A micromanager is possibly the very worst kind of really bad manager out there. If you’re a manager, new to the job or experienced, how can you avoid becoming a micromanager? It’s all a matter of trust—and following these five tips.
1. Trust Your Employees
Really bad managers micromanage because they don’t trust their employees. Sometimes this distrust is justified, especially if you’re dealing with underperformers or lower-level staff. In most instances, however, managers can and should trust their employees to do their jobs. If, for whatever reason, you don’t trust your employees, you may most likely resort to micromanaging them.
Trust, then, is key. That requires having employees who you know will do their jobs well, and then letting them do just that. If you trust your employees you don’t need to be constantly looking over their shoulders. You may still want a weekly progress report or regular updates on important projects, but you should be able to stay relatively hands off and let them do what they know how to do.
Some managers, however, have difficulty trusting others to do their jobs, even if those individuals are qualified and have a proven track record. If you find it difficult to trust those who work for you, you need to work on your personal trust issues. You can’t do everything yourself; you need a team around you who can help with the heavy lifting and don’t require constant attention.
If you spend all your time micromanaging employees because you don’t trust them, you defeat the purpose of having those employees. I know some really bad managers who spend more time micromanaging their employees than if they had done that work themselves! Developing trust is essential; if you can’t trust others, you shouldn’t be working with others. That’s the nature of building a team.
2. Hire Well
Building a strong team that you can trust starts at the very beginning, during the hiring process. You need to hire the best, most skilled, most experienced employees you can find. Ideally, a new employee can step into their role and start performing on day one, with minimal oversight from you. Even if a position is built for less-skilled employees, you want to hire the most capable, most trainable individuals who apply.
The goal is to build a team of strong performers who can trust to do their jobs well. If you have employees you can trust, you don’t need to micromanage them. It’s as simple as that.
3. Train Well
Many positions, even higher-level ones, require some amount of training. That puts the onus of developing strong performers on you—or on whomever does the training. If a position requires doing certain things in specific ways, make sure the employee is trained to do so. Don’t expect a newbie to walk in the door and immediately know how to perform every little procedure on their plate. To develop employees you can trust, you need to hire well and then train well so they know how best to do their jobs.
4. Accept That Different People Do Things Different Ways
Some people micromanage because they simply can’t give up doing things themselves. This is especially true if you’ve been promoted from a lower-level position and are now managing others to do the work you used to do. If you expect the new guys to do things exactly the way you did them, you will be constantly disappointed.
It’s important, then, to accept that different people will do things in different ways. The key thing here is to focus on the results, not the process. You shouldn’t force others to do things the way you do; let them find their own groove that best fits their skills, experiences, and personalities. They may not do things the way you did, but the results can still be acceptable.
5. Don’t Treat Every Employee Like a Problem Employee
Not every employee will work out. If you hire well and train well, you should end up with a team of competent employees you can trust—but you can’t count on a 100% success rate. No matter how good a manager you are, there will always be employees who constantly screw up or underperform; these employees will need more attention from you and, if they can’t turn it around, may possibly need to be exited.
The challenge is to identify the underperformers and give them the attention and management they need—which may include micromanagement. What you don’t want to do is apply that save heavy management to your team’s strong performers. That is, you don’t want to treat your good employees like problem employees.
This is important. You don’t have to and shouldn’t manage all employees the same. You should let the strong performers do their thing while keeping the weaker performers on a shorter leash. If you try to micromanage the strong performers as you do the weaker ones, you’ll stifle your best employees and possibly if not probably drive them away. This is one instance where it’s okay to discriminate; your problem employees can and should be treated differently from the rest of a well-performing team.
The Bottom Line
Micromanaging employees can be time consuming for you and frustrating for them. If you want to avoid becoming a micromanager, you have to learn to trust your team. That means building a team that you can trust to do their jobs well and don’t require constant management. If you can’t trust your team, you either need to build a new team or examine why it is you have trouble trusting others to do their jobs.
