For the past month I’ve been working with a company that’s sending its sales staff home to work. The company has finally realized that through technology including videoconferencing and e-mail, their staff can be just as productive in their individual home offices as they are under the corporate thumb.
There’s only one problem: the sales manager is a micromanager. I’m not only helping their staff make a smooth transition from a corporate office to a home office, I’m teaching the sales manager how to let go and let his staff work on their own. If he can’t change his controlling ways, the company is going to let him go.
In the Management Excellence article “Leadership Caffeine-Give Your People Room to Run,” Art Perry shares 11 ways to avoid micromanaging. These tips apply to anyone with a large or small staff or someone who works with a team of freelancers.
1. Focus on the working environment! You own the responsibility to create and sustain a positive working environment. You cannot do that by micromanaging.
2. Create the right type of oversight by creating a culture of accountability for the values and norms in that environment.
3. You are a teacher. Teach and train. And then teach some more.
4. You are a coach. Observe and provide timely constructive and positive feedback. Everyday.
5. Be approachable, but don’t spend all of your own time approaching. Give your team room to run.
6. Create context, not confusion. Clarify and communicate. Create context for key organization strategies and goals.
7. Expectations and accountability drive performance. Set clear and challenging expectations for individual and team performance. This is not micromanaging, it is good management.
8. Remember, you’re there to help, don’t hinder. Knock down obstacles and free your people to run.
9. Defend, don’t distract. Learn to shield team members from distractions. Keep your people free to run, part 2.
10. Stay out of the way. You are a distraction most of the time. See the prior item.
11. Assert only when you need to. Don’t assert often. If you have to assert often, review the prior 11 items.
There’s hope for the micromanager I’m working with. Until we talked about micromanaging and how it was holding back his staff, he thought he was helping them. A little awareness can go a long way.
Hi Lisa,
Micromanaging is not only time-sucking, but it is soul destroying for those being managed. It undermines their confidence in their abilities, and keeps them on edge and second guessing every decision they attempt to make, until finally they become paralyzed and unable to get any work done at all. Been there, and that’s a HUGE part of the reason I now work for myself.
Wendy
I couldn’t have said it better. It amazes me that micromanagers last as long as they do in the business world. Finally though, their staff rebels and the micromanager is left in the dust.