Dealing with Micro-managers

One of the biggest challenges for effective leaders is having to deal with a micro-manager.

I would bet that most of us have experience dealing with micro-managers.  They exhibit a lot of the qualities of information hoarders which we talked about in a previous blog.

I suspect that most micro-managers are  driven by a desire to ensure that the organization or team stays on task and remains focused.  However, the very act of micro-management often has the opposite effect by diffusing or, in some cases, removing accountability, confusing team members and stakeholders and creating time-wasting workarounds and wild goose chases.

At its most basic level, I believe that micro-managers are often motivated by two things:

• Lack of trust.  Micromanagers have a hard time trusting their team and often feel that they are the only ones who are competent to complete the tasks at hand.  Moreover, a leader who cannot trust his team is unlikely to delegate if they feel that the team cannot be counted on to get the work done or complete the work to their specific standards.
• Lack of confidence.  Another motivation is likely a lack of self-confidence in the leader which manifests itself in a need to control.  A leader who lacks confidence will also not be comfortable delegating tasks and may perceive a loss of that all-important control or, potentially, credit for the work completed.

Real leaders can effectively address the challenges of working for a micro-manager by, as Ghandi said, being the change you want to see.  First, its important to try and understand the motivations of the micro-manager.  More than likely it boils down to an issue of trust or lack of self-confidence.  Addressing those two motivators is a great place to start.

Building trust is challenging because it can take a long time to get an non-trusting micro-manager to a place where they can trust you.  I believe the best approach is to model trust-building behavior: communicate issues clearly and often, keep your commitments, demonstrate loyalty and respectively tell it like it is.

You can help a leader build self-confidence by proactively anticipating the micro-manager’s needs and modeling the behavior you want to see.  If your boss is heading into a particularly challenging meeting, talk to him/her and see what their needs are.  Better yet, try to anticipate their needs and develop a briefing binder or background documents in advance.  By adding value, and demonstrating your support and loyalty, the micro-manager will start to become less concerned about control and more open to trust and delegating. Model and give examples where collaboration and delegation have led to superior results.

Over time, these proactive approaches should start to help the micro-manager understand the value of trust, collaboration and delegation.  But what if it doesn’t?  What if the micro-manager is stuck and not willing to change?  One approach may be respectful confrontation.  Using open communication skills, engage the micro-manager in a discussion about their approach, and it impacts your ability to do good work for them.  If they are willing to try and change, set up some quick wins with clear deliverables and timelines so that you can demonstrate the value of delegation (and, hopefully, the “cost” of micro-management to the organization).

At the end of the day, however, if the micro-manager is unable to move from their position of distrust and be more open to sharing, delegating and communicating, it may be that the your only option is to exit.  While not ideal, you must be willing to consider the costs of leaving with the costs of staying in the realm of the micro-manager.