How To Curtail Micromanaging Your Team

Chidiogo Akaelu

3 years ago

Everybody wants a breathing space at work or whatever they are doing, especially when working under a superior. People hate to be watchdogged while they carry out their respective duties. We know that people are naturally lazy and sometimes need to be supervised and their inputs tracked and managed, this is why we have supervisors and managers as positions in big companies, but the activities of these people – supervisors and managers – can be overstepping in the sense that they now hamper productivity in the team they are overseeing.

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Micromanaging is exerting excessive control over your team. It is a negative management habit whereby a manager shows lots of attention even to the most minute details at work. Micromanagement can be a result of a lack of trust in the expertise of your team members as a manager. This is the belief that if you are not around things will go off track. Micromanagement is a character flaw, it chokes your team member, delays productivity and hampers creativity. And this habit is recognized as one of the major reasons employees resign from their jobs. Maybe you are cut in this web of mismanagement of manpower at your workplace, below are some of the healthy steps that can help you curtail these management excesses. The truth is micromanagement is an addictive habit that takes time to break. But these tips below will help you improve speedily. 1: Delegate Duties Assign different roles and duties to your subordinates. Clearly define their roles for every project at hand. By relinquishing responsibility to your subordinates, you are in order words improve teamwork, boost their morale/confidence and encourage creativity.

2: Set Smart Goals

Communicate your goal and expectations to your team upfront. If you fail to do that, you will frustrate your team and set them up for failure. The clearer you make your objectives concerning a given project, the yardstick through which its success would be measured, when the work should be completed, the better your subordinates are to perform.

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3: Don’t Be A Perfectionist

Don’t be rigid in a particular way of achieving a goal, many ways are accomplishing a task. Be liberal and encourage creativity among your team members. This will conceal eye service and create a good working atmosphere for your team which increases productivity and result-oriented teamwork. Also, be open to novel ideas and evaluate new approaches to solving a problem.

4: Encourage Feedback From Your Team

Encourage your team to report back to you and also give feedback, this is will foster a free flow of communication between you and your team members. This is because there is always a disconnection between what you expect and what they are experiencing. So, giving feedback to you will better fortify the easy flow of ideas and nobody will feel watchdogged or being pestered.

5: Learn To Trust

One of the things that trigger micromanagement is a lack of trust. You don’t trust your team members, their expertise in executing a project. What you will need to do is consciously cultivate trust in them and give them the benefit of doubt.

6: Prioritise On What Matters

Focus on the big picture instead of pestering every dot detail. Communicate your expectations to your team and let them carry out the assignment. Then give them every other support they need. Micromanagement delays work, it kills team members morale, births mistrust, truncates creativity hampers productivity, causes stress, and make your team incompetent. It can even make your employees resign from their work. The tips above, when utilized, help you to improve on this bad habit of mismanagement of manpower. Featured image: Time doctor blog

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