🎒 Microlesson

🪞 Reflect

Do you have any colleagues or supervisors that have the tendency to micromanage? Do you micromanage? How do you know?

💡 Concept

Seventy-nine percent of employees report having experienced micromanagement, 71% of those say it negatively impacted their work, and 85% reported a negative impact on morale.

Despite its negative effects on morale and productivity, micromanagement remains a pervasive issue in many workplaces. It’s often worse in remote teams, too, because of the perceived need to stay in constant communication with team members.

The first step to preventing micromanagement and its negative impact is to identify micromanagement behaviors in yourself and others. Keep in mind that you don’t have to have direct reports to be a micromanager. Anyone who collaborates with other team members can display micromanagement tendencies.

Here are some examples of micromanaging on a distributed team:

• Questioning team members’ productivity

• Constantly checking in for status and progress updates

• Scheduling daily synchronous meetings in the name of accountability

• Neglecting the project management tools that provide transparency into workflows and progress

• Failing to give clear expectations on what success looks like for a given task or project

• Monitoring online presence as an indicator of productivity

• Insisting on being involved in every decision, no matter how small

• Requiring others’ attendance at every meeting, whether or not they are actively participating

• Criticizing minor mistakes or nitpicking about details

• Refusing to delegate tasks

• Requesting to be copied or included on all communication

In next week’s microlesson, you’ll learn how to stop micromanagement in distributed teams by addressing its root causes.

🎬 Take Action

• Reflect on personal behaviors: Use the questions in this lesson to evaluate whether you might exhibit any micromanaging tendencies.

• Solicit feedback: Ask team members or colleagues for honest feedback about your working style. Encourage them to share any concerns they may have about feeling micromanaged or having insufficient autonomy in their work.

• Review communication patterns: Examine communication patterns among team members to assess the frequency of check-ins and updates.

• Evaluate decision-making: Consider how decisions are made within the team or organization—are they made unilaterally, or are other team members involved?

• Gauge workload: Ensure that every team member has a manageable workload and is given sufficient leeway to take ownership of their tasks.

✅ Check In

🧠 Keep Learning

Learn how to build trust in your distributed team with the Leadplaceless virtual leadership training program.

🎁 Learn with your team!

Refer our weekly microlessons to your team members to learn as a group! Just follow the instructions in the section below to get started.