Confessions of a Micromanager | Inc.com

Everyone knows that deep down micromanaging is unhealthy for our companies. But many, like myself, nonetheless battle with the very actual urge to take management and deal with issues ourselves. So we have now to ask ourselves, what drives this habits? Why do rational individuals select to micromanage, even when confronted with the inevitable reality of the hurt that it does every day to their workforce and their companies? 

Nearly each supervisor can inform a narrative of a delegation gone horribly improper. We gave a activity to a workforce member, and so they dropped the ball. And the aftermath left us burdened, having to choose up the items and do it ourselves. Possibly that one time was sufficient, or possibly we had the identical expertise 5 occasions, 10 occasions, 20 occasions earlier than we began to set off a worry response on the mere thought of delegation. Delegating is dangerous. And that worry then turns into anxiousness. And that anxiousness manifests itself into the necessity to micromanage as a approach to defend ourselves from experiencing a probably disagreeable end result. 

We predict that the issue is the delegation. However what if it is not the delegation that is the difficulty? What if as an alternative, the actual challenge is how we delegate? What if the actual challenge is our lack of means, our lack of talent, for the way we delegate? I need you simply to carry and entertain that concept for a second as a result of if that is true, then by denying ourselves the possibility to delegate sooner or later, we can’t give ourselves the chance to get higher on the talent. 

As a enterprise coach, I educate quarterly workshops to my purchasers in numerous locales throughout the nation. However as a dad of two younger boys, there are sometimes occasions the place I am unable to, or will not be capable of, make it to a seminar. As such, I needed to coach others on my workforce to show in my absence. So I requested “Joe” to show a seminar for me a number of years again. He was actually excited. However when it got here time to do the seminar, he wasn’t ready. He droned on and one, and missed a variety of the fabric that our purchasers had come to study. That unhealthy expertise led me to imagine that I could not hand off these seminars to a different workforce member, as a result of nobody would be capable of do it like I might. So I continued to show them for a number of years, by no means coaching anybody else to deal with them for me. 

Then in 2007, I bought the information that my grandfather handed away.  I bear in mind educating the primary day of the occasion, the place I had 100-plus individuals who have already paid to be there. All I might take into consideration was making the flight to the funeral. After which after we laid him to relaxation, I needed to fly out that night to make it again to the occasion to show the ultimate day. That was the consequence of me not being prepared to let go and construct the talents, the capabilities, of my workforce.