If you have a more general question please use our chat function, call Chat Now. The Effects of Micromanaging on Employees Anyone who has been micromanaged knows it is no fun, but it can affect different people. Why Do Leaders Micromanage? Some other explanations for micromanaging might include: They used to do the job and were great at it, so they were promoted to manager.
Their way of doing things must obviously be the best. They see someone struggling, and they want to help reverse the trend. The assignment is a huge deal, and they can't afford to have someone make a mistake. The Problems with Micromanaging If the point is ensuring success for the company, what's the problem with micromanaging? There are actually several reasons why micromanaging can be damaging to an organization over time: It stifles learning and innovation: Micromanaging breeds resentment and causes people to feel untrusted and unfulfilled, causing them to leave.
Skills cannot be evaluated properly: If employees never have the chance to take on new tasks, how will they ever learn anything or improve their skills?
It creates dependent employees: Constant micromanaging undermines the confidence and initiative of employees overtime. Some examples of this could include: Onboarding a new hire: Even someone with extensive experience will need guidance and support while learning how things are done at a new company.
A project with potential legal ramifications or high financial costs should have regular checkpoints and audits to ensure that it stays on track and that all stakeholders know the project's current status.
Correcting performance issues: If an employee has consistently failed to meet expectations, they may need to be retrained or put on a performance improvement plan. However, these efforts aim to help the employee get to a point where they can meet expectations on their own. How to Stop Micromanaging It all goes back to trust. Speak to the Author! Keather Snyder Chief Revenue Officer, is a leader in helping organizations improve and optimize their talent selection, development, and company culture.
Keep reading to discover the key symptoms of micromanagement and what you as a leader can do to alleviate the situation. Serious about your company culture? Join the Breathe Culture Pledge today and commit to putting your people first. According to the Harvard Business Review , the two main reasons managers micromanage are:. Leadership expert and best-selling author, Mark Murphy, adds a third dimension: fear.
He argues that many micromanagers are terrified that their team members will do something to tarnish their hard-earned reputation. Where a micromanager felt secure in a high-performing but non-supervisory role where the quality of their work resulted in a promotion, they fear their abilities as a manager will be poorly perceived if their team members fail to measure up or make mistakes — even small ones. This isn't always a bad thing - but when managers get carried away, that's when it becomes a problem.
We need to remind ourselves that the role of a manager is to be the team leader, the decision maker, and the coach, not to oversee every step taken by an employee. Henry Stewart, business author and CEO of Happy has noted that in his eyes, the number one frustration employees experience is micro-management.
Micromanagers have a tendency to become bogged down in the minutiae of individual project strands, losing the ability to see the bigger picture. For many micromanagers, the idea of giving their team members control is unthinkable.
They often believe that they are the only one capable of effective decision-making. People find themselves having to request approval about everything, rapidly diminishing self-confidence. This can result in people spending more time producing detailed updates than focusing on what they are employed to do. With people feeling the constant need to justify themselves comes the feeling that they are not trusted to do their jobs.
This causes two big problems. Firstly, a micromanager's team members wonder whether they are actually allowed to do to the work for which they were originally employed to do. The need to have visibility of every strand of communication at all times. This indicates a fear of being left out of the loop and obsession that people are discussing details and making decisions outside of their control.
An obsession with even minor details means that even straight-forward projects become ridiculously over-complicated. Instructions are so detailed and convoluted that they end up becoming incomprehensible. Micromanagers often believe that they are in a management position over lesser talented people because only they can be trusted to work as effectively. This is where an HR professional would come in. Managing micromanagers takes tact and careful thought.
Which brings us to the subject of business culture. The culture of a business permeates everything it does and stands for. Business leaders who focus on creating open, positive workplace cultures where people feel supported and appreciated, with their achievements recognised by their peers and managers create an environment where its almost impossible for micromanagers to thrive.
This can all too easily create the toxic culture in which micromanagers thrive, and at the expense of the people they are supposed to be guiding and supporting. So far over businesses have joined us, and if you take your culture seriously we'd love for you to do the same.
Click here to find out more. These days more businesses than ever before are harnessing technical tools which automate time-consuming manual tasks. These tasks can otherwise take over and prevent managers from spending time on helping their people grow and develop.
This applies to businesses of every size and every department. HR management systems like Breathe are now an essential part of the tech mix as they reduce admin, improving productivity and efficiency as a result. This means that HR managers and their teams can focus on personal development initiatives that bring out the best of people. This also means that they will have more time to help micromanagers re-think their practises and work more fairly, ethically and effectively.
By Nick Hardy. Health and wellbeing. GB NZ. HR Software. Staff Holiday Planner. Absence Management. Sickness Monitoring. HR Dashboard. HR Reporting. People Management. Performance Management.
HR Task Management. Location Management. Payroll Management. Managers cannot control everything; everyone needs to do their part. When this sense of trust exists, employees are more likely to speak positively about their employers, they will feel secure in their position, and they will not share company secrets or seek employment elsewhere.
However, when employees are micromanaged, this sense of organizational trust is broke, and employees do not feel a sense of loyalty to the organization. Employees do not want to show up to work each day only to feel stressed out, unappreciated, and as if their place within the organization does not matter. Employees will inevitably leave the company for a position elsewhere where they feel valued and free to be creative. This impact on turnover can bring with it a number of associated costs related to recruitment, lost productivity, and increased training.
Not only that, but if a micromanager is left to continue without repercussions, the cycle will only continue with new hires. Pricing Blog Sign in Sign up free. When managers micromanage, they may: Frequently walk around the office to check what staff are doing at their computers.
In some cases, micromanagers may also take a controlling approach when completing tasks and projects. Oftentimes, micromanagers cannot let go of responsibilities, and they may even assign projects to others but will end up taking over anyways.
Take away responsibilities without justification. The Negative Effects of Micromanagement — On Employees For employees, this style of management can impact their quality of work as well as their personal wellbeing. This includes: Increased stress, frustration, and burnout When employees constantly feel as if everything they do is scrutinized, they become frustrated and stressed out at work — which often leads to burnout.
Decreased productivity When employees are micromanaged, they will oftentimes feel as if they cannot do anything right. Not scalable To put it simply, one micromanager cannot realistically take on the work of all of the employees that they look after.
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