How to Cope With a Micro-Manager and Keep Your Cool
You’re busting your gut and doing a great job. Then an email comes in from your manager questioning your systems and processes and making you second guess yourself.
Worst of all, the email has a cc list of a cast of thousands, so you feel inadequate and undermined. You get all hot and bothered under the collar, and it ruins your Sunday morning.
You craft a response which takes you an hour, press send and sit and fume waiting for the counter-response.
You know if you pick up the phone, you will be defensive and possibly emotional, and besides, your manager is unlikely to take your call because she’s had her micro-manager moment of glory and given her 10 cents worth.
You know it will happen again, so how do you deal with it?
Respond with facts.
Outline the clear and simple facts of the matter. You manager is coming from a place of not understanding the systems and processes so ensure you are clear on what your systems and processes are.
Avoid using a defensive and aggressive tone in your response.
Not being defensive or aggressive in your response is easier said than done. Crafting emails when you are angry and upset is never a good idea. As best as you can, keep your tone neutral, and if you need to, park the email and come back to it.
Resist the urge to hit Send until you have had some time to process and review your tone and manner. Be ultra alert to this as it will come back to bite you.
Enlist a friend or independent opinion.
For me, this person is my husband, who is my voice of reason. I run things by him for a rationality and sanity check.
On many occasions, he has pointed out holes in my argument or communication, which I have dialled back. It is so easy to get clouded by your anger and emotions.
I call this the “hijack” where your emotions hijack your brain. Your heart leads, and your head follows, which isn’t the best option when you’re dealing with work matters.
Deal with only the issue at hand — keep every instance separate.
The best advice I ever received from a marriage counsellor was to keep every argument in a bubble and only debate the issue at hand.
As humans, we tend to dredge up every past crime committed against us by the person we feel has wronged us. Stick to the issue. Resist the urge to stack on any other issues that have bothered you in the past.
How many of us in relationships argue with our partner about not doing the dishes and whilst we’re at it, dredge up the incident last week when someone forgot to feed the dog? Please don’t do it. Keep to the dishes issue and stay present with it until you can come to a resolution.
Show empathy.
No matter how challenging this is at the time, I always try and see things from my manager’s point of view. Absolutely nothing happens in isolation. A person’s reaction to something will occur in the context of their reality at the time.
My manager may have written me an email hot on the heels of an argument (about dishes) with a partner. You can’t control this, but you can manage your reaction to the email. I live by the mantra that life is 10% reality and 90% reaction to that reality.
You can’t change the 10%, but you have absolute power and control over the 90% reaction component.
Her management style says more about her than it does about me.
My manager has by her admission, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) tendencies. She is impulsive and highly reactive. She is also passionate and has high standards of performance which I much admire, respect and aspire to.
Instead of getting angry and upset by her leadership style, I counsel myself to change my mindset and re-frame how I approach her micro-management ways.
Always see the bigger picture.
We work in a people industry, providing seniors with home lifestyle living solutions. We care deeply about the qualify of our service, and everyone is clear about this being the end game.
Her methods and management style may not be the same as mine, but we align on a shared vision of our end goal. Keeping this in mind helps me through times of stress and conflict.
Self Reflection.
A moment of self-reflection may be necessary to consider. The hardest part of human nature is to look long and hard in the mirror and truly observe what you see.
Reflection is one of the most underused yet powerful tools for success. — Richard Carlson
I have considered the possibility that my performance isn’t up to my manager’s standards or expectations, and she is indirectly hinting at this through her emails.
Leaving aside the concept that this isn’t an excellent leadership move on her part, I should prepare to broach this with her. A simple check-in may be all that’s required to workshop the issue to determine where the differences in expectations may be.
I started this article describing angst and frustration that I was experiencing. These are generally the first responder emotions that turn up in the heat of situations ready for battle.
Recently, I’ve developed an app that measures the emotional reaction of humans in response to visual content and I’m amazed that of the eight common human emotions, the majority of these are negative emotions (anger, contempt, disgust, fear and sadness).
Surprise is also a common human emotion which can be interpreted as both a negative and positive emotion.
The reason for highlighting this is to demonstrate that we, as humans are hard-wired to react negatively to situations far more than we respond positively.
It is only with conscious effort that we can adjust our mindset, which we absolutely must do to co-exist in our respective environments.
Summary
To sum up, I have found that dealing with the frustration of having a micro-manager can be overcome by deploying the following tactics:
- clearly state the facts of the matter.
- avoid being aggressive or defensive.
- enlist an independent person to be your voice of reason.
- understand that their micromanagement of you says more about them than it does about you.
- show empathy, always.
- see the bigger picture.
- be prepared to self reflect.
All of the above is much easier said than done, but trust me when I tell you that you will be the bigger person for it.
Thanks to Jon Brosio for your formatting suggestions.
