Micromanagement is now widely regarded as outdated and counterproductive for agile corporate management. But what exactly is behind this management style and how can you recognize him as managing director? In this blog, we offer you insights into the effects of micromanagement on your business practice and present approaches to effectively counteract this management style.
What is micromanagement?
Would you like to proofread every email before sending it and also be in CC? Do you expect your employees to put every presentation on your desk? Then there is a high probability that you are a micromanager.
Micromanagement is a management style in which you focus heavily on the details of your employees' work. This includes not only monitoring and correcting work results, but also hastily reconciliation of decisions or opinions of your employees.
Such behavior may mean that your specialists are unable to fulfill their role in the company. The potential of your team remains unused and the quality of work depends heavily on you as a micromanaging manager. The result: Productivity falls, your employees become more and more frustrated and tend to quit more quickly.
Micromanagement — lose-lose situation pre-programmed
Steve Job was often criticized for his leadership style, at least in public perception. In fact, during his time at Apple, he tried out various forms of corporate governance and finally came to the conclusion: Micromanagement undermines trust! Without trust in the team's competencies, it is difficult to build a company that creates real added value.
In the worst case, micromanagement leads to a toxic corporate culture and has the result that qualified employees leave your company. However, the “internal dismissal”, in which your employees only serve according to regulations and no longer develop their full potential, is even more alarming.
However, the negative effects of micromanagement do not only extend to your employees and your company, but also directly affect you as a manager yourself. This creates an actual lose-lose situation that has an impact on all areas and responsibilities.
Impacts on your employees
Micromanagement has various consequences for your employees. Constant monitoring and monitoring lead to a decrease in motivation, trust and initiative. A bad error culture is created because perfectionism fuels the fear of making mistakes. Increased stress at work also has negative effects on the mental and physical health of your employees. There is general uncertainty in the team, accompanied by doubts about one's own abilities. This not only leads to higher employee turnover, but also to increased “internal layoffs.”
Impacts on your business
The effects of micromanagement are far-reaching and affect not only the affected employees, but also the performance of the entire company. The demotivation and possible health failures of your employees result in a significant impairment of work performance.
In addition, micromanagement nips innovations and imaginative approaches in the bud. Avoiding risks and mistakes at all costs hinders your team's creativity. Compulsive control prevents new ideas from emerging and developing, which in the long term increases your competitiveness and Your company's productivity may interfere.
Effects on managers
Micromanagement means that you as a manager become a “bottle neck” and significantly delay decision-making and solution development. Why Your team can't act independently if you want to be in constant control of every step. For your team — but also for you — this results in an extremely heavy workload and lots of overtime.
In addition, micromanagement is associated with dissatisfaction among your employees, accompanied by a sometimes major loss of trust. Her penchant for perfectionism and control creates an atmosphere in which creativity and personal initiative have no chance. Instead of keeping an eye on the overall picture, as a manager, you persist in detailed management, which further hinders the effective development of solutions.
Are you a micromanager? 5 signs
As a micromanager, you are convinced that everything has to be done by yourself. You tend to send emails with detailed instructions on a continuous basis and want everything to go through your desk. In addition, you (often without request) take on the tasks of your team members directly yourself.
Leaders who practice micromanagement often find it difficult to recognize their behavior themselves. However, there are certain symptoms over time that indicate that you are interfering too much with how your team works. An increased desire for control, particularly in connection with one's own perfectionism, can be a common sign of micromanagement.
And how do you recognize micromanagement? The following points could be signs:
1. Excessive overtime even though there was sufficient time and attention for a topic.
2. More than three correction loops for a result
3. Finished results whose submission is delayed because the manager has no time to approve them.
4. Team frustration or severe apathetic behavior.
5. High fluctuation and frequent cancellations
Avoiding micromanagement: 7 approaches for managers
Micromanagement can be traced back to various causes and takes different forms. But how can teams and you as a manager successfully address this phenomenon? How can you introduce an agile leadership mentality in your company?
Decisive factors such as trust, empathy and an open feedback culture play a central role here. However, the challenge is often to carry out this self-reflection independently. Here, a trusted person can provide support in the form of an external coach and help you critically question yourself.
The following seven steps can serve as guidelines for establishing micromanagement in your company:
Step 1: Separate specialist roles from management roles
Many managers have paved their way through outstanding professional expertise. But when you take on a management position, the requirements for your role change significantly. It is crucial that managers become aware of this change. In particular, managers who have been in management positions for a long time often no longer have the latest professional expertise. It is therefore essential to take back one's ego. The focus is on your team, while as a manager, you should primarily act as a mentor. It is your responsibility to ensure that the best subject matter experts are on the team. This means putting the team together carefully and promoting professional development.
Thinking in terms of intentions rather than tasks plays a central role here. Instead of creating a detailed to-do list for the team, you should prioritize problems or desired work deliverables in a list. This gives your team the freedom to find the optimal path and the right solution themselves. In this way, you guarantee quality by defining clear requirements in advance and only rarely having to make adjustments when presenting results. In this way, you transfer responsibility for solution development to your team and act accordingly supporting from the background.
Step 2: Leadership as coaching
For managers who are making the transition from a specialist to a management role, it is appropriate to consider leadership as professional coaching. Instead of predefined solutions or clear instructions, support your team with your expertise. In this way, you can promote the development of your employees and strengthen their skills and motivation. The following measures are helpful here:
• Explain the background to requirements
• Do not provide a solution.
• Demonstrate multiple solutions and their advantages and disadvantages.
• Give your specialists the freedom to make their own decisions.
• Lead with questions rather than clear statements.
Step 3: Systematically build up competencies
Many teams lack the technical or content knowledge to make truly valuable decisions. But is it advisable to once again leave all decisions exclusively to the manager? This approach doesn't solve the problem, it simply relocates it because the team is unable to build up the necessary competencies. It is therefore advisable that you, as a manager, provide support here and gradually hand over responsibility to your team.
An example of the change from direct leadership to “leadership through intention” is shown in the Story by Ricardo Semler, the CEO of Semco Partners. In the 1980s, he took over the Brazilian company, which was previously founded by his father. Instead of relying on traditional hierarchical structures, Semler introduced radical changes. At the beginning of his term of office, Semco had clear hierarchies and defined processes. But Semler realized that this was hampering the team's creativity and productivity. Inspired by ideas of self-organization and employee participation, he began to decentralize decision-making power. Instead of giving detailed instructions, he encouraged employees to take responsibility themselves.
A decisive moment was when Semler abolished traditional working hours and gave employees the freedom to set their own working hours. This led to a significant increase in employee satisfaction and productivity. Semco developed into a company based on trust, self-determination and personal responsibility — an example of how a paradigm shift in leadership can lead to positive changes.
Step 4: Regular status updates
The basis for trust lies in treating one another with respect, which is based on empathy and competence. This means that employees and managers should regularly exchange information about their cooperation and the work results achieved. You should therefore set aside time for two specific formats at least once a month:
Retrospective: In this format, the focus is on critical reflection of collaboration, in which team members each other constructive feedback give.
Review: In the review, you will jointly analyse the work results of the past period and provide feedback based on this.
In both formats, it is crucial to maintain a respectful relationship. The art of constructive feedback requires not only theoretical knowledge but also practical practice. Empathy plays a central role here, as understanding other people's perspectives requires looking at the context in which they act and their individual needs. that SCARF model by David Rock provides a basis for better understanding and classifying these needs.
Step 5: Insights through experiments
Instead of having endless discussions about the optimal solution, it is a good idea to take a pragmatic approach and carry out small experiments. Especially when there are two alternative solutions and it is unclear which is the better one. Here, you could use the following methods:
1. Present prototypical solutions to your customers to receive direct feedback.
2. Run A/B testing using processes or project templates to compare the effectiveness of the various approaches.
Step 6: Create framework conditions
Errors often occur when expectations, goals, or requirements have not been clearly communicated. As a result, this leads to a loss of trust in management and an increased sense of uncertainty within the team, particularly when frequent corrections are required. It is therefore essential to establish clear framework conditions and principles of cooperation.
With a clear strategy and common goals, you can provide your team with guidance. They provide information about what the team is working towards and how individual work contributes to the overall performance of the company. In doing so, you create a framework that not only makes work more transparent, but also strengthens trust in your leadership and reduces uncertainties in the team.
A vivid example of the importance of clear framework conditions and principles in collaboration can be found in the history of the software development company Atlassian. The company has clear values and principles, which are defined as”Atlassian Playbook“are known. One of these principles is: “Open company, no bullshit'.” This is about dealing with each other transparently and honestly. Thanks to this clear guideline, employees know that openness and honesty are valued in the corporate culture. There are clear expectations when it comes to communication and collaboration.
A specific use case is shown in the so-called “ShipIt Days” at Atlassian. In this 24-hour events employees have the freedom to work on projects of their choice and implement creative ideas. This not only promotes innovative strength, but also shows that the company gives its employees confidence and freedom to act within clearly defined guidelines. The results are often groundbreaking ideas and strengthened team dynamics based on the company's clear principles.
Step 7: Learn from mistakes
Mistakes are part of everyday work and should not be regarded as a fundamental problem. However, difficulties arise when you, as a manager, try to prevent or even punish mistakes. Such behavior puts pressure on your team, which can have a negative impact on motivation and engagement. In the worst case, distrust of you increases.
Change your perspective and develop a growth mindset. Instead of fearing mistakes, you should always start from the potential for success. Victories can be identified even in mistakes. Your team might discover solutions that wouldn't have been considered otherwise, or see how a process can be improved.
A useful tool for analyzing errors and realizing that coincidences can produce positive results is Celebration Grid. With this method, you can visualize the results of an experiment or project, regardless of whether it succeeded or failed. The Celebration Grid shows how you can celebrate successful practices and learn from mistakes:
• Collect content for the grid as a team.
• Regular meetings to fill out the grid together.
• Just celebrate “Worst Fail”
• Share surprising successes and failures across team boundaries
Optimize project management, prevent micromanagement
By using all-in-one software such as ZEP, you can effectively prevent micromanagement and take advantage of a comprehensive solution for your project management. With our software, you give your team the necessary autonomy for project work, while keeping an eye on all project progress. ZEP acts as PSA software with which you can digitize the entire project business can — from quotation to planning to automated invoicing.
You and your team seamlessly record all work and project times via app, browser or at our ZEP terminal. Automatically standardized reports and evaluations make it easier to overview and analyze these times. Our software is flexible and scalable, so it can easily grow with your business, regardless of the size of your business.
If you are interested in project time recording and effectively avoiding micromanagement and would like to learn more about how ZEP can support your company, don't hesitate to to contact us. Our team will be happy to provide you with further information to help you choose the right ZEP solution.
