How do you avoid having to micromanage your employees?
This is a follow up question to a question I asked a few months ago on how to structure our employee meetings. I received a lot of great feedback and suggestions. Since then, I have printed out tasks lists for each employee and agendas for our meetings to keep them short and on point. Our team has been much more productive and efficient with our time since making these small changes. However, eventually I don't want to be micromanaging every little task of my employees. How can I transition out of this micromanaging role without any slack off?
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Mar 9, 2018
Good managers should define the what (i.e. goals and objectives).
Good employees should then define the how (i.e. plan to execute).
Micromanaging is when the manager defines the what and how. Consider the following tips to avoid that:
1. Set up proper communication process
When there is a regular cadence of sharing status updates, you have less of a desire to micromanage. Setup a process where each team member shares a written summary once a week that recaps their plans, progress and problems. You can reply to reach summary with guidance and suggestions.
2. Hire people that are better than you
When the team is made up of people who are experts in their craft, there is little need to micromanage. For example, if the CEO hires a great VP Marketing, that person should know far more about marketing and be advising the CEO on best approach.
3. Jump in and help when people get stuck
Just because you are not micromanaging doesn’t mean you can’t jump in and help employees when they are stuck, or coach your team. To the contrary, coaching is very important. If you see someone doing something ineffectively, help point them in the right direction.
4. Give lots of constructive feedback
By sharing lots of feedback, you’ll give the team insight into different approaches so they can figure out what works best. To be sure, don’t expect all feedback to be used, and position feedback as a “consideration” rather than a “mandate.”
5. Shuffle responsibilities when things aren’t working
You may have the most urge to micromanage if you see someone in a role that is clearly not working. If coaching fails, it may be best to change the responsibilities and delegate them to someone else who can better execute. This might mean parting ways with that employee or finding them a different role.
Mar 17, 2015
To me, the answer is simple here: trust and have faith in your employees. Just don't micro-managed. Period. Micromanaging your employees is a sign that you don't have faith in their abilities to get the job done well, and on time. Rather, empower them. It's okay to check in once and a while and ask how a project is going, that's different than micromanaging. In my career, I've been both empowered and micromanaged. As someone who's always been a self-starter, I don't appreciate being micromanaged when I'm a senior-level communicator. However, I thrived in an environment in which I was left to do my job, build great relationships with my business partners, and trusted in every respect. Trust me, nobody likes being micro-managed.
Mar 15, 2015
In my humble opinion, ask the employees what they need in order to perform optimally. Some of them will give you a straight and useful answer, some a fairly useful answer ( the last part i'll get back to in a sec. ) ...those two will allow you to, together with you own managerial experience, to determine the optimal way to manage most of your team.
Their feedback will also give you a reference on how micro or not to manage the last part of the team.
Should you though still need more reflection, apart from the "Postive psychology approach" above - I'd consider reading through their personal profiles, and going for
- the blue specialist : Give him the less-than-perfect criteria and ask for his plan
- the red leader/asst : Tell him how it is - or ask his plan dep. on your relation
- the yellow salesman : Ask for his input/ideas, and give him a plan with lots of gateways, so that you can follow-up (very!) often.
- The green team player : give him a detailed plan, and let him work in peace
I hope that gave a bit of input and constructive reflection too
Soren
Mar 13, 2015
Giving everyone the responsibility of reporting on their own work instead of running a "check" on everyone is a good start. Once a month doing employee reviews instead of every week can also ease up on some of the paperwork. If you implement these kinds of self-direction, your "holes" will become evident fairly quickly and you will be capable of managing at the task level where it is most needed.
Mar 13, 2015
Promote an employee to head of department to help in assign new employees tasks or orientation of their tasks before starting work. State an employees tasks in a contract to leave no room for micromanaging.
Mar 12, 2015
Three key steps here: 1) make sure everyone in your company shares the business vision; in his or her own way (book: fifth discipline by Senge); 2) set SMART (look up acronym) goals for each and every one (inculding your self); 3) review progress and or adjustment on the goals quarterly; and be able to pivot! Bottomline; unless everyone individually buys in or disgrees and commits. Your time will be spend micormanaging to results!
Mar 12, 2015
To avoid micro managing your people, you need to be sure you have the following in place:
1. All required tasks are standardized as much as possible.
2. Where possible, all procedures should be process driven.
3. There must be a recognition/correction system in place.
If the person asking the question would contact me at (954) 684-7414. I would be available with more specific answers.
Mar 12, 2015
You can do it the hard way (i.e. managing the symptoms) or the easy way (eliminating the root cause). All our relationship patterns are created from within us, from a variety of sources. However, in this case, you're running a parent/child pattern. If you cast your mind back to your childhood, who micromanaged you...Mom, Dad, teachers, big bro or sis? Once you see the connections you need to, you will notice your staff starting to take the initiative you wanted to but didn't feel allowed to. Enjoy...:-)
Mar 12, 2015
HI Jason,
The key thing here is trust. If you can trust your team to do their jobs well they will have more trust in you as a leader, feel more valued and work harder to keep that trust. Ownership is another important thing. If people have ownership of certain projects and tasks it gives them a sense of responsibility, accountability and importance. If your communication internally is clear and people know what is expected of them, feel valued, feel included and don't feel micromanaged they will work harder, gain confidence and may even surprise you. You will still need to keep an eye on things and make sure people are being productive but you don't need to monitor their every move.
Mar 12, 2015
By having task lists and meeting agendas, you are demonstrating that you are the leader and that there is a level of expectations being set. Additionally you have seen a positive impact in productivity. If you were seeing negative feedback then I would consider that being a micromanager. A lot depends on your organizations culture and the relationship you have with your staff.
Mar 12, 2015
Hire good people you trust, who are engaged in the work your company does. Then make managing themselves part of their job. Put the responsibility on them so you don't have to do it all yourself.
That being said, healthy, productive work environments require a mix of skills and personal strengths. Some people are creative. or big picture thinkers who hate methodical, detail oriented work, while others thrive on making things run on time. So try to build a team with complimentary skill sets who will be 'self-healing' when it comes to meeting your objectives.
There's an excellent book by Sally Hogshead called How the World Sees You—that goes into this topic in detail—to help a business owner build the right team.
Mar 11, 2015
Several perspectives can help, these from an HBR study on effective management:
- Being 'authoritative', focusing on providing the big picture
- Being 'democratic', asking for input on how to handle the situation from the person responsible, and depending on the dialogue, having that person take ownership
Some other thoughts:
- Hire people that you do not have to micromanaged, that can be left to their own devices to solve problems.
- Expect some slack, but then again, with their independence comes the possibility that some will rise beyond your expectations.
Mar 11, 2015
The approach I would use is to schedule a weekly meeting with each employee, allowing at least 20 minutes for a progress report, discussion, and mutual feedback. Pay close attention not only to what each person says, but to the nonverbal cues. If you perceive resistance, ask a few non-threatening questions to elicit feedback, hopefully including suggestions to allow the employee to more fully cooperate with you and the rest of the team.
Mar 11, 2015
You will also want to create leaders within your group. Look at which people are consistently successful in achieving your goals, then look at their skill sets and leadership styles, and have those (appropriate) people head groups of employees to accomplish appropriate types of projects. Allow your team to lead itself, with guidance from you as needed and as appropriate. Effective processes and procedures will help streamline your and the team's workflow. Best of luck!
Mar 11, 2015
I think that you will need to add more levels to your Pyramid management model, it is quite innevitable as your business grows.
Mar 11, 2015
Delegate, delegate, delegate. Have tried and tested employees model key tasks and monitor others. Create a work environment where there are 360 degrees peer appraisals and reviews. Let your employees know you trust them when they have earned it and reward them!
Mar 10, 2015
Its depends on skills of project manager how he merge two,three,four or five task to any person according to their skills,and also use proper forward and reverse hierarchy.
Mar 10, 2015
Richard Strrn- Take your time to hire the right people with experience in your industry. Make the job description specific. Testn thre candidates before hiring to be sure they can do the job. Then after hire watch them work. Once they start doing the job have meeting twice a week to audit their progress. When problems happen have the employee map out the solution and audit the resukts.
Mar 10, 2015
You're on the way now to creating at team...Build around the group based upon trust. Start to work on fitting in the tasks as part of the processes, then look for those with leadership qualities who will be willing to step up and take your big picture direction and go from there in individual sections of your company...let them volunteer to do things, let them go, then as review with them the results with both praise and constructive criticism when needed...
To me, the answer is simple here: trust and have faith in your employees. Micromanaging your employees is a sign that you don't have faith in their abilities to get the job done well, and on time. Rather, empower them. It's okay to check in once and a while and ask how a project is going, that's different than micromanaging. In my career, I've been both empowered and micromanaged. As someone who's always been a self-starter, I don't appreciate being micromanaged when I'm a senior-level communicator. However, I thrived in an environment in which I was left to do my job, build great relationships with my business partners, and trusted in every respect. Trust me, nobody likes being micro-managed.