Managers should be involved in their employees’ work, but when a boss becomes over-involved, it can be a detriment. Here we look at some ways to avoid micromanaging.

Obsessing over minor details and offering instruction for tasks that are an employee’s responsibility can be harmful to performance and lead to worker dissatisfaction. Knowing how and when to avoid micromanaging is vital to keeping a team operating smoothly.

“The term ‘micromanager’ means the manager who personally makes every decision, takes a primary role in the completion of every significant task and dictates each small step the employees make,” business technology firm Task Management Software explains. “Often the manager’s excessive attention and focus on the tasks annoys most employees. The micromanager rarely seriously considers attitudes and ideas of the employees.”

One of the key causes of micromanagement is an inability to properly delegate certain responsibilities and learn to let go of duties that should be handled by someone else. A manager who has this problem is not necessarily a control freak or one with an overbearing personality, but someone who may have overlooked the broader considerations of working with a group.

“Have you ever hired someone to do a job and then proceeded to tell them how to do it?” executive coaching expert Patty Vogan writes at Entrepreneur.com. “It’s definitely not the most efficient way to manage a situation.”

By taking the time to evaluate your employees’ skills and to remember why they were hired to do their jobs in the first place, it becomes clear that they don’t need to be guided through every step of the process.

It is important to avoid micromanaging whenever possible because it can be harmful to workplace performance, making employees less confident and thus less likely to be able to handle future assignments on their own.

“Under micromanagement…most workers become timid and tentative — possibly even paralyzed. ‘No matter what I do,’ such a worker might think to himself, ‘It won’t be good enough,’” career development resource MindTools explains. “Then one of two things will happen: Either the worker will ask the manager for guidance before the deadline, or he will forge ahead but come up with an inadequate result.”

In addition to increasing employee dissatisfaction and hurting engagement, micromanagement also takes up the manager’s time and energy, which could be used more productively.

“It’s that time and energy, multiplied across a whole team of timid, cowed workers, that amounts to a serious and self-defeating drain on a manager’s time,” MindTools continues. “It’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, to keep up with analysis, planning, communication with other teams, and the other ‘big-picture’ tasks of managing, when you are sweating the details of the next sales presentation.”

Fortunately, it is possible to wean yourself away from micromanaging behaviors. Entrepreneurial development resource Gaebler.com provides suggestions to put a stop to micromanagement:

• Remember that people who do things differently from you are not necessarily doing them wrong;
• If they are experienced, don’t hover over people when they are carrying out their assignments;
• The belief that “if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself” has no place in the workplace — you must delegate if you expect to get anything accomplished;
• When an employee does a good job on a project, offer praise and make sure to include him or her in future assignments;
• Keep notes — whether mental or written — on your employees’ strongest skills so you can assign them to tasks they’ll perform well;
• Try to avoid intruding on someone’s work unless he or she asks you to;
• When you’re asked for help, give help, but don’t push the person aside and take over entirely;
• Admit when you’ve gotten carried away in managing your employees’ day-to-day work and make it clear that you’re open to hear their suggestions or complaints; and
• Learn to let go and trust that your employees are skilled and hardworking enough to do what needs to be done, and if problems arise, they’ll bring you in.

“In the end, it’s just best to make sure that you hire skilled people who are genuinely passionate about what they do, have an innate desire to excel and are excited about the vision, product and/or service of your company,” Fast Company’s FC Expert blog advises. “That way you can just let them do what they do without hovering over them and be confident that the end result will be great.”

Earlier

Still Employed…Still Dissatisfied

The Impact of Job Satisfaction

Making Disengaged Employees Feel Valued

Why Workaholics Make Bad Workers

Resources

What is Micromanagement and How to Avoid It?
Task Management Software

Learning to Let Go
by Patty Vogen
Entrepreneur.com, May 30, 2007

Avoiding Micromanagement
MindTools

Know the Signs — and What Not to Do — to Avoid Micromanagement
by Peter Woolford
TechRepublic, June 1, 2004

Why Control Freaks Can’t Delegate
by Jay Shapiro
Gaebler.com

The Pitfalls of Micromanaging
by Douglas Paul
FC Expert (Fast Company), July 30, 2008