Micromanagement: The unintentional go-to management style and how to control what matters.

Why are so many new leaders drawn to micromanage?

In my experience this happens most often when an individual contributor, creator, builder or problem solver is promoted into a management role.

I’ll discuss how ineffective communication and misunderstanding how to add value can draw well intentioned leaders into controlling the wrong things.

Communication

The tendency to micromanage at its heart is a communication problem.

Let’s look at things from the perspective of a promoted individual contributor. From your experience, you understand how to translate an idea to the steps to achieve a result. You can turn a feature request into the steps to build a working piece of software. Just hearing about a new idea, your brain starts spinning on how to create the thing.

The first step to micromanagement is performing this translation for everyone on your team as if you were still in your old role. To further complicate things, you might still be expected to perform your old role as a sort of hybrid manager/contributor.

Translating desired results into tasks also feels like a great way to ensure success. If you know what needs to get done and how, why leave it up to chance? There’s risk in those unknowns and the only way you understand how to control that risk is how you once did, or are still trying to do, as an individual contributor.

Without understanding how to communicate at a higher level you’re stuck telling everyone how and what to do. How you justify this can range from not trusting the team to figure it out or helping them.

Comfort

In your new role it will be common to feel lost at sea. You’ll have moments where you’re not sure if you’re doing the right thing or what that even means. You have an old friend you can turn to, your old role. When you’re not sure how to find dopamine as a manager, you know exactly where to find some. As I mentioned a moment ago, if you’re straddling the line between roles, the management side of things might feel like a side hustle. A side hustle where you get to tell the rest of the team to do it your way while getting lost in the work you feel most comfortable doing. You might even take the most fun things to do, because you can.

This place of comfort will keep you from growing any new skills as a manager including communicating in ways that truly help you and your team. It’s more rewarding to jump back in the weeds than it is to navigate the unknowns of management.

Account-ability

Accountability is your ability to account or your ability to be responsible for. If you’re communicating tasks, you’re one person trying to do the thinking for everyone on your team. This doesn’t scale. You’re human and your ability to account for everything will reach its limit. Mistakes will be made. Your team however, does not see the whole picture like you. You haven’t allowed them the chance to see what you see. There is an imbalance of accountability, not enough has been transferred to your team.

You essentially have a bunch of brains on your team that you’re underutilizing. Communication, ego, trust and fear of failure all factor into a lack of distributed accountability. The result of being the main brain is your eventual burnout.

Breaking the Cycle

At this point we have a clear picture of the foundations of micromanagement and how elements of communication and control form a cycle that becomes more difficult to escape.

To break the cycle we need to communicate from a higher level, let go of old ways of working, balance accountability and start controlling parts of the process that drive resiliency and success.

Here are 4 steps to change how you manage and build resilient, growth oriented teams.

1- Statement of Change

This step is for your team as much as it is for you. This is a declaration of how things are going to be different as well as how you’d like to be held accountable by your team.

You might find this statement as part of your hiring and onboarding process. Remember, a lot of new hires will come from micromanaged teams, so explaining how you and your team work together will be necessary.

It’s okay to be a little aspirational as long as you communicate what may be difficult and how the team can call you out. This is the very beginning of transferring some accountability back to them.

Things to think about when crafting your message:

• What are some warning signs you’re slipping into old habits? How can you give your team permission to call you out.
• What will be different and what advantages will these differences bring?
• What other questions might your team have and how can you bring clarity to your particular situation?

These might be difficult to answer right now, but keep reading.

2- The Lens of Liability

We got here by not understanding how to communicate at a higher level, so how do we improve?

Low level communication, “it should be done this way”, comes pre-packaged with all of the context, experience and decision making. Focusing on how to produce the outcome is the shortest path to a successful outcome. To achieve success, your solution avoids liabilities, they’re just under the surface, in your head. Communicating at a higher level is bringing these liabilities to the forefront so they can be a larger part of the conversation.

Looking at problems through the lens of liability is about exposing the liabilities, fears, context, experience and decision making that you would use to create a solution. These are the real boundaries around a problem. Within these boundaries lives creative freedom. Controlling the context, liabilities and other boundaries matters more than controlling tasks.

In some situations there may be limits to where creative freedom can exist but make this a discussion not a decree. In other situations you may want to let them find the limits themselves.

3- Let Them Fail

You can be told 100 times to avoid the hot stove burner, but sometimes you have to experience it to really learn. Experiencing failure is a great way to learn. Failures, provided some guardrails are ways to let your team discover their own rules, fears and improve their resiliency.

As you bring more of your decision making into conversation with your team, there may be elements you leave out on purpose. Instead of handing over every lesson you’ve learned, what lessons do you want your team to learn on their own?

4- Real Purpose & Pride

The most rewarding moment is when someone on your team finds a mistake you made or something you missed. It’s a moment you understand your team has your back and it’s not all on you to figure it out. A weight has been lifted!

They have your back because you’re letting them grow and they’re owning more and taking on more accountability. You’re transferring all the important parts of how your brain finds solutions and letting them build their own rules for success. Not only does this drive innovation but it gives everyone purpose, pride and satisfaction.

I personally find moments like this more of an ego boost than trying to do everything myself and take credit for all of it. So, if your ego is what’s holding you back from a new way of managing, know that watching a team grow is far more rewarding.

* The ADHD Factor

Even if you don’t have ADHD, read this. You may run across this in the wild.

ADHD people gravitate naturally to jobs that mesh well with their survival and symptoms. What this means is the job you may have been doing prior to a promotion likely meshed very well with your interests, need for novelty, stimulation and challenge. It may have been easier to get focused and lost in your work, in a good way.

A promotion can feel like you’ve been pulled from your natural habitat.

You need to find interest, novelty and challenge in new ways that align with your new role. Combined with ADHD related inhibition, it can feel impossible to resist revisiting your old habitat.

This makes mechanisms of accountability even more vital to find success in your new role. You’ll need to find ways to keep you out of old work and in new work that you might find extremely difficult. It’s not easy but understanding why it’s not easy can shift some of the blame from yourself.

Moving Forward

Communicating in growth oriented ways allows you to shift accountability, build trust and gain resiliency. This is the kind of leadership that drives innovation, collaboration and fulfillment. Continue to question where you seek control and your underlying motivations. Bring more of your decision making, concerns and risks into conversation. Lean on your team and they’ll lean on you.