Micro Management

This (micro management) is not new; one time or other either we personally have gone through, have seen that happening to others, or worse, had been doing that knowingly (or unknowingly).

Let’s straight away try to list out the reasons for this skewed behavior, detail those reasons, and finally try to uncover the remedial steps.

I personally believe, there are two reasons for this skewed behavior;
1) Inferiority / Superiority Complex
2) Failure to understand the preparedness level of employee

As you must have noticed the “fear of loosing” is imbibed into first reason. A person with inferiority complex would resort to micro management either because of threat to his / her existence, threat to potential gains, or threat to his / her growth. In either case, he / she is insecured about his / her well being.

An opposite of it, a person who is either a perfectionist or an exceptional performer, is insecured because of his / her reputation. A reputation that he / she has built over a period of time, and the standards that he / she has created for himself / herself.

The problem is even if they were not so hard on themselves, and would want to provide some leeway to others to perform; however, people around them have certain set expectations for “standard” for any given task / work. It is obvious that anything less than the set standard will be considered as “let down” by others, which ultimately may jeopardize their reputation, and hence, growth path.

As evident, either way, whenever there is a situation of “fear / insecurity”, people end up doing micro management. Therefore, if we need to address “micro management”, we need to address the “fear / insecurity”; the first reason of micro management.

Now, let me explain my second reason, i.e. the failure to understand the preparedness level. As we know, a management style is dependent on the preparedness level of an individual. It can range from being authoritative / directional, guidance, supportive to delegation. One may have a pre dominant style; however, one can not have single style for sure. In addition, I personally believe, even the pre-dominant style is a reflection of preparedness of his subordinates and not entirely his (provided there is no “fear”).

The reason being, a style become pre-dominant because he / she has to use that style, repeatedly, to get the things / tasks done. Otherwise, if he had a mix of direct reports, i.e. with varied preparedness levels, he would have definitely made use of style, as applicable to given preparedness level. The reason being, failure to read / understand the preparedness level leads to subordinate dissatisfaction, as it would lead to perception of micro management.

Now, let’ see how we can improve the situation by doing things a little differently. First, in order to improve the “situations” because of “fear”, one should,
1) Communicate – provide necessary and sufficient details periodically. This would help you in gaining the confidence of the person, as you would be helping the person in knowing the “unknown”.
2) Build trust through actions – do away with office politics, and be loyal to your work.
3) Set the expectations right – do not be hard on yourself and your reports because of wrong perceptions / expectations set by others.
4) Understand that there is always a probability of exception; therefore, work with the exceptions.

The second situation demands / needs a thorough introspection from manager himself / herself. He / She needs to identify the preparedness levels of his / her reports, and adapt his / her style as per preparedness level.

The suggested steps may sound trivial, however, those are the ways to reduce the instances of micro management. In addition, those may sound trivial, however, their application is not as trivial as it sounds.