image of a coffee cupThe odd quirk that seems to bedevil so many who occupy roles of responsibility for others is their overwhelming urge to tell other people what to do.  While a certain amount of “telling” is OK, particularly during crises and anything involving safety or security, for the most part, your communication efforts should focus on listening and asking. 

Starting this year, shift the focus to you and your role and your daily habits, and for everyone’s sake, quit telling people how to do their jobs. No one loves a micro-manager, and trust me, this includes those being micro-managed and those above you looking for talented leaders to promote into positions of increasing responsibility.

When You Talk, Make Certain It Counts:

Yes, you certainly owe guidance, encouragement, constructive and positive feedback and help with direction setting and development planning. You also are responsible in many instances for teaching…directly and indirectly. However, the talking stops…or at least the telling stops when it comes to people doing their daily jobs.

Change Your Thinking on the Capabilities of Your Team:

We all know that you think they won’t get it right or that your involvement will ensure optimum results.  We’ve all also heard you complain about how frustrated you are that you have to be involved with every little detail and how little time you have for other elements of your job.

Overheard:

Nothing gets done right if I’m not involved.

I can’t trust them to do the work without checking the quality.

Or my (least) favorite:

If my team substituted brains for gunpowder, they wouldn’t have a firecracker between them.

While your own phrases might be different (and much softer), if the sentiments about your team are similar, it’s time to take a close look in the mirror and then to shift the focus of your micro-managing to the person staring back at you. (Of course, if the sentiments are genuine, you need a new team, and no amount of micro-managing the wrong people will solve the problem.)

Nine Ideas for Letting Go to Promote Better Results:

1. Provide direction not instructions. There’s a profound difference.

2. Ask for input on performance targets and work to understand and resolve differences between your views and theirs.

3. Deliberately reduce your direct contact time with your team members. Yes, call this MBNWASM (Management by Not Walking Around So Much.) Give people some room. Everyone will benefit.

4. Recognize that you’ve conditioned everyone to wait for your commands, and that you will need to encourage them to take initiative on their own. This takes some time to sink in for people who have been on auto-pilot for a long time.

5. When the inevitable happens and someone mucks up, count to 10,000 and then have the following discussion: “What did you learn?”  “How will you improve next time?” And then say, “Good, go do it.” And shut up.

6. During trouble-shooting situations, talk last. Ask questions, solicit input and if required, offer ideas, but don’t strong-arm people into doing it your way.

7. Start asking people what they need from you in terms of support and resources to help them execute their jobs. And then do something with the input!

8. Try rotating responsibility between team members for elements of operations and quality meetings. You can approve the agenda, but teach others how to lead sessions like this and watch the value of the events go up tremendously.

9. Spend more time figuring out how to help your boss. Seriously.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Just like “telling ain’t teaching,” it’s not managing either. Your primary job is to develop others capable of free thought and independent action in pursuit of supporting firm/team goals. While you might perceive they’re not up to it, more often than not, it’s you that’s the problem. Starting this year, fix the problem!

Note: because most chronic micro-managers spend little time reading about professional development, this post might make a nice print-out and leave-behind! I’ll let you decide whether it’s an anonymous leave-behind. 

Art Petty is a developer of leaders and a strategy consultant. Art frequently speaks on leadership and management, and his work is reflected in two books (Practical Lessons in Leadership and Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development) and over 1-million words published at The Management Excellence blog. You can reach Art via e-mail to learn more about his leadership development, speaking and management consulting services.