Issue 30 - Overcoming the Need to Micromanage

"The best leaders are those most interested in surrounding themselves with assistants and associates smarter than they are. They are frank in admitting this and are willing to pay for such talents."

- Antoinette Brown Blackwell, the first woman ordained as a minister in the United States

Welcome to our 30th issue!! The next series in Skip-Level Strategies will focus on mistakes people make. These are mistakes that cost them leadership effectiveness, opportunities, and peace of mind.

Let’s start with micromanaging. Micromanaging stems from thinking that close supervision ensures tasks are done correctly and on time. Problem is, this approach backfires, leading to decreased team resentment, stifled innovation, and burnout for the leader.

Here’s What It Looks Like:

• Constantly Checking In: You might be anxious about how things are going to turn out and believe that if you stay closely involved, you'll increase the likelihood of success. Maybe you don't trust your team's ability to deliver without you. You think if they get it wrong it will make you look bad. 

• Overloading Your Team with Details: You might feel compelled to involve yourself in every minor detail, and literally remove any autonomy or decision-making from the process because you believe no one else can do it as well as you can. 

• Setting Unrealistic Expectations: You set high, often unrealistic, expectations because you want to push your team to achieve more. Unfortunately, this is often to prove your own competence vs to lead them. You could be under external pressure or you just feel you need to prove yourself  as a leader. Problem is, this creates a stressful environment where your team feels overwhelmed and like they can’t win, leading to more mistakes and lower productivity. It's a lose-lose.

What You Should Be Doing Instead:

Learn to Delegate Effectively

Delegation, or passing work onto your team by investing time up front to set clear expectations and demonstrate what quality looks like and then trusting your team's expertise to make it work, is a critical leadership competency. These are the steps for effective delegation that I recommend to the leaders I work with. It's well worth the investment!

1. Assess: Assess the task to ensure it's suitable for delegation. Consider factors like complexity, urgency, and the skills of your team members. If you don't know how to do it yourself and as a result don't know how to provide effective delegation or feedback, reconsider delegating this task until you have clarity around what you actually need. 

2. Assign: Select the most suitable team member for the task based on their skills, knowledge, availability, and when possible, their interests. Match the task to the individual’s strengths unless you want to make it more of a stretch, in which case you may need to do more heavy lifting. If you're willing to provide the support, it can be a great development opportunity for your team members. 

3. Accountability: Clearly communicate expectations, deadlines, and desired outcomes. I can't stress enough the importance of being clear about what success looks like.  Once you've done that, have them explain to you in their own words what success looks like. This step of having them paint their picture of success will highlight any missed expectations or gaps in understanding. Encourage questions,  especially up front, to ensure successful completion of the delegated task.

4. Feedback + Correction: 🛑This is where many leaders drop the ball. The process is incomplete and ineffective if you skip the feedback and correction step. This is where you provide detailed and specific constructive feedback on the completed task. Ideally, sit side by side with them and walk them through your thinking and rationale. This will not only make their next attempt more successful, but start to up-level the quality of their decision-making and understanding of your priorities. Be sure you're also calling out what they did well, since you want to be sure you get more of that from them in the future. This step is crucial for reinforcing positive behavior and encouraging continuous growth and development.

5. Empower +  Self-Check:  When it's time for the team member perform the task again, ask them to review the task through your lens. What would you say? What additions or changes would you make and what questions would you ask? To ensure there's time for this, I recommend giving them a due date BEFORE you need the deliverable or task completed so they have time for the self-check. You'll be amazed at the improvements they make when they're empowered and invited to revisit their own work through your lens!

Clear delegation and empowering team members leads to better outcomes and growth for everyone involved.

Why this matters:

Micromanagers don’t get promoted and they miss opportunities to lead. If you’re doing their job, you’re not doing yours. You will never be seen as a skip-level leader if you can’t get out of the weeds your team should be adept at handling. If you are micromanaging, you’re not effectively leading your team.

If you feel called out, that’s perfect. Awareness comes before action. ;)

I help mid- and senior- level leaders break free from the cycle of micromanagement by helping them delegate effectively and redirect their time and energy to high ROI activities that raise up their teams and establish them as influential leaders.

Working together you'll learn to assess your environment, establish priorities that your organization cares about, and communicate at a level that establishes you as someone who "gets it". Schedule a consultation to discuss how we can tailor these strategies to your unique leadership style and team dynamics. Your journey to becoming a more effective leader starts with one conversation.

Next week's preview

In our next issue, we’ll dive into a costly mistake that 86% of professionals make, it's one that leads senior leaders to say "they're not management material". Until then, how can you raise your sights and empower your team to succeed?

Go out there and lead,

Asia