Are You a Micromanager? 5 Ways To Tell.

A note from your team: Stop doing our jobs.

The only thing worse than a crappy delegator is a micromanager—and often, business owners are both! 

Thankfully, the red flags of micromanaging are easy to spot. Can you (or better yet, your team) relate to the following?

• You’re never delighted with deliverables.

• You’re easily frustrated by how a task was completed because it’s “not how you would have done it.”

• You feel the need to keep tabs on every email and detail of a project.

• You have a tough time removing yourself from ongoing tasks.

• You’re quick to correct and perfect.

These behaviors are warranted under certain circumstances, but you can easily break down team confidence, morale, creativity, collaboration, and more when repeated consistently- and unnecessarily.

Before you justify behavior with reasons or excuses (“I’m just detail-oriented!” “It’s just faster if I fix it myself!” “They clearly didn’t have enough info, it’s just easier if I do it”),  remember this:

When you reinforce the belief that only you can solve a problem—you essentially render your team incapable of completing a task without your involvement or approval. 

Do you really have time for that?

The answer is no. You don’t. You have better things to do. 

Like YOUR job. 

If your team struggles with the tasks you assign them, either adjust your responsibilities, add to their training, or find the right talent who can.

But first, do the following:

• Be honest with yourself. Check out this chart of what micromanagers really mean when they try to explain their behavior and see if any of it rings true for you.

• Set realistic expectations. Guidelines are good, but make sure you are not over-explaining how a task gets done—instead, focus on how the result should look. Let your team figure out how they’ll get there.

• Motivate for success. What’s a win? How will it be measured? Validate your team’s efforts. You can avoid the vicious cycle of “learned helplessness” when you take a step back and let them achieve success on their own merits.

• Hold everyone accountable. Keep everyone in their lanes (you included!) by creating an Accountability Chart. This is a great way to assign roles and responsibilities, with ONE owner for each major responsibility. Accountability charts help clear up confusion and highlight inefficiencies (times to delegate or elevate). EOS offers a great starting point and free tool here.  

When you micromanage, your focus becomes too narrow, and you lose sight of the bigger picture. Hire the right people. Train them well. And then trust them to do their jobs better than you can.

Because it won’t be long before they do. And when they do, it will be the best thing that has ever happened to you as a business owner. 

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Bill covers topics like this (and then some) on LinkedIn all the time—connect and join the conversation!