Do You Empower or Micromanage?
When managing employees, it’s tempting to want to manage all the details of an employee’s work in the guise of helping them be more productive. Does it actually help? Rarely. Instead what you manage to do is create frustrations for you as well as the employee. Managers who need to micromanage usually have a large dose of anxiety which propels them to control everything that is happening.
Managers are not trained in coaching and counseling so they use the tool they know best – control.
Instead clear direction and expectations allows the employee to engage and contribute in a more effective way to meet business goals.
What are some of the issues in micromanaging employees?
- Trying to control the employee rather than coaching them to perform their best actually decreases productivity
- Decreases employee creativity
- Makes you accountable for the deliverable instead of the employee
- Blocks team building
- Creates a bottleneck as the manager has to oversee all work
- Employees feel the manager doesn’t trust them
- Can potentially lose great talent because they are looking for the ability to contribute
- Keep employees who have limited motivation to excel in performance
- You are doing all of the work
- Employees are fearful of making a mistake so don’t stretch themselves to do more, but rather wait for direction
What are benefits of empowering employees?
- It improves productivity as the employee is more engaged with the outcome
- Less bottlenecking of work as the employee has the power to move forward with their work
- An empowered employee provides better service to customers as they are given the permission to solve the customer’s issue.
- Employees are engaged in the well-being of the company
- Creativity is more abundant as employees are willing to challenge the status quo
- Open to change as their manager trusts them
- Overall quality of work increases as employees are accountable for their performance and take pride in their work
Accountability
Manager – You are responsible for providing clear structure, goals and direction for each team member. Your focus is to be in touch with each employee, coaching them to meet their deliverables, providing them with proper training to perform their work, and counseling them when they are falling short. You are not responsible for performing their work!
Employee – Each person on the team is responsible to gathering the information they need to do their work, ask the necessary questions, be creative in their solutions, checking in with their manager to insure they are clear around what needs to be done and showing up each day to do their best. They are responsible for doing their work!
Final Thoughts
Be clear around what you can and should control and allow your team members to step up and perform their work. Keep an eye on the flow of work, though understand that the employee is to do it. You job is to ensure they have the tools and clarity to do their work.
Be well,
Pat
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