7 Part Sales E-Course
Lesson 5: Minimize Your Micromanaging
There's a difference between mentoring and micromanaging. One is instructive while the other is destructive.
Micromanagers often don't realize (sometimes because of years of practice without open feedback) that their behavior has been constipating the growth of their business, either as an employee or owner.
One of they ways to enlighten a micromanager of his or her tendencies is to point out that they are inhibiting their own growth and earnings potential because of their propensity to want to help their employees, team members, or clients, to the point of doing their jobs as well as their own. "Are you getting paid three times your salary to do all those jobs?" may be a question worth asking. Many micromanagers see what they do as part of their job description and not as intrusive behavior. A quick review of their position outline may be a good thing to do.
Effective managers and leaders can't afford to have micromanagers on their teams. And I mean that from both the literal and figurative perspectives.
One major tenet of my teaching is that your job is to make your job obsolete. If you can't or won't do that then how do you expect to grow?
For an effective manager or leader that means making sure that everyone you manage or lead is working at top efficiency. Micromanagers stifle others by not enabling them to grow.
I had a client whose previous plant manager micromanaged the entire place. The employees called it "Turn the bucket over management." When I inquired what they meant they told me that he used to tell the crews what needed to be done and then sat there (by turning a bucket over at the site), and watched and directed the whole operation.
Which also meant that he wasn't doing what he was paid to do and neither were the quite capable managers under him. His behavior also had the affect of causing projects to run much longer then needed.
The new plant manager had a completely different method. After informing all the employees that he intended to give them the authority to do their stated job description (along with the accountability that accompanied it), he proceeded to announce that once everyone became acclimated to the new policy they would find that they would also have more time to complete tasks and would need less time at the plant.thus giving them a richer home life.
And guess what.it worked! Less micromanaging meant more time to do what really needed to be done AND the tasks were completed more effectively and efficiently.
The offshoot to the story is that I was called in to do a week of management training shortly after the new plant manager took his position. One of his dictates was that no one in the training was to be bothered (except for family or nuclear emergencies). The doors to the training room were shut. No cell phones or beepers allowed. Everyone was informed that emergencies would go through the receptionist who sat directly outside the conference room doors.
At the end of the forth day the receptionist told us that one of the major components of the plant had a serious malfunction which caused it to be shut down for a sizable period of the day. The staff knew that they were not allowed to bother any of their superiors, so they took it upon themselves to fix the problem and lo and behold not only did they correct it but the plant also had a record output day!
Lesson learned: empower your employees and watch as your growth unfurls.