Why Micromanagement Is Hurting You and Your Employees

Why Micromanagement Is Hurting You and Your Employees

The following is adapted from The Problem Isn’t Their Paycheck.

Have you heard yourself saying any of the following to your employees recently?

• “Did you do this today?”
• “Here’s how you have to do this.”
• “I would have done that differently.”
• “Just let me do it. Give me the mouse/keyboard/phone.”

Sound familiar? If so, you’re micromanaging, and it needs to stop. 

If you’re a business owner who micromanages, it’s limiting your employees’ freedom at work. Without freedom, employees have lower job satisfaction as well as lower productivity. Keep reading to find out how else micromanagement is harming your employees—and yourself.

How Micromanagement Hurts Your Employees

Micromanagement indicates a lack of trust in your team. You don’t believe that they are capable of completing a task on their own, so you micromanage, holding their hand throughout the task or even doing it yourself.

Many managers, employers, and small business owners (who are often one and the same) have a difficult time making the mindset shift toward trusting their employees and letting go of micromanagement. When you first started your business, you might have gotten used to doing all the work yourself and now are having a hard time passing on the reins. Or maybe you’ve been burned before by bad employees who didn’t work out. Maybe they watched the clock instead of being self-directed employees who were motivated to work hard toward a goal.

You need to trust your employees, because without trust, employees don’t feel free. When free will is removed from work, people feel trapped. Work becomes something they have to do, a punishment to be endured until they can clock out and once more reclaim their time. It’s a recipe for job dissatisfaction. Nobody likes having their boss look over their shoulder all the time.

Worse, when you micromanage, you stunt your employees’ growth. They don’t have the opportunity to show initiative and take ownership of their work. They become pencil-pushing robots instead of free-thinking, self-directed employees, which ultimately hurts you and your business.

How Micromanagement Hurts You

We all want self-directed employees, but they rarely start off self-directed from day one. They have to grow into that role because they have to learn to work within your organization and under your leadership. They need to become self-directed toward your purpose, toward your business, toward the best way to work for you.

Micromanagement, however, prevents employees from becoming self-directed. It trains your team not to perform any tasks until they receive cues from you. When you say, “Hey, do these things today,” what happens when your employees finish those things? They sit around and twiddle their thumbs and wait for you to tell them the next thing to do.

A self-directed employee, on the other hand, understands the company’s purpose and says, “I’m going to do anything and everything I can think of in my day to meet that purpose. I’m going to accomplish tasks without my boss having to tell me what to do, because I have the freedom to act on my own accord.”

The truth is that none of us truly want to micromanage our employees. It takes way too much time and energy. If I tried to micromanage each of my employees, I wouldn’t be able to get anything else done. I wouldn’t be able to spend my time on what’s most valuable. I wouldn’t be able to fulfill my role as a business owner and CEO. My freedom would be taken away too.

When you don’t trust your employees, you are stuck either doing everything yourself or micromanaging everyone around you. You’re unable to escape from the day-to-day. Your business becomes completely dependent on you, every day and every moment. Performance takes a dive as soon as you’re out of the office. That means you can’t turn your phone off. You can’t leave the office. You can’t just take a vacation.

But you know what happens when you do trust your team and when your employees do have freedom? They get things done. They perform. They do their jobs and meet your unified purpose whether you are in the office or not. My team breaks records when I’m out of the office, because they know what needs to be done and they do it, no hand-holding involved. Because I’ve learned to stop micromanaging, I’ve earned back my own freedom.

Stop Micromanaging

This is going to be hard to hear, but you need to hear it: if you don’t trust your employees, that’s not their problem; it’s your problem. Trust is not earned—it’s given; and you’re the one who needs to give that trust. If someone on your team isn’t worthy of your trust, it is again a “you” problem because you hired them.

But the good news is, you have two options: you can either start trusting your team, or if they’re not trustworthy, you can hire new employees whom you can trust. Once you begin trusting your employees, you can stop micromanaging and set your team—and yourself—free.

For more advice on micromanagement and workplace freedom, you can find The Problem Isn’t Their Paycheck on Amazon.

Grant Botma is the founder of Stewardship and the leader of its nationally ranked team of top producers. Thanks to a thriving company culture, Grant’s team has won numerous awards, including national performance rankings like “Top 1%” and “Top 100.” Grant’s leadership has also grown Stewardship to be an Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company In America. He lives in Arizona with his wife, Jodie and their three children, Cambria, Parker, and Ellenie. To learn more about Stewardship, visit moneywellrooted.com.