Nearly eight in 10 employees are
victims of a micromanaging boss. Here's how to
cope.
The margins are wrong. The period is in the wrong place . That
should be a semicolon, not a dash.
THOSE WORDS RANG in Rebecca Weingarten's ears every time her
unit turned in work to her supervisor. "Everything came back
covered in red ink," says Weingarten, who now can look back and see
her team as a classic victim of micromanagement. Under her old
boss, Weingarten's job performance had been considered exemplary.
But with her new supervisor, suddenly, everything Weingarten's unit
touched needed dramatic improvement and was accompanied with a
blistering critique. "I felt frazzled - like a kid again.
Controlled. Everything started falling to pieces," says Weingarten,
who ultimately fled her job and now is a New York-based career
coach who, not surprisingly, often works with victims of
micromanagement. "I've been through it. I know how terrible it
feels."
"We are in a micromanagement pandemic," says Dr. Robert Trestman,
vice chair for clinical affairs at the University of Connecticut
Health Center. It's so widespread that 79 percent of us say we have
been micromanaged, reports Harry Chambers, author of
My Way or
the Highway: The Micromanagement Survival Guide. Chambers says
71 percent of us indicate that micromanagement has interfered with
our job performance, and 85 percent say morale has suffered as a
result. How could it be otherwise? A micromanaging boss, by
definition, robs an employee of independence and freedom to do the
task. Suddenly, every speck of work has to be put under a
managerial microscope and, usually, subjected to endless rounds of
criticism as a micromanager painstakingly deconstructs the job
until, finally, it's exactly as it would be had he done it
himself.
Nightmare stories are abundant. Just ask Pamela Yaeger, a
communications expert from
Long Island,
New York, who says that, at
a past job, her micromanaging boss would literally time staffers'
bathroom breaks. When they seemed too long, she'd stick her head in
the door and yell, "Break's over. Back to work!" That boss, like
all classic micromanagers, wanted to script every minute of her
subordinates' day. "She wanted to know what I was doing every
second. If she sent me an e-mail at nine a.m. and I hadn't
responded by 9:05, she'd fire off another e-mail: 'Are you ignoring
my e-mail?' " This boss's favorite line, adds Yaeger, was: "I order
you to...."
Joni Kirk, who now lives in
Moscow,
Idaho, knows that story line
all too well. Her micromanaging boss would log on to her
subordinates' computers and delete e-mails she felt they shouldn't
answer. "She also told us that when we signed documents, we could
only use black ink," says Kirk. "She liked degrading us. She'd
loudly say in front of everybody, 'I need to speak with you,' and
she'd go into a tirade about a perceived mistake. She liked doing
that in front of everybody." Instilling terror is another hallmark
of the micromanager. Frightened workers are that much more
pliable.
Chicagoan Kingsley Day, now in the Department of University
Relations at
Northwestern University, says he can go one better:
His micromanaging boss at a former job expected workers to log
hours long into the night and on weekends. "I once heard him yell
at somebody, 'I never see you here after 10 at night!' " This boss
also had a peculiar prejudice against zip codes. "We were banned
from using them," reports Day. That boss was so determined to
eradicate zip codes, he would even sneak into the mail room to
prowl for envelopes that defied his ban. When he found them, he
trashed them, no matter what was inside. He also, like clockwork,
"annually announced a reorganization of office assignments, where
we all had to shift office spaces." Why? "He wanted us to know he
was in charge." That urge to take vivid control is another hallmark
of a hard-core micromanager. When workers feel off balance,
micromanagers feel that much more in control.
What triggers micromanagement impulses? Judith E. Glaser,
author of
The DNA of Leadership, says there are three main
causes. The first is an extreme detail orientation (also known as
perfectionism). "This kind of manager will always need to stick in
refinements," says Glaser. Second: "Some managers really just love
to micromanage; that is, he or she believes he is the center of the
universe." This persona is also known as the Diva, says Glaser. And
third: "When the manager is nervous about results, it can trigger
micromanagement."
Meditate on Glaser's third type, probably the most common cause,
and suddenly, the reasons for the epidemic become clear. For 10
years, management slots have been under attack, as organizations
have trimmed budgets. When anxiety over that business reality gets
out of control, an easy upshot is micromanaging. "Insecurity is
pandemic, too, among managers," says Trestman. "There are strong
pressures for productivity. Many managers have never been trained
how to manage. These managers feel a lot of anxiety. Most
micromanagers frankly feel they are doing what they need to do to
produce quality work."
That's the stumbling block facing an employee who feels
micromanaged and who suffers the resulting problems (poor morale,
lack of creativity, no enthusiasm about the job). When a boss feels
he or she is doing only what must be done, where can change
arise?
Philadelphia employment lawyer and human resources specialist Robin
Bond draws upon her personal experience from a past job. "I know
about micromanagers. At an in-house counsel position where I
worked, I had to photocopy every document I produced for review by
my boss before it went out. Everything. She read everything and
always had comments and changes. I had to learn to build a lot of
time into every workday just to communicate with her. As long as I
communicated with her, she was happy, even if I wasn't getting much
done."
Getting along and going along is one coping strategy. Another is to
just quit.
But there may be a shrewder way. Executive coach and leadership
trainer
Marcia Reynolds whispers the word she says every
micromanaged employee needs to know:
aikido. That's a
martial art where the key is to turn an opponent's force back
against him with clever footwork, leverage, and ducking. Don't see
how that applies to work? Reynolds says that when she had a
micromanager for a boss, she consulted a therapist who told her:
He's doing the best he can. Don't fight, don't push back, don't
resist. "That will only make the micromanager do it harder," says
Reynolds. The therapist didn't expect Reynolds to quietly suffer,
however. "He told me to model what I wanted from my boss." In other
words, to act as though he were the world's best boss with the
world's best employee. A funny thing happened: "When I stopped
resisting him, he started trusting me. When there no longer was any
resistance, he quit fighting. Doing that really empowered me. This
definitely isn't giving up," says Reynolds, who at that time held a
senior human resources position in a semiconductor company. "When
you model what you want, sometimes that's exactly what you will
get."
FOR THE MICROMANAGED
Breathe deeply and suck in this thought: Sometimes micromanaging is
good for you. A more troubling thought: If you're micromanaged, you
might look in the mirror to see the cause.
That's the discordant viewpoint of Jim Walter, an associate vice
president in the University of Connecticut Health Center's
communications department. Walter roots his claims in personal
experience. He elaborates that in the first job in his career, his
boss rode him hard, minutely editing Walter's every word. Nothing
Walter did passed out of the shop without a thorough going-over.
"Yes, I felt frustrated," recalls Walter. "But now I realize it was
good for me."
Huh?
The boss, Walter explains, didn't believe that his young hire's
output was ready for prime time, and therefore he buffed, polished,
and prettied up the work before passing it upstairs. There's a thin
line between mentoring and micromanaging, and sometimes the line
just may be invisible. Adds Walter: "As I got better in my job
performance, he loosened the reins; he backed off and gave me more
freedom." A quarter-century later, Walter has risen high up the
career ladder, but, he says, "that experience shaped me as a
manager." He says he'll sit down with fresh hires and tell them, "I
don't want you to make mistakes, but if you do, part of my job is
to correct them." That, he says, isn't micromanaging - it's putting
out quality work. Period.
FOR THE MICROMANAGER
Do the math: If more than three-quarters of employees complain that
they are micromanaged, that means a whole lot of bosses are guilty
as charged. What about you?
As a micromanagement expert, Chambers regularly grills bosses, and
his first question is: Do you allow others to influence how things
are done?
If your answer is that you provide subordinates with step-by-step
instructions even for routine jobs, move on to question two: Does
everything have to be done your way?
Say yes and here's the last question: How often do you tell people
to rework a report before you approve it? If the answer is
"always," guess what? You are a micromanager.
Is there a cure? Career coach Les McKeown, who often counsels micromanagers, says those who want to change usually can. He offers two tough steps to help change things: Get a buddy to be your reality check and sounding board. Somebody you can ask, “When I did this, was I micromanaging? What should I have done?” This could be a coach or even a peer. The idea is to gain an outside perspective on one’s management style. Step two is tougher: “Ask the people you manage for help,” says McKeown. “This is the hardest step for a micromanager, but it’s critical.” Tell them, “Yes, I’ve been bad … but with your help, we’ll all enjoy work more.” When they catch you micromanaging, ask them to call you on it. “This is a very powerful way to get progress quickly,” says McKeown. “It produces a powerful bond.”
Author