RL Blogs
By Steve Pagani
Dec 12, 2016Why micro-managing is the worst style of leadership. |
||||
to do or how to do it? If you’re getting involved in the how, chances are you’re micromanaging to some extent.
I once had a supervisor that asked me to put together a Powerpoint presentation on a topic. Once that presentation was complete we sat down and reviewed the content. The adjustments we made involved everything from re-phrasing sentences to changing the formatting of the text. Yet, nothing on the actual subject matter.
I’ve also had supervisors that wanted to review every little decision that I made. They’d ask the generic questions about alternatives considered, and weighing benefits and cost as if they were foreign concepts to me.
In both those cases, I felt dissatisfied with my work and didn’t have the same sense of ownership over my work. As engineers, most of us want our work to mean something. We want to feel valuable and know that we’re contributing. And a micro-manager works against all those objectives.
If you’re going to ask your people to work on something, have a little bit of trust. Let them work towards a final product and own in. The more involved you get in sculpting the final result, the less ownership your people will take.
It’s important to let your people make their own decisions and drive their groups. If you’re getting involved in all aspects of the business or asking to review all decisions before they’re made, you’re not only limiting your people but you’re increasing your own workload.
Remember your role as a supervisor. It is to set goals and expectations, develop your people, remove obstacles, provide feedback, and set the long term vision for your organization. If you do that well, you won’t need to get involved in the how… and you can keep focusing on the what.
And if you’re not sure where to start, here’s a list of items you can focus on instead of trying to come up with the solution yourself.
| ||||
|