason why you micromanage in the first place. You need to know if you are increasing performance or if you are destroying it.

What should you do instead of micromanage?

What drives employee engagement? This is my spring board when it comes to deciding what you should do at work in any scenario. Engaged employees produce amazing results, there is no doubt about it. Look at Zappos, look at Southwest Airlines, look at any other great company; employee engagement is the main building block of a winning culture. Lack of employee engagement is like building a tower on water, you might manage to build a large one, but it won’t go as high as it would with a good foundation.

Keyword: Trust
Trust is important to drive employee engagement. Have faith in your employees and leave them room to perform. You will soon see an increase in productivity. Trust will also give you valuable feedback, as MM leads to employees shutting down the communication lines to you. If you are satisfied with the overall performance and you want to keep the employee in the future, implement trust.

Keyword: Time
You spend a lot of time micromanaging, is it worth it? Could you be better at time management? Should you focus on growth strategies instead of being detail oriented?

Keyword: Communication
When you micromanage you are shutting down communication lines. Your employees will stop talking to you in fear of becoming micromanaged. Laying low will become a strategy in your office, resulting in no communication, no engagement, no growth and you will not have enough information to do your own job good enough.

Implement Trust, Free Time and Communicate

Display trust, become a better communicator. Try to motivate performance and use positive feedback to accomplish your desired outcome. Be clear about what you want in results. Engage the employee in conversations, and LISTEN, ask questions and listen. Talk with the employee and display trust until you are sure that the message is understood. You need to know that MM is damaging on the work environment and micromanagement is a result of unhealthy communication skills.

You Care

One of the reasons why you are a control freak * is that you care more about the outcome or results than your employees. At least you fool yourself to think so. But is it true that you care? If so, you need to show that you care in a better way. You will think of your own interference as constructive and beneficial, in reality you are in the way. I assume you care, if not you might be driven by the feelings of power and superiority. In that case you might end up losing your own job soon.

* I needed to use the term control freak, because if you read the Micromanagement article at Wikipedia you will find a “see also” section. There is one link: “Control Freak”

Micromanagement is Psychology

If you feel that you lack the trust of your employees and you have been micromanaging for a while, there is hope. You need to know more about motivation, employee engagement, personality traits, human behavior and a bit of positive psychology. There are several books on the topic and the evidence that micromanagement is devastating is humongous! Being humble, apologizing to your employees and being open about your challenges is a good start, as you need to start building trust, and it takes time. Try to find a mentor or coach that can help you before it is too late, after all, you want to do a good job too.

I got a lot of questions about micromanagement after writing a post called ”Dealing with Micromanagement”. I wrote about how you as an employee should deal with micromanagement, but soon realized that you where interested in more views on this subject, and I hope this article will help you to realize your challenges. Or it could help you to understand your boss, if you are the one being micromanaged. I also want to specify that micromanagement does not need to be bad and might be necessary from time to time, good communicators manage to pull this off in a positive style without the negative fuzz.
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You will benefit from knowing the differences between personalities when working with people. There are several different types in circulation today and personality analyzing has been a field of research for a long time, traced back to ancient civilizations over 5000 years ago. Philosophers and leaders have been trying to understand human behavior up to date. This is also a field that I find very interesting. You can read a personality or behavioral test without any benefit. You need to know a little history before you understand the full potential of these tests.

Personality and Behavior

There is a slight difference between personality and behavior, still both are interlinked with each other. I am focusing on the DISC test today as I use this in my work. The DISC test is based on a mix of four different characteristics. This theory about the four temperaments is traced back to the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations over 5000 years ago *. Ezekiel (590BC) defined the four temperaments as Lion, Ox, Man, Eagle (bold, sturdy, humane, far-seeing). And as time went by, it all formed the DISC test and several other tests commonly used today.

* http://www.businessballs.com/personalitystylesmodels.htm A great resource and further reading to understand more about personalities.

D = Dominance I = Influence S = Steadiness C = Compliance

This leads me further in my claim that each company needs two kinds of leaders. A strong D and a strong I. Why? Who manage to inspire the people around them? This is the outgoing active people person that is represented in the Influence category. This people speak in images, they are great salespeople and know how to inspire and persuade. On the negative path the I-group is more dreamers and has trouble converting ideas into action. Their good friend D on the other hand task-oriented, result oriented and gets things done. The D on the other hand is not a people person and do not understand why people don’t have the same drive for results, feelings is unimportant for a strong D.

Why D and I Work Well Together

They need to know about each other’s flaws and strengths to get the best out of their companionship. If there is a meeting the “D” can handle numbers and “I” can handle the vision and pep-talk. Without the “I” the “D” will talk about numbers and results and demand improvements. How many employees are motivated by looking at graphs displaying the fall in market share? Without the “D”, the “I” will rally the crowd into a cheering and fighting spirit, they will take part in the dream and lack touch of reality as described by a good “D”. The “D” can bring the numbers; the “I” can talk about what to do now. If you look at successful companies you will probably find pairs of “I” and “D”. You find them at Apple and Microsoft. They might be hard to spot as the “I” like to be in media and “D” just wants to get things done behind the scenes.

Why One Might Fail Alone

The “D” is not a good people person, they are phlegmatic. They cannot motivate an employee that is an “I”, because the “I” is motivated by personal approval and praise, as you probably understand the “D” does not care about that. Further you will have “S” and “C” people in your ranks. The “S” is motivated by time and space to get things done properly. The “D” will tend to rush things. The “C” is detail oriented and driven by perfection and truth. The “C” on the other hand might enjoy the numbers from the “D”, but fear the uncertainty in the dreams and visions of the “I”.

By understanding these kinds of personalities you will have a great tool at your hand on how to talk to people. I have experienced that my message failed because of this, and an adjustments to the message create great results. You will also have a map when putting the right person in the right place with the right tasks. Getting the “I” to do routine work will not work in the long run.

You are a Combination of These

You are not either one or the other. When taking a DISK test you will get a % score like this: D:37% I:44% S:65% C:79% – This person is a strong “C” with a lot of “S” – This person fears change and unpredictability. You are not exclusively just one of the four. Most people have one dominant with one or two supporting types.

My Opinion

I have been thinking about Inspire to Action Leadership lately and need to follow up with this post. If you read Inspire to Action Leadership you will remember the difference between the “What” and the “Why”. The “I” leader is the one that knows “Why”, and the “D” leader is the one that knows “What”
In my opinion a dual leadership is the best way to go when it comes to achieving success.

Other DISC resources
http://changingminds.org/explanations/preferences/disc.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DISC_assessment
http://www.disctrainingworkshops.com/
http://onlinediscprofile.blogspot.com/
http://www.discprofileblog.com/

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This blog post is a follow up to the Inspire to Action Leadership post. Read it or read other blog posts about leadership here. If you would like to follow my blog and receive notifications whenever I update my blog, click here to check out the different ways to follow my blog. Thank you for reading.

I believe in sharing knowledge, I believe that each person is provided with the right tools to become as great as they want. I believe in a world where all people are content with their neighbor and respect the choice of the individual. I wake up each morning urging to help you to grow and develop yourself into your own full potential. I believe that you can do whatever you set your mind on doing.

The world is populated with 6,855,878,752 different individuals, personalities and needs. People are different, so are leaders and followers, none are alike. But a leader does need a follower and some people need another kind of person to work well together. This is why a strong initiator needs a reactor to make anything happen. But why should the reactor do what the initiator is saying in the first place?

What makes the follower do what the leader is communicating? What makes people follow great leaders and ditch others as soon as it gets tough? Different people act differently and different companies have different goals. The leader that can inspire action or change is the one that can articulate the purpose, not by telling what to do, but to inspire by telling you why you should.

Taste the difference:

Doing the “What” is a dread, it is work and it is hard. Doing the “Why” is meaningful, it has purpose. The leader is the one that articulate the why, the followers are doers and know What to do. If I tell my kids that we are going on a picnic they will go “WOHOO!” And run around the house and find stuff they want to bring. If I tell them to get the stuff first they will go “Uhhhhh…..sigh…. WHY!?”

So how should you use this as a leader?

Think about your work, how many times do you ask your employees to do a what task? Get on the phone, get that report done by tomorrow, make sure to ask the customers if they want something to drink with that.  How many times do you use why? We have customers waiting, do we allow that? Your report is an important piece of the puzzle to get the deal tomorrow.  It is hot outside today our customers might be thirsty. This is the day to say why. Your company should also have its Why to motivate the employees into doing What. The people, who know why, also need the people who know what to do.

Gain Believers

The good follower is the person who believes what you believe. To find the right employees you need to tell them why you are in business. You are not hiring, you are gathering believers.

This blog post is influenced and inspired by Simon Sinek’s book – Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
This is a great book that every single manager or leader should read. If you don’t have it, buy it today! Must read!

Further Reading:
If you like this post, you would probably like Fear and Courage leadership or look for other articles in the Leadership Category. Did you know that you can receive updates from my blog by subscribing to updates? It is free and there is several ways to follow my blog.

Update: I wrote Leaders Personality Matters to follow up on this post. Take a look!

It started with Bennis.

Bennis wrote that “Managers do things right, leaders do the right thing.” With all due respect to one of the brightest minds of leadership theory, I still have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Perhaps it’s the lack of clarity in the definition that set us on a crusade to draw up a final draft.

Perhaps we bit off more than we can chew.

Now we have:

“Leadership is influence.”

“Leadership is the ability to impress the will the leader on the followers.”

“Leadership is an influence relationship.”

“Leadership is what leaders to in groups.”

“Leadership is inspiring others to take action.”

“Leadership is the ability to get someone to do what you want them to do and like it.”

On and on it goes until we’re left more confused than we were with Bennis’ definition alone. It seems like leadership scholars are gridlocked in their debate over the precise wording of a leadership definition. It seems like leadership students are lost in definition.

Allow me to be the first to raise this question: who cares?

Should the study of leadership be any different than biology or psychology? Gather a roomful of biology scholars and you’ll likely get a roomful of definitions of biology. Yet they find a way to work together to progress their field. Why should leadership be any different? Indeed, the definitions above all share a similar resemblance.

We must move beyond this need to define. We must stop asking ourselves what a leader looks like so we can begin to tackle the more important, more vital questions:

What makes a leader effective? What makes “good” leadership?

Introducing David Burkus, with his first guest appearance at Never Mind the Manager. – Thank you David.
David Burkus is the editor of LeaderLab, a community of resources dedicated to promoting the practice of leadership theory. He is an executive coach, a sought-after speaker and an adjunct professor of business at several universities. David focuses on developing leaders putting leadership and organizational theory into practice. Follow David on Twitter