This week on Mind Your Own Business, Micromanaging!
This week I want to explore the topic of micromanaging! I saw a post on LinkedIn a couple of days ago where someone had asked the audience what their views were on micromanaging and all of the comments was just so negative and in my view oversimplistic! I think micromanage has got to such a bad reputation and is miss understood. Instead of using the word micromanaging let’s think about it as being directive and having a directive management style. Do I think that it is appropriate to be directive all the time with everybody you manage? No, definitely not. I think it is also not okay to be non-directive all the time with everybody. It just doesn’t work like that.
When you are managing your team members, they might need something different from you depending on the situation, depending on the level of experience. Just because someone is brilliant at A does not mean they are brilliant at B, and that is when directive management becomes necessary. If somebody does not know how to do something, they need to be directed and you need to show them what to do specifically and how to do it. Otherwise they are not going to achieve the results and they are going to be frustrated and you are going to be frustrated at them. Often I see the opposite of micromanaging and I think that is the problem, because micromanaging has got such a bad reputation it’s like everyone swung the other way and there is just loads of abdication going on.
Managers aren’t giving people proper guidance or setting proper expectations and people aren’t performing. I’ll just urge you to think about your people and think about the scenarios you find yourself in. Where are you being directive when you need to be non-directive and directive when you need to be directive. Managing is always a tough gig, but it becomes even more challenging if you are over simplistic about things like micromanaging or being directive.
If you’re looking for more small business tips, then we’d like to see you every week on “Mind Your Own Business,”
Marco Soares is an award-winning business coach in Sussex and is available if you’d like help implementing these tactics.
