Micro-Management Your Staff Creates Negative Results
What Would Change In Your Workplace If YOU Stopped Micro-Managing?
The leader that micro-manages his or her team, might be sacrificing bottom line results and team performance for that control. Control is hard to give up when you are the leader or manager. You just have that feeling that others won’t do it as well as you, or that if you don’t make every decision, mistakes will be made.
To some extent that is true. When you think back to your own journey you can probably find a few mistakes that you made along the way. They were lessons that have guided your ultimate success.
Empower Staff
Empowering your staff gives them responsibility and opens up the possibilities of mistakes and new lessons. Part of the leader’s responsibility is training staff to take on responsibility. The other part is letting go of the micro level control and empowering staff to do things, perhaps differently than you would and perhaps better!
Start with sharing your vision with staff. When staff understand the bigger picture, that can help them to do their job well. Then they know what is important to you.
When leaders have to have control over each detail they slow operations down, they demoralize the staff and decrease performance. Staff Have ideas, insights into the day to day operations of companies. They can anticipate problems and see ways to overcome them. They know the tasks that need to get done and can schedule those to fit into the team’s workload more effectively. When leaders don’t empower their staff the results are poorer. But the results are even direr than that. Demoralized staff doesn’t stay forever. They look for other options. They seek positions where there are opportunities for growth and increased responsibility.
Self-Reflect To Overcome Micro-Management
The micro-manger needs to do some self-reflection to identify why they need control. What is holding them back from letting their staff shine and take the lead? Often it is their own confidence and the need to recognition. Confident and self-assured leaders can give over the reins to their staff.
Micro-managing undermines your goals and vision. While be a control freak might feel like the right path, it will eventually undo you.
Download an excerpt of my book Employee Coaching or pick up a full copy. Employee Coaching and learn how to inspire staff to create the results that you need through coaching.
