Micromanagement: What's Wrong With You People?

Like most of us, I'm quite familiar with the topic of micromanagement. Over the past several years, I've had numerous opportunities—often unintentional—to delve into this subject firsthand. In every new professional endeavor and with each new manager I worked with, I had the chance to rediscover this topic.

There are two aspects of micromanagement in an organization: organizational culture and individual management style. In my opinion, both aspects ultimately boil down to the latter, the individual management style. Organizations are made up of people, and hence their individual styles of operation. If the entire organization is geared towards micromanagement, it often means that those in the highest positions allow it and, in many cases, operate this way themselves. It's hard for me to believe that directors are unaware of their managers' management styles. It's hard to believe that over years of running a company, they haven't realized that there's a manager behind the wall who checks minute by minute what his team is doing. A manager who needs to be invited to all team meetings, who spends half the day looking at team members' calendars to check what they are currently doing. A manager who checks the MS Teams app every ten minutes to see who has been "yellow" or "red" for too long—a situation I personally experienced when one of the directors called me to ask if I knew that employee X, one of over seventy people in my team at the time, had been away from their computer for ten minutes. I didn't have time for that; I can only imagine how he was utilizing his time and how productive he was.

Therefore, I believe it all comes down to the individual management style of each person. In any company, no matter what the organizational culture is, there will always be managers who approach things individually. In a company where 90% of managers didn't know how to manage a team, there were managers who handled it perfectly well and had a completely different style. Likewise, in a company with a pro-employee management style, there will always be one or more managers who manage through fear or apply micromanagement.

In the study by Harry E. Chambers, "My Way Or the Highway: The Micromanagement Survival Guide," nearly 80% of employees claim to have experienced micromanagement from current or former managers. How is this even possible in an era of ubiquitous coaches, mentors, millions of training sessions, and billions of articles? Where do such individuals come from, and above all, what do they hope to achieve with their management style?

There are many reasons, and not all can be identified because each micromanager is unique. I had the opportunity to meet several such individuals personally and noticed a few common traits among them.

One of these traits is the need to control everything that happens around them. This becomes the only, and in the manager's view, the best tool for managing the team. Controlling every task minute by minute gives the illusion of having control over what is happening in the company. However, they forget that there are dozens or even hundreds of such tasks, and it's impossible to control them all. Often, they end up spending half the day analyzing a tender for office supplies while forgetting about key issues essential for the company's functioning.

Another trait is the belief in their infallibility and relying solely on their own experience, which is considered the only good and valuable one. "If something worked 20 years ago, you should do the same now." Many managers still believe that to be a good manager, you need to know best about all the tasks performed by the team. The belief persists that a manager should be all-knowing and can't admit that someone on the team has more knowledge in a particular area.

Many such managers, unfortunately, act out of fear. They try to prove to everyone around that their presence at every meeting and watching every task is necessary for the company. They fear that the company will function just as well without them and that nothing will fall apart without their "help."

Such behaviors can have very negative consequences.

The most immediate visible consequence is the company's atmosphere. Employees are demotivated and don't want to take on new tasks to avoid interaction with a manager who will control everything. Employees, unable to carry out tasks independently and burdened with the "backpack" of the manager, become increasingly frustrated, leading to only doing what the manager expects, falling into a trap. If the task is done well, the manager takes credit; if done poorly, the blame falls on the employee. Ultimately, this leads to stress, lack of motivation for further tasks, and starting to look for new job opportunities outside the organization.

Another consequence of micromanagement can be a noticeable decline in proactivity. Engagement in tasks and proactive problem-solving can all be "killed" by such managerial approaches. Building an atmosphere of engagement in the company is extremely difficult, and maintaining it even more so. Such negative managerial actions can easily spoil an atmosphere built over many months or even years.

A very significant consequence is the loss of trust in the manager. Trust is one of the most important values in a team. Experience can be gained daily, knowledge can be acquired daily, but trust is often built over years. Thanks to trust, one can approach new task problems openly. With trust, you can honestly say what might work in a project and what might go wrong and control it from the start. When trust is lost, no one will bother to be honest, and many projects may simply fail.

What is also very important from an organizational standpoint is that such a management style will generate enormous costs due to employee turnover. It has long been known how costly the recruitment process is, how much time it consumes, and how long it takes to onboard new people. Such a management style will also result in a very unfavorable reputation for the organization. I know very well how hard it is to win over people from outside when the company and the manager's reputation are terrible.

Is micromanagement a domain of the Polish job market? It's hard to say definitively. Micromanagement can be encountered in companies managed by Polish managers as well as in those managed by French or Italian managers. It's more about the individual manager than their nationality.

However, this management style has much to do with how much the company wants to develop, both technologically and in management thinking.

How many times have you heard, "He's a great salesperson with the best results; let's make him a manager"? This is one of the dumbest arguments you can hear in your professional life. By not checking if the person has any predisposition to be a manager and just looking at their results, you often doom the person, the team, and the company to disastrous consequences.

A manager is not someone who should have the best results in the company. It's not someone who should know everything and have all the answers because they're a manager. A manager is someone who leads the team, learns with the team, gives advice, ties all actions together, knows everyone's strengths and weaknesses, builds the atmosphere, develops the whole team, and motivates them. That's it.

A manager should not interfere, not pester every minute asking what you're doing for the fourteenth time that day. Sometimes they shouldn't even talk about work but let the team carry out their tasks. They should be available for questions, not necessarily ask if someone has questions—that's a big difference. Of course, they need to tie the project together and know what's happening in it but don't need to know all the details. A manager's job is to deliver the project, not to impose their thinking and way of doing things.

It's hard to achieve all this by micromanaging every step. You won't build an atmosphere, develop the team's creativity, or build any trust between the manager and the team, which is very necessary in everyday work.

In the past, I've met many people for whom being a manager was associated with prestige, treating their complexes with new positions and benefits. Few managers truly understood the responsibility that comes with the role and how their behavior impacts the team working directly with them. How much their daily behavior influences their team's well-being, work, results, and perception of the company as a whole.

Fortunately, I've had the chance to work with managers who had excellent approaches to their teams, their daily problems, and successes. I have had and still have the pleasure of working with people who "raised" great teams and subsequent generations of excellent employees.