YOUR STRESS-DRIVEN
MICROMANAGING HURTS YOU AND EVERYONE ELSE.
Take a moment to think
about it, and you may start to notice all those signs of your conscientiousness
as indicators of something a little less healthy. Maybe you get frustrated by
employees not following your instructions. Or you feel anxious about missing
out on information, so you attend every important meeting, even when you’re
slammed. You even ask your team to reschedule if you can’t make it, rather than
trusting them to represent you. And you want to be copied on emails all the
time.
Work-related stress is a
likely culprit. When you feel overwhelmed, you worry that you don’t have a good
handle on things–so what do you do? You tighten your grip on everything. The
first step to loosening it up (and reducing your own stress in the process) is
simply recognizing the impact that your micromanaging is having. Think back
over the past few months, and ask yourself these four questions:
1. Am I killing my team’s
creativity? All innovative ideas start as something new, untested, and
relatively crazy. If your employees don’t feel they have the freedom to test
out new things, they’ll give up being creative. If there’s been a recent
project or brainstorm where you felt the solutions and ideas were sub-par, you
might be to blame.
2. Am I tamping down
performance, or causing people to leave? Micromanaging tells an employee that
you don’t trust their judgment. One 2011 study found that people who believe
they’re being watched perform at lower levels as a result. As you offload your
own stress onto your employees by micromanaging them, they may even start
looking for the door. Rumor will get out that you’re a micromanager and people
won’t want to join your team.
3. Am I harming my team
members’ health? This is no exaggeration. We know that lack of autonomy at work
causes stress–after all, that’s likely a key factor for your micromanaging
habit in the first place. But last year researchers at the Indiana University’s
Kelley School of Business identified potentially serious health-related
ramifications, too–including links to mortality. Examining workers over a
seven-year period, the researchers found that people in demanding jobs who had
little control over their work were 15.4% more likely to die compared with
those in less demanding jobs. Meanwhile, people in demanding roles who did have
a high degree of control over their work saw a 34% decrease in the likelihood
of death.
The study’s lead author
Erik Gonzalez-Mule put it this way: “Stressful jobs have clear negative
consequences for employee health when paired with low freedom in decision
making.” On the other hand, he continued, “Stressful jobs can be beneficial to
employee health if also paired with freedom in decision making.”
4. Am I doing what I was
hired to do? This is as simple as reminding yourself of your job description.
Letting your team get on with their stuff will free up time for you to do what
you’re supposed to–and feel less stressed about your workload in the process.
Set up the vision for the team. Manage your stakeholders. And then step back.
Don’t worry–your team will come to you if they need you.
HOW TO CURB YOUR
MICROMANAGING HABIT (AND DE-STRESS IN THE PROCESS)
So how do you stop being a
micromanager? Start, of course, with those four questions above. But if you
find that doesn’t cut it, try anonymous 360-degree feedback surveys to
encourage your team to speak about your micromanagement tendencies. This can
also help you learn how your bad habits affect them–not just in terms of
executing their work, but also in adding stress.
Next, identify your fears.
What’s the underlying anxiety that’s causing you stress? Is it fear of failure?
Is it other people? An executive coach may be able to help you increase your
self-awareness in this area, but so can building a solid team. You won’t be
able to delegate if you don’t trust your team’s competence. Hire good people
and invest in their development, and chances are your worries about things not
going right will start to diminish.
Finally, step back and
articulate your vision and the results you want your team to drive. Look away
from the details of the work for a moment to reconsider its purpose in the
first place. That can help you learn to stop dictating your team members’ “how”
as long as they deliver on the “what” and understand the “why.”
Rather than you setting
the approach, lay down the ownership and engagement guidelines for you and your
team: What are the tasks and relationships where you won’t be involved? When
should the team come to you? Then resist the urge to interfere unless they ask
for your help or notice something unethical or dangerous. Done good enough by
your team is better than done perfectly (does that even exist?) by you.
Don’t be responsible for
harming your employees’ health and your company’s performance. If you can learn
to stop micromanaging, you’ll feel a lot less stressed at work–and so will your
team members.
Caterina Kostoula is an
executive coach and global business leader at Google. You can download
Caterina’s free balance and self-care tool kit for reducing work-related stress
and follow her on Medium, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
