Micromanaging – Recognise 13 Signs and Be a Better Boss

What Micromanaging Means, When It’s Unavoidable, How to Stop Doing It, and More

Micromanaging is a negative term describing managing someone or something excessively, or to an unreasonable level. It’s often associated with authoritative, pacesetting, transactional and task-based leadership.

Everyone prefers their boss to be empathetic and warm, and let them get on with it, as in democratic or laissez-faire leadership. But sometimes it can be unavoidable. So, when people aren’t doing their job properly, even the most caring boss has no choice but to step in and take control, until the results come in and they can relax and loosen the reins.

All in all, as we’ll see in a moment, micromanaging can be a highly effective short-term strategy to increase productivity. But you should only use it in small doses to restore order, or it can turn toxic.

So, this article includes:

• What does it mean when someone is micromanaging?
• 13 signs of a micromanager
• Why is micromanaging toxic?
• Examples of micromanaging
• Is it ever okay to micromanage?
• What is a micromanaging boss?
• Is micromanaging bullying?
• How do you stop micromanaging?
• Micromanaging problem employees
• 7 ways to stop someone micromanaging you
• 7 steps to ensure you don’t micromanage others

Okay, let’s get started!

What Does It Mean When Someone is Micromanaging?

Micromanaging means excessively controlling and supervising employees’ work and processes and being limited in delegating tasks or decision-making to individuals who can do the required work successfully.

All in all, micromanagers often have good intentions in wanting work of high quality and achieving their goals. Saying that overcontrolling over a sustained period can impact the team’s ability to achieve excellence and feel fulfilled, and limit productivity.

What Are The 13 Signs of a Micromanager?

Here are some tell-tale signs to look out for:

1. Seems to have control and trust issues: lacks trust in staff’s ability and is rarely satisfied with the deliverables.
2. Dictates not just what people need to do, but how, leaving no room for initiative.
3. Don’t delegate.
4. Fears losing control over projects.
5. Positions themselves as the sole point of contact.
6. Over-communicates and reaches out more than necessary.
7. Hovers, and thinks people are slacking if they’re out of sight.
8. Asks people to account for every second of the day.
9. Calls for frequent updates and insists people document work processes meticulously.
10. Constantly phones into the office from meetings to find out what’s going on, and communicates outside business hours by text.
11. Demands continual hustle.
12. Wants to sign off on every step and change people’s work after it’s done.
13. Has an unusually high turnover of employees.

This last sign of micromanaging, an unusually high staff turnover, leads us to a major point:

Why is It So Toxic?

If micromanaging becomes ingrained in a company’s working culture, it has toxic effects. Here’s why:

• It signals a consistent lack of trust in employees’ abilities, leading to strained working relationships, loss of respect, and low morale.
• Employees worry about getting it wrong, doing it wrong, or saying it wrong.
• Teams develop insecurity and lose confidence in their abilities. In the boss’s absence, they might find it difficult to function effectively.
• Remote managers trying to control people working from home could unintentionally lead to team members “quietly quitting,” just doing what they must to survive.

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What Are Some Examples?

As well as the 13 signs we mentioned, look out for these behaviours from managers:

1. Setting unrealistic expectations and deadlines.
2. Sending unnecessary emails to team members.
3. Wanting to be copied on every email.
4. Focusing on unimportant details.
5. Constantly calling meetings.
6. Thinking team members never come up with fresh ideas.
7. Getting over-involved in the work they’ve assigned to the team, and believing they can do it better.
8. Routinely interrupting people to deal with “emergencies.”

Is It Ever Okay to Micromanage?

Well, actually, yes. There are times when what people might think of as micromanaging behaviour is actually unavoidable. These include:

• Need for clear instructions.
• Ensuring “correct performance.”
• Improving productivity.
• Ensuring or confirming the quality of output.
• Maintaining morale by relieving employees’ feelings of overload and stress: “It’s okay, I’m in control.”
• Avoiding miscommunication.
• Giving clear leadership in a crisis or a change.
• Implementing urgent action.
• Leading young or inexperienced people.
• Bringing delayed or interrupted projects back on track.

All in all, when things go wrong in a business, you’ve got to put them right. Micromanagers often resort to micromanaging in these situations because of time pressure – they need results now – or pressure from higher up the business. Actually, micromanaging can be a highly effective short-term strategy to increase productivity. But to repeat, you should only use it in small doses to restore order.

Is This Kind of Behaviour Bad?

So, these situations may call for micromanaging behaviours. However, in “normal” times micromanaging individuals is bad for businesses because it:

• Disempowers people who are otherwise perfectly able, by not allowing them to produce results in ways that work for them.
• Makes them feel less accountable for their results and less engaged.
• Underutilises people’s skills, knowledge, and talent by controlling their every movement.
• Leads to confident employees feeling a micromanager is condescending due to a perceived lack of faith in their competence.
• Could mean team members become frustrated and resentful as their work is undermined, they have no autonomy, and their skills and personal development are neglected.

What is a Micromanaging Boss?

Here’s a quick recap. As we’ve established, a micromanaging boss is someone who habitually gives excessive supervision. Rather than saying what people need to accomplish and by when, then letting the team get on with it, they watch their actions closely and provide frequent criticism of their work and processes.

Julia Milner, a professor of leadership at EDHEC Business School in France, identifies three kinds of micromanagers:

1. Technical:

They’ve been promoted for their technical skills, not their people skills. However, with a bit of training, these individuals will improve.

2. Controlling:

These people crave power. They’re holding onto control, and aren’t interested in empowering others. This is harder to put right, as they often lack the self-awareness to grow.

3. Motivational:

These individuals confuse enthusiasm and support with controlling people and forcing them to follow their lead. They need to take a step back and switch to a more neutral form of cheerleading and support.

All in all, micromanaging bosses need to work on their self-awareness and ask themselves if their behaviour is down to insecurity about their ability and fear of failing. So, someone new to their role and inexperienced in managing people may feel they need to control everything. It’s best to establish clear goals and agree with the team how best, and how often, to provide the necessary information to be sure everything is on track.

Is This Excessive Managing Bullying?

There’s a fine line between micromanaging and bullying. A perfectionist might say they’re micromanaging because they want excellence, but here’s the thing – manipulation to control others IS bullying. The employee affected feel humiliated and belittled, and their mental health deteriorates. The increased stress affects all areas of their lives. Their self-esteem and confidence suffer, and they lack motivation.

As time passes, they may fear losing their job, being demoted, or being punished. Micromanaging creates a co-dependent relationship with employees, where they can’t function independently without the manager’s involvement and approval. If this happens, the employee should talk to colleagues, consider their options, and seriously think about moving on.

Luckily There’s a Solution

The answer to all this is to train micromanaging leaders to aspire to authentic leadership and emotional intelligence. Authentic leaders live by their values. They’re sincere in their interactions and true to themselves. They give their team members self-respect and belief in themselves and rekindle in them a sense of vision and purpose for the business.

How Do You Stop Micromanaging?

If you’re the boss who’s doing it, you can:

• Develop effective communication skills and set clear expectations.
• Focus on giving trust and keeping things in perspective, while being open to others’ viewpoints.
• Delegate “what” people need to do and agree on “how,” then step back.
• Set fair guidelines and metrics that define success.
• Agree on a deadline for each stage of assigned projects, and hold update meetings with a time limit.
• Talk through details that are important, but can’t be defined, and agree on the values that need to be applied.
• Have an open-door policy to give team members coaching or guidance, if and when they want it, and give them space.
• One option for habitual micromanagers might be training in other management styles.

Team members on the receiving end should:

• Do your job as you’re asked to, and prove you don’t need such close supervision.
• Check that your work priorities line up with the team and company goals, and meet your deadlines.
• Build your respect and trust level with your boss.
• Work on your communication with them, and keep them aware of the status of your projects and tasks.

If the Behaviour is Still Happening After That, You Need to:

• Talk to your colleagues, and see if they have the same perspective as you.
• Consider pointing out specific behaviours and the impact they have on you.

We’ll come back to this. But first…

Micromanaging Parents

Micromanagers weren’t born this way! They may have learnt their micromanaging habits in childhood. Constantly criticising children and undermining their self-confidence affects their self-esteem as adults, so they need to prove themselves in positions of authority. This leads us to…

Micromanaging in a Relationship

So here’s the thing. Partners or family members who work together in businesses need to respect each other’s abilities and judgement, and not be critical of each other unless it’s relevant and necessary. The person with the greater knowledge, ability, and experience in a given area should focus on what they’re good at and micromanage when it’s necessary, then go back to “normality” as soon as possible.

Micromanaging Problem Employees

Problem employees are a drain on bosses and their teams, but having to micromanage them over a sustained period isn’t good for anyone. You don’t want to lose a previously valuable employee. But if things don’t improve, it’s probably advisable to follow the proper procedures and let them go. Read our article on Problem Employees.

The Big Question – Why Do People Micromanage?

Well, people micromanage for different reasons. So, we mentioned adverse childhood experiences. Here are some other reasons the experts recognise:

#1- Insecurity:

First off, they don’t feel secure in their position or abilities and need to exert control over others to feel more confident. Moreover, they may feel impostor syndrome: “I shouldn’t really be doing this job, but I am.”

#2- Lack of Trust:

Also, they may not trust their employees to do the job properly, so they feel the need to oversee every detail themselves.

#3- Perfectionism:

They want everything done a certain way and are unwilling to delegate tasks.

#4- Inexperience:

They are uncertain or inexperienced in how to manage people, so they overcompensate by micromanaging.

#5- Fear of Failure:

They are afraid their people will make mistakes and reflect badly on them.

#6- Emotional Problems and Anxiety:

Finally, personal issues like trauma and relationship breakdown affect people’s self-awareness and cognitive thinking. After all, their window of tolerance is affected, and they’re hypervigilant. Hence, at work, they feel they’re constantly firefighting. So they’re anything but calm. In such situations, people may resort to controlling their team, rather than connecting with them.

And Finally: 7 Steps to Prevent This From Happening to You

1. Start with giving them calm feedback. There are various ways you can do this, depending on the size of your business. It’s clearly difficult in a small company, where there’s no one you can go to. After all, this is a conflict between you and them, and you’re trying to resolve it.
2. Make them aware, without being confrontational. Be honest and, importantly, respectful.
3. Have specific examples, with notes in writing, of how they micromanaged you. This is crucial.
4. Provide alternative suggestions, and be prepared to explain how you will deliver the improvement your boss wants.
5. Afterwards, prove you don’t need to be micromanaged by getting your work done at the right level of quality, and on time.
6. Give them updates before they ask, and let them know what you plan to do next. Eventually, they’ll respect you and trust you, and it’ll all be good again.
7. If it doesn’t work, take action.

This conciliatory approach should make a difference. If it doesn’t, talk to your fellow team members. In a larger business, you can take the issue to HR, or another manager, as you would with discriminatory behaviour. Moreover, if the micromanaging seems connected with you having protected characteristics under the 2010 Employment Act, you should certainly report it to HR.

Hopefully, if an employee initiates a conversation like we’ve described and delivers their side of the deal, everything will come good. Great work. Meanwhile, as a boss, you can do your bit to help by following these top tips:

7 Tips to Make Sure You Don’t Do This to Others:

1. Practise delegating: Get to know your team and give them work that suits their skills. Moreover, brief them clearly, then step away and let them crack on.
2. Give fair criticism: Constructive criticism helps build a productive work culture. So, give helpful feedback, don’t just say it could have been done better!
3. Promote creativity and problem-solving: welcome new ideas.
4. Ask your team for THEIR feedback: Don’t just give your opinions, ask what they think. Better still, encourage them to speak up, and listen to them.
5. Set clear expectations: Being clear about what you want, and what you expect, gives people a chance to prove their abilities. It sets them up to do well, you don’t need to micromanage so much.
6. Look at the big picture: You’ve told them what to do, you needn’t worry about the little details. Leave them to get on with it.
7. And lastly, develop your confidence as a leader and manager.

All in all, leading and managing people is not easy! You need to work on things like self-awareness and learn about the different leadership styles and how they fit together. So, you’ve read this article – now follow our tips on making sure you don’t micromanage, and act them out.

Updated: March 2024 by Charles Smith