I'm sitting with a friend at a coffee shop, working on our various projects. He told me a story about how his boss handles team leading and project management. -VERY "hands on" to the point of being a "micromanager." The irony is that his boss definitely seems to be under the impression that he is not. In fact, according to my friend his first interaction with his boss he said, "I'm not a micromanager, you can do things your way." -Doesn't turn out to be true.
Now, my director on the other hand will often apologize to me and say things like, "look I know that I have a tendency to micromanage...." -when in reality the guy is extremely hands off. In fact, sometimes I wished he took a more active role in my day to day.
So the realization is that in the case of self-declarations of micromanagement tendencies, the opposite is likely to be true.
For those of you with leaders, managers, directors, VP's, or Presidents you work for or have worked for in the past, do you find this rings true?
Are you micro-managed?
I have been both micromanaged and at times, been a micromanager. This is a huge source of organizational conflict and one of the approaches used to address conflicts arising from interactions between all levels of leadership is called resonant leadership. A lot of conflict engagement/management/resolution skills seem like "feel good" practices, especially because they tend to consider the "emotional side" of things. The reality of it is that people have emotions that are often ignored in favor of efficiency or getting the job done and when people feel misunderstood or that they are being treated as a cog in the machine, conflicts arise (imagine that). Anyway, successful management is a collaboration where those being managed are active in managing themselves and work with their nominal manager to make sure that everything runs smoothly. From what I've learned and observed so far, many organizations that bring organizational leadership/conflict skills consultants into the mix tend to want someone with Authority to fix everything, as if leadership is not at all a contributor to the problems they are having, when most often the leadership is a part of the problem. Resonant leadership in a nutshell, is the idea that those that are being led take cues from the leader. If the leader is active and engaged, those being led "have permission" to be active and engaged. If the leader is distant and uninterested, that gives others license to do the same. For example, I once had a manager who didn't introduce herself to us for two whole weeks and then jumped in, guns blazing telling us How Things Were Going To Be. Our response? "Who the fuck are you and why the fuck are you bothering us with this authoritarian bullshit?" By the end of that quarter, many of us had decided to move on. An extreme point of view was introduced to what was otherwise a very profitable enterprise and so we decided that extreme measures should be taken. Once that manager was in place, it was also decided that we should focus on profits and bringing in as much business as we could at the cost of time to create quality lessons and run quality classes. So, we began to work the students hard to ensure that they passed tests and the students came to resent us in the way that we resented our new manager and thus, many of us decided that that particular school was no longer for us. Good management, like a good conversation means that each side gets a chance to put something out there and each side gets a chance to receive constructive feedback. It's a lot of work.
A question of my own if I may, to build on what you're saying: When I'm in a leadership position I've had the tendency to micromanage, resulting in resentment from my group. Then I've let them take their own route and they've fucked the job up horribly. I don't actually enjoy telling people "I told you so," but isn't there a sort of understanding to be had when the leader says he knows what he's doing? Or is it truly better to compromise the success of your project so that every member feels included? I'm not trying to justify my micromanaging, just offering that scenario as an example.
I think the key to any successful manager is to manage to the individual and not the group. Even if it is a group project comprised of only 2 people. Different people have different needs, different motivating factors etc. Some people may require more hand-holding and may even appreciate it. But when you hold everyones hand by default, you are asking for resentment. Any team is comprised of individuals and every good coach knows this and approaches it thusly. Celebrate your successes together and manage your challenges on an individual basis. Good things will happen.
I would slightly amend that to say that a successful manager manages results, not people. A leader is responsible for making sure standards and deadlines are met. S/he accomplishes this by ensuring communication is happening, progress is occurring at an acceptable pace, and obstacles/conflicts are dealt with. Otherwise, the individual or group should be left to accomplish things as they see fit.
The best leaders I have had have also been "coaches" people that see my strengths and leave them be but find an area where I can improve and help me do so. I have been fortunate to have several leaders like this during my career.
Yeah, me too. I once had a leader call a multi-thousand-dollar error on my part "an educational investment." He then explained to me what I should've done differently and I never heard anything else about it. It was awesome because A) I knew how to avoid that mistake in the future (and I guarantee you I never made that mistake again) and B) I felt a lot more confident in my job and my leadership, and confidence plus security kind of naturally results in better work overall. It was a great way to handle it.
Aha, I might've been neglecting the individuals' contributions/potential in the group for the total product. I appreciate the tip.But when you hold everyones hand by default, you are asking for resentment.
You also have no idea what the "micromanaging" was. Nor do you know how long the person had been at the site/job. Trust is a thing, and it's perfectly normal for a leader to watch more closely until the leader starts trusting them. That isn't anything negative against either individual, it's just how life works. It goes both ways too, if the individual trusts that the leader isn't doing it to be a jackass, they're less likely to get offended by it.
Hmm. Not really. First coop was extremely laid back. Second my boss was too self absorbed trying to move up the career ladder to notice, and this one is fairly laid back. I was micromanaged once in the radio station, two general managers ago, but I eventually told him to "fuck off" and then he left me alone because he somehow respected that. When i manage people I give them a task with a bit of initial guidance and tell them to get back to me when it's done. I'm a pretty hands off manager. Bigger projects I'll check up on, but only to see if help is needed or if anything has gone wrong. Managing people is way more fun than being managed.
The person managing our team is actually hands-off so long as you complete your projects on time and remain transparent about where you are during the process. It's pretty great really.
At one job I had to enter everything I was doing in 15 minute increments into an excel spreadsheet (with the rest of my teammates). We also used software that could track our productivity while we were using it (about half the time) so you bet your self-report would be compared to the software. That came down from up above, it wasn't my managers fault, but that was micromanagement. Your times weren't publicly available so this wasn't some weird set of time metrics to meet or exceed. This information was just gathered - and used somehow, I guess, but the time tracking initiative began a few months before I found a new job and quit. There was no end to it in sight when I left. In theory the department was understaffed and they were collecting this information to justify hiring new staff but it smelled like shit to me. Overtime was never authorized at this job, if you were understaffed wouldn't you offer OT before looking into hiring additional staff? Especially if deadlines weren't getting met?
This kind of reversed self-characterisation seems common (cf. Dunning-Kruger effect; research on self-evaluation of ability to multitask vs. actual performance; etc). I wonder if it stems largely from a tendency to notice exceptional events disproportionally from the typical and then weigh them accordingly.