Workplaces are where most people spend the majority of their weekdays. Workplaces see us at our best and our worst, and to get the best out of staff, managers know a certain amount of guidance is needed for their teams. 

But what happens when this desire to guide spills over into something overbearing, burning morale and hindering productivity? Today we’ll look at one of the most damaging mistakes managers can make at work: micromanaging.

We’ll highlight what exactly is meant by micromanaging, how it relates to deeper forms of narcissism and look at some examples of how it appears at work. So grab a coffee and we’ll figure out what makes micromanagers tick.

So what exactly is micromanaging?

Micromanaging is a desire a manager shows to control every part, however small, of an enterprise or activity. While this may sound like the strange behaviour of a control freak, it’s actually more common than most people realise.

69% of people surveyed recently said they considered changing jobs because of micromanagement, and 36% of respondents actually did! 

Micromanaging as narcissism

A lot of the actions micromanagers display line up with narcissistic tendencies. For anyone unfamiliar with the myth of Narcissus, the Greeks had him down as the perfect example of a self-centred personality. 

Much like Narcissus gazing into the pool, micromanagers become too caught up in their perceived superiority. They eventually become blind to the viewpoints of others, and they fail to recognize that true leadership involves empowering those around them, not self-absorption. Navigating around this is epic stuff!

Signs of micromanaging at work

Here are the most common and potent forms of micromanaging at work. Be careful to apply our combat strategies to these micromangements if you see them in your workplace!

1. Excessive monitoring and surveillance

One of the clearest and easiest to identify examples of micromanaging at work is a manager who monitors too much. Let’s create scenarios of a manager who is too keen on surveilling staff and let us consider its consequences. 

We could paint a scenario as simple as a production line in a manufacturing plant. The supervisor decides to monitor a line worker at every production step. The task completion time is displayed to the worker, as the supervisor stands over and scrutinizes every movement on the assembly line. Do you see here the potential damage to the morale of the line worker?

The same principle applies to virtual spaces and remote work too. For instance, you’re managing a marketing team. You’ve let each member of the team know exactly what they’re responsible for in an upcoming project, and the work is done online through Slack. Here, a boss too caught up in micromanaging would insist on screen-sharing software. A micromanager might try to explain that its true use is to make sure daily deadlines are met. Staff might see through the statement and see it as a way to monitor every click and keystroke they do. From their perspective, how can they feel trusted to perform if their boss doesn’t have their back?

Happy, loyal employees need to feel trusted at work, and over-surveillance is a surefire way of quickly eroding trust. When staff have this sense of trust, they are comfortable enough to communicate important thoughts about the project, and this information is worth its weight in gold to an effective manager. Over-surveil at your peril.

2. Nitpicking minor details

A micromanager feels as though they need to control every aspect of the task, when in reality it would be much more effective if they keep the big picture in mind. The phrase that most embodies this trait is expressed as: a micromanager can’t see the wood for the trees. This means they can only see the minutiae, or each individual section of the project. A micromanager is unable to get an overall understanding of the situation because they’re too worried about the smaller details.

A working example could be a manager of a new marketing campaign. This team will most likely already have someone familiar with the design aspects of the work. Yet the micromanager would ruminate on the font choice or colour scheme. While these are indeed important, an efficient manager would make these choices quickly and then move to more critical aspects. They would show that they trust the work of the designer if the need for changes comes up. See the creation of confidence here?

Small practices can lead to big changes, and trusting your staff to keep their eyes on minor details helps encourage team camaraderie. Relinquishing (some) control into the hands of capable team members is a sign of managerial maturity, and this leads us to…

3. Inability to delegate

Now we have a real bane in the life of a micromanager: delegation. In business, delegation is the transfer of responsibility for specific tasks from one person to another. A manager needs to do this all the time, assigning specific tasks to their employees. It most definitely isn’t a do-it and forget-it action, and effective managers know this. We believe there are 3 key reasons why leaders won’t delegate.

First, they won’t delegate when they’re too scared to fail. A micromanager lets the fear of failure take hold, and scramble to take charge to create deliverables personally, to their own standard. The adage ‘if you want something done properly, do it yourself’ comes to mind. Yet this begs the question, how is this manager doing their job properly when they have to do it all themself?

Secondly, a manager won’t delegate when they don’t have trust in their team. All great managers know that a lack of trust can sabotage a team, so it’s important to sort this out immediately if it’s an issue.

Lastly, as pointed out before, leaders won’t delegate when they love the details. Some people do love working in the details, but for a manager, the importance of being able to let go and place trust in those around you cannot be overstated.

There may be more underlying factors that stop a manager from being able to delegate, but by addressing these three in your teams, your foundation is set up to encourage trust amongst your star teams.

4. Setting unrealistic expectations

Let’s delve deeper into our 360-degree dissection of micromanaging. You might have found that you were monitoring staff too closely at the end of a project, breaking trust, or you were too caught up in the details in the middle of a project and lost track of the target. Well, how about right from the starting line? The opening gambit of managing a team: setting expectations. 

We all lose track of our expectations sometimes. In the business world, unrealistic expectations can melt a team’s morale right from the start. We know that high-functioning teams have trust and good levels of communication, so imagine leading a team that has a member with long-term experience, and this person is not listened to. They know the upcoming project is expected to take half a year. Yet the leader sets a completion date of 3 months. Trust dissolves and communication dwindles as the experienced staff holds his opinions in, and the workplace becomes a toxic environment of stress, frustration and eventual burnout.

Here a super-manager should use open communication and create an arena for staff to put forward their ideas of project expectations. You could create a group-led milestone chart, with incentives at each step. This helps the team function harmoniously and develop their own teamwork skills. Allow for some autonomy among your more experienced team members, they hold valuable input.

5. Fear of creativity

Micromanaging often stifles all forms of creativity and growth in the team. As we’ve seen, most workplace micromanagement stems from a manager unwilling to let go of any control. When bosses do this, they squash any spark of team cohesion the group has established. This fear creeps in as staff become worried that any deviation or change from the boss’s playbook will be met with criticism or disapproval.

This kind of fear creates a dark cloud above the workplace and makes staff hold back their unique ideas, scared that the dark cloud looming will drown out their suggestions. In a team that is afraid to put forward ideas, how can any project be completed that has that wow factor? This is especially true in marketing and advertisement teams. A micromanaging boss needs to recognize the damaging impact of this micromanagement and let those creative juices run amongst the team.

To combat this fear, an efficient manager can hold creative ideation sessions and let them be as open as they wish. Don’t forget that the staff see you as their guide, their shepherd through the storm, and so the only lines or limits that exist when putting forward new ideas are the limits you create!

6. Too many updates!

Delving even deeper into the narcissistic traits of a micromanager, we might see that the fear they have towards losing control creates a culture of giving updates too frequently. When every minor task and decision needs to be greenlighted through the manager, time is wasted and distrust might begin to weave its wicked way into the group.

Bosses guilty of micromanaging in this way should ask themselves some important questions. Firstly consider the cadence, or how frequently updates are expected. Many projects are optimized with weekly check-ins and status reports. So if updates are becoming more of a daily standard, carefully consider if any time is being wasted by people spending more time creating detailed reports than the actual task at hand.

It might be time to check if any of your reporting could be enhanced through business intelligence (BI) tools. You may find extra hours are freed up for morale-boosting activities for the team as detailed sales reports are automatically published on Mondays. The reports are also created in real-time to help the savvy manager alter their plans on the fly.

7. Blaming employees for failures

One of the most dangerous types of micromanaging a boss can show lies in blame, and where it is directed. There are some studies to suggest that humans are hard-wired to blame others, so it’s going to take a highly skilled manager to navigate away from blame and focus on responsibility and accountability.

Once a manager decides that all blame lies with their team, an atmosphere of “blame culture” is created at work, and it spreads like wildfire. This kind of atmosphere leads teams down a negative spiral. Our brains absorb blame the same way we interpret a physical attack. We shut down and direct our energy towards defending ourselves, which actually hinders someone’s ability to solve the problem they are being blamed for in the first place!

It’s integral for an efficient manager to occasionally reflect upon failures, and try to get into the mindset of “we are all still learning.” before fingers start to point blame. It may require a certain amount of honesty and openness, but why not use these opportunities as “teaching moments”? You could discuss your own mistakes from the past and the lessons you learned from them. This creates a safe arena of discussion for less experienced staff to open up. So don’t take part in the blame game, instead become the shining example your team needs!

8. Ignoring personal boundaries

Here we enter into territory that may differ from company to company, or culture to culture. The setting of personal boundaries is created by the staff, never the manager and an effective manager understands and respects this. Let’s create a scenario of a micromanager whose obsession with control has them overstepping the line.

Many micromanagers, as we’ve seen, request too many updates, and set unrealistic expectations. A micromanager might request an update late into the evening, signing off his request with a passive-aggressive “replying to emails shows kindness.” Morale among staff is inevitably driven into the ground as they come to realise there is no off-switch for the workload, even during their downtime. This intrusion into personal time is a prime example of micromanagement’s negative impact.

Here we might want to take a step back to understand some cultural differences in global workplaces. In some companies, especially those in different cultural contexts, this idea of ‘taking your work home with you’ might be perceived as normal or even commendable behavior. For instance, in some Asian cultures, there's a strong emphasis on dedication to work and responsiveness to superiors, which might mean employees are expected to be available around the clock. New truths are beginning to emerge on the effect overworking has on mental health in the Asia-Pacific region, with 1 in 4 employees in Hong Kong experiencing work-related mental health issues in 2020.

A savvy leader is clued up on the ins and outs of personal boundaries, and as we see workforces evolve into global units, further understanding becomes crucial to understand where personal boundaries should lie.

9. Displays of criticism or humiliation

In the workplace, criticism often serves as a potent weapon wielded by a micromanager. We know that not all projects are successful, and some of the most valuable lessons are learned by analysing the causes of failure and creating feedback from it. A micromanager takes this to another level by ensuring that any criticisms are given in front of an audience. There are no outcomes to this approach other than leaving employees demoralized and disheartened.

Imagine being the employee under fire in this scenario. The manager has decided to give feedback about one unsuccessful team member, singling their performance out, and in true micromanager fashion, highlighting the things they saw while over-monitoring them. This manager decides to do this in front of every other member, instead of first trying a one-to-one approach. This kind of behavior isn’t about working on issues, it’s a power move aimed at asserting dominance. The micromanager aims to set a standard to others on what happens when you don’t meet expectations.

In the end, these displays of criticism and humiliation don't just damage morale; they cripple creativity and productivity. Instead of building a team full collaboration and group cohesion, micromanagers create a culture of fear that stops growth and ultimately harms the organization as a whole.

Make sure micromanaging doesn’t creep into your workplace. Try out one of our team retreats!

Micromanagement often stems from managers who haven’t experienced recent change. Team-building retreats are a fabulous way to introduce change and try out creative solutions to workplace stagnation. So why not consider a team retreat with us?

Imagine the usual confines of your office settings melting away on a sandy beach or taking the time to appreciate nature on a countryside retreat. A quick change of environment can be as revitalising as a complete office overhaul. Your team will have one another’s backs and be full of harmony, ready to tackle work through microaggressions together. As a manager, you might even find your tendencies to micromanage are solved in a new location.

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