Am I the Micromanager?
How do you know if you’re micromanaging your team?
There’s a good chance we’ve complained about “micromanagers” while doing the micromanagement thing ourselves: hovering over shoulders, sending a message to “check in”, requesting a change late in the process.
Where does this need come from? According to this great piece in Harvard Business Review, micromanagement is the result of deep-seated anxiety. It is the result of a fear of criticism—a fear that we try to avoid by making everything “perfect”. Because if something’s perfect, how can we be criticized?
When our quest for perfection descends into micromanagement, we cause more problems than we solve—and ruin our team’s productivity. Below, we’ll go through a scenario to demonstrate the effects of micromanagement. Reflect and ask yourself how you’re managing your team in similar scenarios.
What causes micromanagement?
Inexperience: a manager lacks the experience to coach a team and manage projects
Anxiety: a manager feels anxiety about their own role or worth, and they attempt to deal with this by taking more control
Perfectionism: with the best of intentions, a manager may be seeking perfection before they feel ready to ship projects they’ve been working on
Lack of project management skills: without clearly defined project briefs, roles, and timelines, a manager may resort to micromanagement to keep projects moving forward
Power dynamics: there are just some managers who need to feel in control, who need to exert a “command energy” to feel satisfied in their work, and so will use micromanagement to reassert their sense of control
What are the consequences of micromanagement?
Some tasks have a clear path to success. When an airplane takes off, the end result is that all the passengers arrive safely at their destination. Getting to this outcome requires precision—rules and practices that are based on engineering principles. That precision leads to a single predictable outcome: the plane lands safely.
Compare that to a creative project. When a company wants to improve its social media presence, there isn’t a single predictable outcome. Sure, we can say that there are data we can use to say things are going well: we increase our follower count, we get more views and likes. But there’s no end point. A company never arrives at a place where social media is “finished“.
Let’s create a scenario. Imagine you’re a manager tasked with getting your team of creatives to improve your company’s social media presence. Does any of the following sound familiar?
You hire creative people who know how social media works. You decide together that they need to make one post per day. You tell them that they have creative freedom to do what’s best—what they think will create a better relationship between your brand and your potential customers.
But you feel the pressure from above to make the social media strategy a success. And you have your own ideas of what you think messaging from your company should sound like. You know your customers and what they like, right?
So you ask to see the post drafts before they’re posted. The team tells you that it’s not quite there, but take a look. You start to worry. You’re not sure this is the right messaging. Plus, there’s a spelling mistake—your customers should see perfection. You send it back with feedback, basically telling them to start from scratch.
What you didn’t consider was that when you asked to see the drafts, the team were still in the ideas stage. They didn’t think it was ready yet. But they were cooking something. And now you’ve not only interrupted that creative flow, you’ve driven a large red STOP sign into the path.
This happens several times. You wanted to get a post out today but it’s already getting late, you’ve missed the window to post when you’ll get the most engagement. But there was pressure from above you to ship, so you tell them to post anyway. What gets posted is a half-cooked thing, part your team’s interrupted creative flow, part your anxieties. It doesn’t get many likes. You panic. It needs to be better than this. We need greater impact.
This time you tell your team what it should look like from the beginning, and you ask them for more frequent updates, constantly course-correcting them. Wary of your feedback, the team feels less confident and starts making safer bets. Their priority is to satisfy what you want, rather than to get creative.
Creativity doesn’t do well in this situation. The team loses their initial interest in the project. It becomes just a task they have to do every day, and it doesn’t feel like they have any control over it—they feel like your puppets, rather than a team who can express themselves.
Your social media is safe and boring, just like many other companies. One by one, your employees quit, seeking greater autonomy and job satisfaction.
Is all your “checking in” helping your reports or hurting productivity?
Does any part of this sound familiar? If it does, that’s ok. This is a common response to the pressure of leadership. And there are a few tweaks you can make to turn your anxieties into becoming a high-impact team leader.
But have no doubt—being a micromanager has a big impact on the team, as we’ll see below.
What effect does micromanagement have on a team?
Loss of creativity: the aim becomes to do what the micromanager wants, rather than create something great
Loss of motivation: loss of creativity comes with a loss of purpose, which destroys motivation
Loss of trust: when employees perceive that what you say is not what you mean, they lose trust in you as a leader, which corrodes relationships
Less accountability: micromanagement at its worst makes employees afraid of making mistakes, so much so that they will avoid owning their mistakes and blame each other
Burnout: an employee pushed too hard for too long in a situation they get no personal satisfaction from will burnout, get sick, and have to take a leave of absence
The scenario above shows how, with perfectly good intentions, micromanagement can severely limit a team’s potential and output. But that’s just one leader and one team. What happens when micromanagement happens at higher levels in the org? As we’ll see, micromanagement, and its effects, can scale.
What effect does micromanagement have on the organization?
Slower delivery: interruptions and checks ruin productivity and creativity
Worse results: teams start working to satisfy their manager, rather than get the best result
Reduced employee engagement: employees who have lost their sense of autonomy and purpose feel disconnected from the organization, switching off their brains to protect themselves
Employee churn: disengagement inevitably leads to churn, and it costs to replace them—a lot
Read more about the impacts of micromanagement
In organizations, what happens at the individual level scales across the organization. Behaviors become habits—and habits stick. If you’re near the top of the org chart and you’re wondering why you aren’t shipping as quickly or effectively as you want, perhaps it’s time to have a look in the mirror. But don’t worry. Micromanagement can be a state rather than a trait. And there are ways to modify our behaviors to avoid micromanagement.
How to avoid micromanagement
Emphasize delivery over perfection
Practice true delegation
Set project expectations and processes
Welcome ideas and let them fail
Talk to your employees about how they like to be managed
Give employees agency
The first step is understanding that your role is not the same as a pilot. You’re a coach—but the coach of a game that has no final score. There is no one way to win at most sports, and in your world there isn’t even a clear picture of what “winning” is.
Your job is to create an environment for your team to produce their best work. That doesn’t mean being an absentee manager, leaving them to do as they please. Nor does it mean you can’t have your own vision and input. It means intentionally cultivating practices, processes, and behaviours that let employees feel empowered to be creative.
Here what that can look like in more detail, with some personal examples:
Emphasize Delivery Over Perfection
Did you know the top goal scorer in the English Premier League in the 2023-24 season, Erling Haaland, also recorded the greatest number of misses? He sacrificed perfection in order to create more opportunities to score. If he’d waited for the perfect chance before shooting, he’d never score. As the founder of Acquisition.com, Alex Hormozi, would say: the most important thing is to post more often. This lets you test, test, test until you find the messaging that works. Once you do that, double down. I don’t care for Hormozi’s personal brand or advice, but he has a portfolio of over $500M, so he knows a thing or two about delivery (and his posts are riddled with mistakes—but they receive thousands of engagements!).
Personal example: Running a content team of less experienced writers, I noticed that we spent too much time wanting content (surveys for tech executives) to be perfect. This was limiting our ability to launch more content. Having my own perfectionist tendencies, I decided to do something to help both me and the team feel less burdened by perfection. So, I introduced a weekly content retro where we shared past surveys and discussed how they could be improved in a friendly, supportive way. This introduced a mindset that imperfection was ok—the important thing was to reflect and keep improving. The team rapidly scaled survey production across a community that grew by over 5 times (from 20K to over 100K), hitting the weekly cadence objectives and creating a system of constant improvement. Survey topics and tone improved, leading to improved engagement, completions, and positive user feedback. All because we stopped being obsessed with perfection.
Practice true delegation
For people pleasers, delegation may as well be called “being bossy”. But true delegation is anything but “bossy”: delegating means believing in someone else’s ability to get something done. In other words, you’ve given them the opportunity to show their abilities. This can be stressful for some employees, especially those who are more junior. To delegate effectively, you need to define what’s needed and what success looks like. Then make yourself available for insight—without hovering around making “suggestions”. Make sure the employee feels capable and energized by what they’re being delegated to do, and supported by sufficient resources. Then watch them shine—or realize they weren’t quite ready yet. Then reflect on their performance together and game-plan what they do differently next time.
Personal example: I had a copyeditor on my team. They knew far more about the minutia of copyediting than me—that’s why they were the copyeditor. When we needed to integrate our style guide following an acquisition, I delegated sections of the style guide to them, telling them that they were the person to do this, here’s what we need covered, and we decided on a deadline that made sense. And guess what? That style guide was amazing, and they loved making it—I never saw them more lit up than when they were walking me through the finished version.
See more tips on delegation from HBR
Set project expectations and processes
There’s a perception that process kills speed. While this can be true (hello bureaucracy), a small amount of process enables greater speed and flexibility. When you are organized and know where all your files are, and what channels of communication you need, you can launch projects faster and pivot with minimal disruption. Use creative briefs to frontload expectations and outcomes—this is inspiration, not micromanagement, and it helps employees feel safe and confident, even if you’re asking them to stretch themselves. While process can take a while to establish, and a few repeated explanations from you, you’ll soon see how quickly process can become a positive habit—and you’ll be relieved at how much more focus you get back every day by trusting to the process.
Personal example: Working with a direct report who was a videographer, we game-planned with a creative brief before shoots so that we knew the shots we were looking for, who we needed to interview, what the overall aims of the video were, what a good time for was for editing and publishing, and where the files would live. After that? I let them cook—they knew what they were doing with a camera, not me. Did I give feedback on the editing process? For sure. But I wasn’t constantly checking in. I encouraged them to experiment. And the videos today keep improving and evolving to the place where they stand out compared to the competition—leading to more conversions.
Welcome ideas and let them fail
Many leaders do ok with welcoming ideas to the table. They do less well when it comes to letting employees actually try them. You may think that you know the “best” way to do something, but there is rarely one “right” answer. Instead, let your team keep trying different approaches until something works. This helps train project completion and ideation, meaning that testing becomes much faster, and that your team will get better at tuning into what works. This is similar to the “emphasize delivery over perfection” point, but places the emphasis on initial creativity—which leads to greater innovation and the potential for standing out against your competition.
Personal example: Slightly regretful with this one. I felt that our social strategy needed to be employee-led, so I secured budget for microphones and camera equipment. An employee emerged as someone who wanted to do funny interviews with small lapel mics. They would’ve been great—except we couldn’t hear anything with the microphones. When I told the employee we couldn’t use the footage, they retreated from trying again, despite me telling them it was a technical issue, not their fault. I wish I’d done more to encourage them to keep trying. However, that experiment was still useful in demonstrating the power of highlighting the staff—an approach still used (in collaboration with a videographer) that leads to the impactful videos described above.
Talk to your employees about how they like to be managed
Do employees do their best work in independent deep focus? Or do they prefer closer coaching? For me, I’m less motivated when I’m delegated something without being told why. But if I’m given a clear reason why it’s necessary? I’ll do everything I can to see it done.
Personal example: I’ve learned a few things from the corporate world here. I find out how reports like to receive feedback and how much coaching they feel they need. We create a collaborative 30-60-90 day plan to help them visualize what success looks like for them. This creates a blueprint for growth that we can both refer back to. And I quickly found out that pretty much everyone likes to focus in the morning (and so do I). So we set meetings for the afternoon and left mornings free for deep work.
Give employees autonomy
Intrinsic motivation is when a task is rewarding in itself. Chances are there’s a way to unlock intrinsic motivation in your employees by asking them what lights them up—then giving them the autonomy to try it their way. This is called job crafting—and has been found to improve employee engagement by 92%—and findings suggest that an engaged workforce drives 21% more profit and is 17% more productive.
Personal example: Back when I was managing a team of baristas, I noticed one of the team loved discussing how I chose which roasters to sell, and how I’d learned to taste coffee. I showed them how to set up coffee tastings, and then had them start running tastings with the other baristas in the shop, sharing his learning. He got so into this that I let him help me with the coffee sourcing program. I ended up choosing this employee as my successor, and he’d go on to surpass what I achieved by opening his own coffee shop.
Read more about “intrinsic motivation” in Drive by Daniel Pink
To Avoid Micromanagement, Embrace Imperfection
The thing is, if you’re already wondering whether or not you’re a micromanager, chances are you probably aren’t that bad. It means you’re already aware that your actions impact your reports—and you’re willing to change. So don’t let perfectionism take over your leadership abilities. Try some of the things above and see how they go. Then reflect, adjust, and keep trying.
And remember. In digital, nothing is permanent. Post first, add that comma later. When you do that, you give everyone room to grow—and achieve more.
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