You want to help. You think you’re teaching, modelling, holding the bar to a particular quality, and protecting your team from mistakes. You mean well, want to help your people, and see your team and mission succeed.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of that. In fact, all of that is great! But it can go drastically wrong depending on how you approach your people and the problems they face. People learn concepts and behaviours in particular ways, and when we model certain behaviour, we can do more harm than good.
Micromanagers usually believe they’re teaching the work. Surprise, surprise: They’re not. The behaviour that consistently gets rewarded under micromanagement is checking before acting. So that’s what employees learn. Not the craft, not the correct way to go about things, and not to think for themselves.
As people, we develop our own judgements by making decisions, watching what happens, and then updating. A loop of decision, a consequence, and an update. If you have a micromanager, typically, they open that loop but refuse to close it. Your manager intervenes before the decision or its helpful feedback lands, and you, as the employee, never get to see how your own thinking would have played out. Without that feedback, your judgment, or rather your critical thinking, never gets to develop. Think of it this way: you can watch someone else fly a plane for a thousand hours, even taking direction from them on what buttons to push and which levers to pull, but you still don’t know how to fly on your own.
When an employee is interrupted by this type of micro-management too many times, something terrible happens. They stop trying to learn, and they stop trying to think critically on their own. They get into the habit of waiting and deferring, checking before acting. They’ve fallen into learned helplessness.
The micromanagers out there aren’t necessarily villains, though. I have encountered and coached many folks who have confused control with care. Honestly, for some, it can be one of the hardest areas where I’ve helped them learn and unlearn. But the important thing I want to leave them with is that the most generous thing a leader can do is protect someone’s learning loop, even when intervening would be faster. Then, help the employee dissect and understand it afterward.
A manager who lets a junior ship a slightly worse version of something and then debriefs it is teaching. They will see their team mature and their trajectory to improve. A manager who fixes everything before it goes out is performing the work in front of an audience. Their employees will learn helplessness, often stagnate, and some will get combative, freeze with indecision, or even leave. Rightfully so.
People who want to be great managers (one day, perhaps even evolving into leaders) need to stop intervening in this critical loop where employees learn and develop. And, unfortunately for many employees stuck with this type of manager, we also need to learn how to coach upward, claiming the psychological and operational safety required to fail forward and learn. A lot of managers I’ve coached have kids, so one way I get through to them is with analogies about children. If you really want a kid to learn how to ride a bike, eventually the training wheels have to come off.
The great manager asks how and why you’re doing things to be in the know, but doesn’t intervene. They ask thought-provoking questions and lead you with care in a particular direction while enabling and empowering you to get there on your own. Then, they help you understand your journey and the result, again with thought-provoking questions, and aid in seeking evidence, not with judgment. Questions asked, not corrections given. The best leaders, who mature the best teams, give their employees permission to be wrong in a recoverable way.
The best leaders, who mature the best teams, give their employees permission to be wrong in a recoverable way.
The great employee who has encountered a micro-manager points out how best they learn, and why it’s important for them to be able to try a few things and fail, what that safety opens for them. They lay out that they need the safety of not having to ask for permission and of being able to make their own decisions. They ask questions, become the trusted expert, build momentum with small decisions, and gain trust so the micromanager will let go.
“But Spencer, some people genuinely need close supervision.” Sure. This can be true for new hires, high-stakes work, or recovery from failure. I’m not saying you don’t check work. I’m saying not to substitute your judgment for theirs as a default.
“But Spencer, isn’t this just coaching?!” Coaching asks questions that help people think. Micromanaging gives decisions and/or answers that replace people’s thinking. You cannot learn judgment by being told the answer. You learn judgment by being trusted with a decision and watching what happens.
If you really want to help your people, recognize if you’re enabling their growth or inhibiting it. And if you really want to escape a micromanaging boss, be straightforward with them and make a plan to work forward incrementally. The worst thing either person can do is blame and get indignant.