Hi, I'm Kevin Eikenberry, and I'm here to help you
reach your potential as a leader and a human being.
Welcome to Remarkable TV and the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.
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Today's episode I'm talking about micromanaging,
but specifically I'm asking the question Who decides if you are micromanaging?
Are you ready?
Let's get started.
Micromanagement leaders tell me they're not doing it,
but if I talk to their teams, I often hear something different.
Leaders, regardless of how long you've been doing it
or how well you think you're doing it, you need to hear this.
The other person decides if you're micromanaging.
It's wonderful to think if you're not.
But the reality is, if the other person,
the person you're leading or managing thinks you are, then you are.
Because micromanagement is relative,
right?
What feels like micromanagement when we're brand new in a job
is quite different than what it might feel like
when we've been doing a job for a long time.
Because what we even need as the employee is quite different.
You could be working with two different people, lead them in exactly the same way.
One of them thinks you're doing great.
The other thinks you're micromanaging because micromanagement is relative.
Micromanagement is also personal.
We have different experiences in our past,
different sort of buttons that can get pushed by our boss.
And so we have to be clear about what does it look like to the other person.
If we want to avoid this problem right
now, this doesn't mean that we might not need to provide guidance.
Does it mean we don't need to provide coaching?
Does it mean that sometimes people are messing up
and we need to give them more input?
Doesn't mean any of that stuff because all of that might even be welcome.
But micromanagement is something else.
Right. So how do we overcome it?
Well, there's lots of things we can do to overcome micromanagement.
But here are a couple of quick ideas.
Number one, talk with each team member.
Since micromanagement is both relative and personal.
We want to figure out where that person is.
What style works best for them.
And we need to be thinking about what it is that they need
so that we make sure that if we're going to provide that, that they don't view it
as that we don't trust them or we're micromanaging them.
Which leads to the second point, which is we need to set clearer expectations
for both the work and your interaction with others.
So in other words, if people are clear about what the work is
and what success is, you are less likely to micromanage them
because you know that they know what success is.
And if you want to or feel the need to have interactions with them
or one on ones with them at a certain interval,
and you've talked about what that interval is.
They're not going to view every interaction as micromanagement
because, well, this is the plan, this is the way it's pre set up.
And so people will have a much better sense about that.
The main
thing I want you to remember from this short video is this,
that even if you don't think you're micromanaging,
you might be because the other person decides.
Let me close with today's tweet.
You may think you aren't micromanaging, but others decide whether you are or not.
We've created a master class on micromanagement.
Not how to do it, but how to avoid it.
How to overcome the habit.
And how to become a more effective leader without micromanaging.
You can learn more about that master class and all of our other master class
offerings by going to Remarkable Master Class Tor.com.
I hope you'll do that and I hope you'll be back here next week
for another episode of Remarkable TV and the Remarkable Leadership podcast.