How Micromanagement Can Kill Empowerment
Today I got trolled by the gods.
It happened earlier today on mid-day call when a new hire, in just her 5th week, made her global debut leading a call connecting more than 80 purpose-driven employees who zoomed together from across 15 time zones to join a global sustainability movement she is catalyzing.
In the preceding hours, while on calls of my own, I fiddled with her Google Slides. A bit of formatting here. A word choice there. It’s a bad habit, that I try to justify with an impotent “it’s how I learn and engage” excuse. Still, I know better. From much earlier days I’d experienced how demoralizing it was to work under a, gasp, micromanager.
Exactly. Don’t be that guy.
Still, I was being good. I tampered only with the sloppiest of oversights.
Like the ever returning formatting thing on the agenda slide!
I kept adding a space to make sure the right column stayed lined up. Three times I’d made the change. Three times it had reverted.
Cat and mouse. This game went on for multiple rounds during the lead up to the call.
To be certain, my new colleague is a total pro in her field, and had rehearsed her timings, so I knew my role was merely to tee her up and make sure she knew I had her back. I would intervene only when needed.
So, imagine my shock when she began her presentation by showing off the agenda:
Insert horror face emoji here.
It was about perspective and trust (and my lack of it). From her side, all she could see was her new boss repeatedly destroying her tidy alignment, with his inexplicable fiddling:
After the third time being “corrected,” she chose not to die on that hill, and accepted whatever obscure and awkward formatting preference her boss might have for the final agendum. Dunno… maybe some strange out-of-date GenX thing like wanting two spaces between sentences?
Thank goodness she was too busy conducting the call to notice me speed through feeling shocked then embarrassed then horrified and ending with a smirk.
But, of course. I’d been trolled by the gods.
It was a sign and a reminder about the razor’s edge between empowerment and control.
The micromanagers I’ve known have justified their behavior by identifying as hard drivers with high standards. That backfires though, and instead causes standards to slip. When the boss consistently feels the need to make the final polish, all it does is signal to the collaborator to not bother wasting time on the last 10% of the job. Why bother? It will get changed anyway. In bringing a “good enough” version that is 90% done, the vicious cycle begins. The boss gains conviction in their need to intervene, and the cycle continues.
I’ve been on both sides of this one in my years. It’s a trap to avoid. So, I give thanks today, to the troll for the reminder.
