I was reading a recent web article by an executive who was extolling the virtues of what he called “micromanagement.” (??!!) As I read further, I realized he was (in my opinion) misusing the term. And I think his thoughts exemplify the widespread confusion over the concept of management—especially in the area of PERFORMANCE management.
I have often shared in person (in my training seminars and coaching sessions) and in print (in my training manuals and blogposts) this simple definition of what it means to supervise and manage people:
Your #1 Job as a Boss is to Help Your People Succeed
This simple principle encompasses the entire universe of responsibilities incumbent on a manager—including the most important responsibility to monitor the performance of subordinates—to determine if an individual employee is failing, and requires the boss to intervene and address the need!
Here’s the challenge for managers and supervisors:
- Too little intervention can lead to continued failure.
- Too much can lead to the loss of employee engagement and motivation.
The Bane of Competent Employees
Here’s the simple truth: Employees hate to be over-managed. According to a 2014 Accountemps survey, a majority of workers polled said they have firsthand experience with an overbearing boss. Fifty-nine percent of employees interviewed reported working for a micromanager at some point in their careers. The survey also found the constant scrutiny has a negative impact on most workers. Of those who felt they’d been micromanaged, 68 percent said it decreased their morale and 55 percent said it hurt their productivity.
How does a manager strike the right balance???
It helps to understand the difference between OVER-managing and MICRO-managing. Over the years, I have made a distinction between these. In this post, I identified three reasons why leaders manage their people too closely and intrusively: 8 Management Archetypes – The Implementer and The Micro-Manager | The Boss Doctor
OVER-managing occurs when a manager has one of two problems:
- They don’t trust their employees to do a good job
- They have perfectionistic tendencies and have difficulty accepting outcomes different than what they, themselves would produce
The over-managing boss ends up intruding in the work of the employee unnecessarily—over-ruling the worker’s decisions; second-guessing their opinions; and overturning the activities, decisions, and efforts of a subordinate ESPECIALLY without any accompanying coaching, training, or advising to help the worker improve.
MICRO-managing occurs when a worker steps into a leadership role and faces the challenge of embracing management functions and letting go of the type of tasks they performed as a “contributor.” This phenomenon was described in the book, Leadership Pipeline (by Ram Charan and others). The authors saw micromanagement happening when newly-promoted managers simply could not let go of the work they performed before promotion – work that their teams were tasked to perform. The new managers could not understand or embrace the difference between PERFORMING the work and managing PEOPLE who were performing the work.
I described this in a previous blog, where I presented insights from GE and their leadership development initiatives. You can read it here: Google’s Management Pitfalls – #3 | The Boss Doctor
MICRO-managing pushes the manager to compete with their staff over the very assignments they have given their employees. They end up doing the same things that OVER-managing bosses do, but for different reasons…reasons that require a different solution.
Up Close and Personal
Let me share an example that will help to put this in perspective for you…
In one of my training seminars I had a student who was a new manager only 6 months into his new leadership role. I asked him,
“What kind of team do you manage?”
“I manage a team of computer programmers,” he replied.
I responded, “Let me guess… you were the best programmer on the team and so higher-ups promoted you to lead the team.”
“Well… yeah,” he blushed.
I asked him, “What is the biggest challenge you face in your new position?”
He said, “When I have one of my team members come to me with a computer programming problem, my biggest temptation is to tell them, ‘Get out of the chair’ and sit down and solve the problem myself. I have learned that my job is to help THEM learn how to solve computer programming problems.”
I smiled and told him, “You are wise, oh Grasshopper!”
Great…but what do you do when there IS a problem???
The job of a manager is to help their team members succeed in their work, NOT DO THEIR WORK FOR THEM. When a team member is not performing, their manager may have to manage them more closely and more directly. That may require the manager to simply observe the team member while they do their work, to determine exactly why they are failing.
- Are they doing the procedures incorrectly?
- Are they doing their work inefficiently?
- Are they lacking effective work habits?
- Are they wasting time or energy?
Up Close and Personal
During one of my management seminars, a student cornered me during a break to confront me with one of his employee problems. He started the conversation with a point-blank question:
“What do I do about an employee who is not doing their job?”
I asked him for more details—“What exactly are they not doing?” He explained,
“I supervise a team that loads sand into trucks. They work eight-hour shifts. This one employee only loads HALF the number of truckloads that each of the rest of the team loads. I asked him what the problem was, and he told me he was working as fast as he could.”
I probed the supervisor for more information. “Does he load sand half as fast as the rest of the team, or does he load sand just as fast as everyone else, but he takes a little smoke break between each load?”
“I don’t know,” the supervisor replied, “I’d have to watch him all day to find out.”
“Well, maybe you should do that,” I recommended.
“I can’t do that,” he said, “I don’t have time to watch every team member do their job all day—I have other things I need to do.”
I pressed him on this issue. I asked him, “Do you have to watch EVERY team member, or JUST THIS ONE TEAM MEMBER?”
“I guess just this one team member,” he glumly admitted.
I have heard all of the objections to this approach:
- Managers who say, “That sounds like baby-sitting to me.”
- Overworked supervisors who say “I don’t have time for that.”
- Employees who say, “That’s harassment.”
- Union members who say, “I’m in the union… you can’t do that.”
My response is always the same: “This is not MICRO-management… it is MANAGEMENT.”
Here is the simple truth: If you have an employee who is underperforming, it is your job as a manager to determine the source of the problem, and to do what is necessary to help your employee resolve the problem and succeed!
- If that means you must sit beside your employee and observe their work – so be it!
- If that means you need to check in with your employee and evaluate their progress with an assignment – so be it!
- If that means, in spite of all your efforts to help them, they are unable to perform successfully and must be terminated – so be it!
If you need help understanding how to manage more strategically and address underperformance more effectively, CALL US – we can help! We can give you the tools you need to help your team members perform and to help you manage them in a way that is positive; affirming; realistic; and effective!
Until next time… Yours for better leaders and better organizations,
Dr. Jim Dyke – “The Boss Doctor” ™ helping you to BE a better boss and to HAVE a better boss!
