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As discussed last week, we are in the process of developing our own, detailed language and terminology for the coaching we offer, as well as other services. Coaching using the Targeted Performance IQ Coaching® System developed by Gary Morais and GPT3 is only one of the services we provide at AMC LLC. In addition we created content about subject involving talent development, personal development, self-improvement, and leadership. We have clients in the areas of project management, customer support services, and typical organizational development consulting. For all these aspects we want to use a common language and terminology as we grow, get more coaches and employees, and overall develop into a full service organization.
Of the new terms introduced last week, the first one we are going to delve into more deeply is Micro Management. Here is what we found in popular definition sites and reference books like Wikepedia or Webster’s (shown italic).
In business Micro-management is a management style where a manager closely observes or controls the work of their employees. As a description of this style, employees experiencing Micro-management from a manager or leader often characterize it as a negative behavior.
In contrast to giving general instructions on smaller tasks while supervising larger concerns, the micromanager monitors and assesses every step. Micromanagement is often easily recognized by employees or team members, but micromanagers rarely view themselves as such. They actually claim the need for micro-managing their people to be lack of precision, lack of skill, or lack of ability to see the bigger picture. That’s part of the reason Micro-manager have a tendency to think that the only true and right way to complete a task is when they do it themselves. Naturally they realize that they can’t do everything required, so they keep an extremely close eye on everything and require many administrative steps to insure their ability to monitor processes and developments.
Extreme cases represent dangerous management pathology. The latter is characterized by an obsessive style of management and is closely related to workplace bullies, narcissists and other management pathologies. Micromanagement may arise from internal sources, such as concern for details, incompetence or insecurity. While the main originators are internal and are related to the personality of the manager it also can be partially attributed to external pressures such as organizational culture, severe time pressure, increased performance pressure, instability of manager position, etc. This is one of the aspects where our coaching cuts in. We try to find both the external and internal motivators that lead to this behavior in an attempt to find replacement mechanisms that suit the person and the organization while reducing the need to micro-manage.It can also be seen as a tactic used by managers to eliminate unwanted employees, either by creating standards employees cannot meet leading to termination, or by creating a stressful workplace causing the employee to leave.
egardless of the motivation the effect can create resentment and damage trust. Severe forms of micromanagement usually completely eliminate trust and can provoke anti-social behavior.As you recall from last weeks post, trust and motivation play a connected role. As we postulated, the combination of micro-management and suspicion lead to fake trust and the belief of the micro-manager that he is doing everything he can to create success for the company and his employees. This fake trust can tear teams and departments apart and drive members of an organization away from a division, department or altogether leave the company. It finds its counterbalance in the combination of Motivation and Self-esteem, which leads to true trust and freedom. We will talk about these in a later post.Micromanagement can also be distinguished from the tendency of the manager to perform duties assigned to the subordinate. Benign forms arise when the manager can perform a worker's job with more efficiency. In severe forms, the manager does not have the required competencies of efficiency but still try to dictate the subordinate not only what to do but how to do a particular task. This can happen especially in environments where work is performed through the use of complex tools and machines. In those cases the employees achieve a high level of mastery in the use of the machine. The micro-manager often never used the tool or machine or had worked with much simpler systems when he was on the employee’s level. Still he/she thinks he needs to tell the employee how to do the work.It is also connected with requests for unnecessary and too detailed reports. Typical examples include but are not limited to the area of performance feedback. A micromanager tends to require constant and detailed feedback and tends to be excessively focused on procedural trivia rather than on overall performance, quality and results.Micromanagers are usually irritated when a subordinate makes decisions without consulting them, even if the decisions are totally within the subordinate's level of authority.In case you like to see what micro-management was believed to be about 75 years ago, check out this link of an old training film about micro-management. Humor is important when discussing complex topics, so have a little fun...
Http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAqWkTO5jZ0
In summary, Micro-management is an issue often kept under wraps as long as a group, team, or department reaches its goals. In our coaching and consulting we help individuals who experience these issues or demonstrate an elevated level of micro-management tendencies through exercises, sample analysis, affirmations, and other tools to turn fake trust and false beliefs of achievement into true trust and freedom.
