Audience: Leaders and Managers
Overview: Micromanaging is at an all-time high. And it’s affecting every part of your organization’s culture.
By: Cynthia Kyriazis, Chief Experience Officer, The Culture Think Tank
When I ask clients what they think the most requested need employees have of their leaders, in 9 cases out of 10 they guess correctly. Stop micromanaging.
And now we also hear about ‘helicopter’ managers born out of what the pandemic and remote work may have given us. Our internal stats tell us it can be a serious culture killer.
The need to micromanage employees is about many things including but not limited to the need for control, lack of trust, obsession and perfectionism.
The bottom line is that it’s about a person facing some type of fear/doubt. By itself, it may not completely kill a healthy organizational culture, but it certainly contributes to one whose performance and productivity are sub-par.
There are many ways to help a leader, manager or supervisor begin to unhook from this behavior.
The easiest approach has to do with establishing routines and systems to help see and measure work activity. Unfortunately, I find this approach is infrequently honored or worse yet, never established. And it’s unfortunate because they help set expectations, clear up communication stragglers and biases and put everyone on the same page:
Schedule regular meetings and honor them.
Every week, every 3 weeks, the 10th of the month…whatever is needed should be committed to the calendar with an alternate date if a conflict arises. When meetings are skipped once, they’re likely to be skipped again and that begins to negatively impact communication and trust which are two high value dimensions of a healthy culture.
Develop and share a 3-4 question template.
Share this with your employee and encourage them to develop their own question list of what they need to regularly ask of you or from you.
Again, stronger communication and trust are the winners here. These play to the cultural dimensions of alignment and accountability.
These suggestions are about processes and systems to support getting what you need. The harder part? The behavioral aspect.
Be honest with yourself.
Take a step back and ask yourself what’s causing you to feel the fear/doubt that’s feeding your need to micromanage. If it involves an employee’s performance, engage in a constructive discussion with the goal to resolve the issue and feeling.
If it has to do with your own needs seek resources to help you begin to learn how to overcome your concerns.
We all grow from asking, understanding, and taking the first steps towards change. The secret for success isn’t really a secret. It’s about being open to change and practicing a different approach towards growth. It’s about experiencing less stress and better outcomes.
Help yourself, your team and ultimately your organization’s culture excel by doing what you can to retain employees and draw interest during recruitment activities because your culture has been identified as one that helps employees grow.
And don’t forget this can help you stay focused on your own workload. After all, it was probably your special abilities that put you in this role to begin with. Let them shine.
Cynthia Kyriazis is the Chief Experience Officer at The Culture Think Tank. Her experience includes executive coaching, meeting facilitation, consulting and training.