Katie Anderson is an internationally recognized leadership consultant, speaker, and award-winning author. KBJAnderson.com
Have you ever had a manager who was constantly checking in on you, ready to criticize or challenge anything you did? Or one who—even before you had a chance to think—would tell you exactly what to do or even take over what they had assigned to you?
I’ve yet to meet someone who hasn’t had an experience with a micromanager. They leave an impression, but not a positive one. If you’ve experienced a micromanager, you probably lost your motivation and inspiration to contribute and be engaged.
Micromanaging is a quick way to lose one of the most fundamental factors for team success—trust. In moments of fear and uncertainty, people tend to seek ways to control what they can. However, this reaction can have the opposite impact from what’s intended. Instead of moving a project forward, team enthusiasm wanes and progress stalls. And by taking on the “doing” of the project, a micromanager takes over the responsibility they had assigned to someone else, further eroding trust.
Since the pandemic, managers and employees alike have adjusted to new ways of doing business, including adopting flexible work schedules. In some instances, the adjustment has prompted increased surveillance of their employees, to a degree that some would call micromanagement. It’s prompted many employees to report feeling distrusted and disempowered.
Meanwhile, managers and leadership argue that due to varied work environments, including work-from-home options, it’s more difficult to track the metrics and performance of their employees, leading to frustration and disempowerment as they feel they have no other choice but to watch every step their team makes.
Yet leadership doesn’t have to be a win-lose scenario. In fact, everyone can win because there’s a better way. It involves trust and a connection between leaders and team members. The rewards are astronomical, breeding loyalty within employees and a healthier atmosphere at work and helping to develop stronger leaders within the organization.
It’s called macromanagement.
Whereas micromanagement erodes relationships between managers and employees, macromanagement fosters trust. It allows you to set the direction for your team and offers them the freedom and ability to design their own paths for getting to the final destination.
A macromanager establishes the big-picture goals their team needs to accomplish and provides support without taking over responsibility for the “doing.” These leaders strike the balance between setting a clear direction for team members and providing a support system to remove barriers and create a process to make the status of progress visible. By being intentional about what needs to be accomplished and allowing team members the space to figure out how to accomplish it, macromanagers build trust, capability and confidence in their team—and ultimately more capability for achieving the new goals and challenges that emerge.
A macromanager nurtures team members throughout the process rather than checking in on them every step of the way. It’s about building trust, both in your team to get the work completed and for the manager, who believes that if there is a question or hurdle that’s difficult, team members will come forward for guidance.
The result? Your team will be stronger, creative solutions will flourish and you will find that you have more time to focus on the bigger picture.
3 Tips To Lead From A Macro Level
1. Connect the macro with the micro.
Rather than focusing on the minutiae and checking in obsessively to ensure your team is minding every last detail, a macromanager focuses on understanding the bigger picture of the organization and articulating how their team’s efforts align with these priorities. Focus on the vital must-dos so that your team is certain to be going in the right direction, and communicate those effectively with your team. Help your team understand how their contributions support the purpose of the organization, to create a sense of “why” behind their work.
2. Be proactive and available.
Macromanagers make the time to connect with their employees to provide the support and resources necessary to be successful. This includes giving space for learning and experimentation. Macromanagers not only check on project status but also seek to check in with how each team member is doing. These leaders are available to listen, to support or to assist when needed and to celebrate an employee’s successes when they’ve excelled.
When you set aside time to regularly check in with your team, they become comfortable in reaching out to you, allowing them a level of proactivity in their schedules.
3. Create processes and systems to make work visible.
To be effective in knowing if work is making progress toward the big-picture goals, macromanagers also need to have visibility regarding work status.
It’s crucial to have an effective process so that you can be sure a project is on or off track, especially when it becomes challenging to “see” what your team is working on. Examples include holding routine huddles at the start of the day or implementing electronic or physical “visibility boards” to track the status of work.
When you set up systems to make work visible and routines for your team to be able to escalate issues or ask for guidance when needed, you’ll find that you have better insight into the status of each project and your team members’ places in the system. Collaborating with your team to collectively create systems and routines that you can put into place to help prevent micromanaging can be a fantastic method to build further trust and to solidify the team’s sense of purpose.
Macromanagers achieve more by doing less.
Micromanagement doesn’t usually increase productivity, outcomes or employee engagement. It often does quite the opposite. When you consider the negative impact micromanagement has on retention and morale, embrace a new way of leading—now.
Macromanagers encourage collaboration, innovation and trust, which leads to improved productivity and higher levels of employee engagement. In the race to cultivate a high-performing team, the benefits of macromanagement clearly win every time.
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