This is an interesting and pertinent topic to me, as many of my clients – some aware, some not – suffer from
the micro-managing malady. Are you micro-managing??
It’s been my experience that micro-managers do so from perceived need. At least in their minds, they feel they have a need for acute attention to detail in one or more functions, or with one or more (or all) members of their staffs.
From my experience, the underlying reasons driving this perceived need come from
real or perceived lack of competency of employee(s)
real or perceived lack of trust, and/or
an overdeveloped personal ego/sense of self-worth.
Realize that most people want to achieve the same results with fewer efforts, and micro-managing takes more effort, not less. The dangers to me are straightforward: in times of economic scrutiny, we need employees to be thinking more, not less.
So, how can we tell if we’ve crossed that line into micro-managing? What do we look for, and what can we do? Some indicators (and suggestions):
You frequently get questions about problems without recommended solutions. Employees–even really good ones–tire of doing the legwork for a micro-manager, so will simply ask questions instead of problem-solving. “What do you want me to do?” is a typical question, and they are essentially absolving themselves of all ownership and accountability. You decide, you own. They screw it up, you own it.
You regularly ask successful employees for status updates. Stop it. They didn’t get there by being an idiot, and you frustrating them isn’t helping. Set priorities and deadlines, and then allow employees room to do as you asked. Status updates, particularly those without major project milestones, are simply a display of distrust.
You’re questioning others’ good decisions. Usually because you would have “done it differently,” or are uncomfortable you weren’t involved in the decision. How about just saying “Good work, thanks…?” Learn to shut up; diarrhea of the mouth is a career limiter anyway…
Eradicating micro-managing is the responsibility of both parties–the staffer being micro-managed, and the manager “doing” the micro-managing.
In my upcoming (tomorrow) newsletter, “At C-Level,” I address this topic in some detail. I’d like to cover some additional points, and since this is my forum, I figured I’d just use this… From leadership and performance perspectives, mediocre performance — particularly among managers or key positions — is certainly a critical situation.
There are three real problems with accepting mediocrity:
First, it slows organizational performance. We know that intuitively, though we frequently feel we can “get past that.” We make processes, even hire people, based on some mediocre log-jam that we seem to accept for no rational reason.
Second, mediocrity breeds mediocrity. In other words, if the prevailing culture accepts substandard efforts (in fact, REWARDS those efforts), then those efforts will continue. A basic tenet of compensation: “That which is rewarded is repeated.” In other words, if bad things don’t come to bad people, you can bet their steadily value-sucking performance will continue.
And third, we cannot even KNOW our capabilities or potential when mediocrity is pervasive in the organization. What we view as a challenge – a ‘stretch goal” – may be child’s play for a high-performing organization, yet we’ve accepted that degree of difficulty as a DIRECT result of our culture of marginal performance. Shame on us — we don’t even have a full grasp of where we could be or how high we could go, merely because we allow mediocrity to add weight to performance scales.
Additionally, mediocrity points to two obvious shortcomings with us in senior leadership:
First, the organization cannot be performing at a significant level with mediocre performers. The financial and productive results, then, are obviously less than the potential. Given today’s scarcity of resources, shame on the organization’s leaders for wasting them this way.
More importantly, the leadership team has proven unable or unwilling to manage performance correctly and effectively for the organization to truly realize its success. We have to ask ourselves, if some members of the leadership team are incapable of eradicating pervasively lackluster performance, what else are they “not” doing? What other gaps do we have, that we may not even realize? How much money has flown through the door unchecked?
Mediocrity, either in terms of absolute performance or at least acquiescence/acceptance, begins at the top.
To borrow from some other cause’s tagline: We can eradicate mediocrity in our lifetimes.
I’ve never seen an annual performance evaluation that was worth half the time it took to fill it out. That’s especially true when it comes to evaluating the leaders in our organizations. Have you ever wondered why we even do them?
When we don’t assess a leader’s leadership, we continue to promote weak leaders that are doing more harm to our people and organizations than good. The evaluation is like a sheep in wolf’s clothing: weak and pretending to be something it’s not.
Most companies have an evaluation system to justify the subjective decisions the boss is going to make in the first place. HR may not like that statement, but damned near everything about an evaluation is subjective. What we measure is subjective, how we measure it is subjective, and how we weight that measure is subjective. And then we pretend to make turn it into something objective by assigning a number to it.
Then we use it, not for developmental purposes, but to justify a salary and an end-of-year bonus. We kid ourselves into thinking it’s meaningful for the receiver when it’s anything but.
Except for the money it represents.
I only had to suffer through 27 of those evaluations in my Air Force career (along with another dozen “training reports,” equally as bogus), and not one of them made a bit of difference in my progression up the leadership ladder. And none of them gave me a single developmental goal for the coming year, and none told the whole truth about what an annoying SOB I was (they used words like tenacious). Most just said I didn’t get the soles of my boots wet when I walked on water.
Okay, that last part was because I wrote so many of them myself.
We all get asked for our self-assessment in preparation for our annual feedback session, so we provide the inputs in a format that exactly fits the form the boss has to fill out. Seems like a no-brainer. I once got a boss at the Pentagon to sign off on a bottom line that said, “This guy’s so good I should be working for him.” His boss gave it serious consideration.
Why can’t we just use the evaluation for what it is and grade what’s important for leaders in the first place… leadership?
Sure, there are areas we want a leader to be successful in like financial success, goal achievement, innovation, internal and external processes, etc., but where and how does a leader’s leadership get evaluated so that developmental feedback can be part of that dreaded annual meeting? Stop for a minute and consider your own process to see if you can find a real leadership measurement in the results.
Do we just give leaders credit for the successes of their teams? Probably. That’s how the system works… at least
that’s how I’ve always seen it done. And regardless of the number scale we use, there are only two possible outcomes: meets expectations or doesn’t.
The system won’t get better until we as the leaders’ evaluators are more involved (and I don’t mean in a micromanagement sense) in learning how a leader’s day-to-day behavior and performance affect the team’s performance. And how, leaders of leaders, do we do that?
By talking to people, that’s how.
I’m not suggesting a complicated and time-consuming method for collecting subjective “data” about the leader. I’m suggesting that we have a few 15-minute conversations with some of the people being led. We’ve written about Stop-Start-Continue before, and that’s a good method, but any way we can discern how their leadership behaviors – trust, ethics, integrity, communication, decision-making, inspiring others, etc. – are shaping their team and its success is better than what we’re doing now.
If we want to help a leader develop, we have to give him or her meaningful feedback about their performance as a leader. Sound pretty basic, doesn’t it?
I propose a leadership evaluation form that has two parts: meets or doesn’t meet expectations and developmental feedback. Tell him or her what behaviors they’re doing well and what behaviors could use some improvement. (And maybe set some leadership developmental goals for the coming year?) That would certainly be more useful that the way we do it now.
That idea will never make it past HR, but it’s how we should help leaders lead and, in turn, help our organizations succeed.
Healthy conflict: Good. Unhealthy conflict: Bad.There endeth the first lesson…
The key, of course, is knowing the difference between the two.
I frequently say that when reasonably intelligent, well-intentioned people disagree, the organization is better served.
By reasonably intelligent, I don’t mean an IQ number — just that the person communicating has enough mental snap to understand and discuss the issues at hand. And by well-intentioned, I’m simply referring to those without some boneheaded personal agenda.
The latter, as you’ve likely surmised, is the tough one.
So, we’re working on a complex project with a client. Opinions are buzzing around like mosquitoes during an August Houston evening. We’re cussing, discussing, arguing, persuading, etc. Generally a good time being had by all… and then it happens:
Unhealthy conflict rears its ugly head.
How do we know? Simple… conflict bridges from healthy to unhealthy when those involved in a difference are no longer willing or able to consider others’ views and alternatives, and thereby set up a win-lose confrontation. Enter emotion, stage right.
No longer willing or able to consider others’ views and alternatives. Even if baked in truth, simmered in fact, and stewed in verifiable data. In other words, we’ve begun using emotions alone to decide the fate of the discussion. Logic has left the building…
You know how you can tell? You hear phrases like, “Yea, well, I just don’t agree…” or “I hear you, I just believe you’re wrong (or whatever emotional outcome is desired).” These, and phrases/words like them, mean we’ve entered the unhealthy zone of conflict, and we’ve got to find some ways to get back to healthy conflict. For some methods and tools, see my BrazenLeader blog post, same subject.
So, who cares? Why bother? What does it matter? Why should we spend one whit of effort on addressing unhealthy conflict? Well, besides the fact I just successfully used “whit” in a sentence (my grandmother would be proud), there are three significant reasons we should be concerned about leadership and healthy conflict in an organization:
Most conflict is born of miscommunications. That’s right — the vast majority of conflict we see and enjoy are driven by communications missteps, rather than an argument of facts.
That’s why the “Logic has left the building…” comment above. Factual arguments seldom lead to unhealthy conflict. Disagreements, yes. Arguments, maybe. Near-violent discussions, sometimes. But unhealthy conflict? Rarely, since the very basis of unhealthy conflict is an emotional attachment to a position. That attachment was probably solidified when someone challenged the position with opinion, not fact.
Understanding needs versus wants is the key to resolution. Most of the time, conflicts occur when we focus on our wants instead of our actual needs. If both parties (or however many are involved) would instead determine and focus on their needs, we could make immediate headway.
“I need all deliveries to be on time” is likely a want. “It’s important that deliveries be made with enough time for me to inventory and prepare the parts for installation — about 45 minutes — prior to forwarding to manufacturing” is an underlying need that drives more timely deliveries. “On time” is a performance standard that doesn’t necessarily represent a factual need — a want. “In time to inventory…” is a need based on demonstrable fact. See the difference?
Unresolved conflicts degrade trust. Always.
Sometimes we “get over” a conflict, meaning that we force civility, feign acceptance, and disguise acquiescence as agreement. But the conflict, yet unresolved, still exists. And as long as it exists between people, the level of trust will decline. Since trust is the very currency of leadership, and since enhanced levels of trust allow and encourage discretionary effort, these unresolved conflicts are damaging — to both the leader involved as well as the organization as whole.
When you see a conflict go to the dark side — unhealthy conflict — recognize it for what it is, and address as soon as humanly possible.
You’ll be better for it, as will others.
Exemplary efforts are what we do, as leaders. Critical here when dealing with unhealthy conflict.
Disclaimer: The identities of the characters in the story below have been changed to protect the innocent from possible repercussions by her moronic boss(es).
The military has an acronym for almost everything… and for the rest, it has initialisms. Today’s acronym is BLUF (pronounced bluff) – Bottom Line Up Front. Often in military briefings, you give the boss the BLUF, so they don’t have to pay attention to the rest of what you say.
Today’s BLUF is: You don’t have to spend money to piss people off; weak leaders can do it for free.
When I was talking to someone I really care about (she’s the innocent I mentioned earlier), she told me about a token of appreciation she’d received at work that day. I asked her if everyone received the same token and if it made her feel appreciated.
Her answer was not surprising: Yes and no, respectively.
The token was, incredibly, a pair of socks with the company logo on them. Maybe not incredible to you, but I was certainly incredulous. I couldn’t help but share my initial impression of the token:
“Who the hell thought this was a good idea?”
I guess as God rains on the good and evil alike, so the boss gave socks to the high performers and the slackers alike. Heavy sigh.
Of the people I shared my initial impression with, only my friends in Corporate America agreed with me. Those in local government positions scolded me and told me it was the thought that counted, while those in federal government service made it clear they didn’t have the budget for tokens of appreciation. Why was I not surprised (again)?
Somewhere there was a chain of events that led enough people in this organization to convince the Emperor he would look splendid in a company logo-emblazoned pair of socks. And then they began to believe that after 18 months of working in the h—–care industry during a global pandemic, their employees deserved a pair of socks and would appreciate them because the Emperor already had a pair.
I’m a little disappointed for her that not once during the previous 18 months had anyone up the food chain expressed their appreciation to that someone I really care about for working in an environment with a high risk of exposure to COVID-19 – not even providing them with company logo N-95 masks – but they thought giving them a pair of socks was a good idea.
I must be missing something. Now of all times, leaders need to make their employees know they’re appreciated for the effort they’ve made over the last year and a half to keep the company up and running successfully. What follows are some nuggets I thought were intuitive but clearly aren’t to everyone.
If we want to know what makes our teams feel appreciated, we have to have heart-to-heart conversations with them and actively listen to discern the answer… or we can ask them directly. There are ways to do both more effectively than guess, and it takes time, trust and approachability or we’ll never get the answer.
If we give the same token of appreciation to everyone, it’s not a token of appreciation, unless we’re just thankful that people still choose to work for us. It’s one thing to give everyone the same kind of shirt with a logo to wear at work or elsewhere (that’s called marketing and brand recognition), but socks? Give me a break.
If we have money to spend on worthless trinkets for everyone, we have money to give something meaningful to a few (hopefully our top performers).
Just because our boss (that’s the moron I mentioned earlier) thinks it’s a good idea – or even just an okay idea – we don’t have to hold our tongues and embolden them to convince the Emperor he/she will look good in their new socks.
Bottom line: You don’t have to spend money to piss people off. I suspect someone I really care about will put the socks in the company logo backpack they gave her a couple of years ago, and I’ll never see them again.
Do you know what makes your team feel appreciated?
