Micromanagement is defined as a type of management where a supervisor closely observes and exercises a high level of control over the work of his/her subordinates at all times. According to Mulholland (2018), micromanagement has been associated with numerous adverse effects including loss of creativity, loss of morale/motivation, and loss of productivity.
One of the main reason why bosses micromanage is the need for most bosses/ supervisors to be seen as experts and authority figures by other employees. When supervisors are power driven, it means that they want to not only be in charge but also to have the authority to make decisions that will impact others. When a manager seeks to be seen as an expert and an authority figure, but employees work independently and self-sufficiently then a problem is created. Managers begin to feel not needed, obsolete or superfluous. Faced with these fearful emotions, they may naturally start to micromanage the employees (Mulholland, 2018).
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The fear from having a healthy ego is also a contributor to micromanagement. Normally, managers often start their careers as high performing individual contributors. For showing great expertise in their job roles, they get noticed and get promoted to even better jobs. Some of them land into supervisory roles which involve managing teams of employees who may not be as good as they were. This, therefore, creates a fear in the supervisors that their name may be tarnished by overseeing work that is not as satisfactory as it could have been if they had done it themselves (Riggio, 2018).
Micromanagement is not only demoralizing to employees but it is also counter-intuitive as the desire for practicing extreme control creates more problems in the long run. While micromanaging is sometimes deemed useful especially in small-scale projects, it usually results to supervisors losing sight of the bigger picture and frustrating employees by being over-controlling. By micromanaging, managers show an employee that they do not trust them enough to allow them to work on their own and still produce high results. Trust is a very crucial quality in the business environment. When employees do not feel trusted, they tend to assume that their manager’s do not have their best interest at heart (Riggio, 2018). For team success, trust is essential and when others feel judged or not trusted, it results to frustration and lack of authentic relationships which ultimately affects productivity. When employees feel that everything they do is scrutinized or corrected, it discourages any independent work and decision making. Micromanagement does not help employees grow or develop skill/career-wise. Instead, it makes them dependent on further micromanagement to do their job.
The growth potential in a department is reduced when employees are micromanaged (SK, 2002). By putting too much emphasis and attention on daily operational details, managers end up missing the broader picture. This, therefore, results in them failing to plan for departmental expansion. Also, by continually involving themselves in their subordinates’ duties, managers may experience burn out and fail to be as productive as expected in the long run.
Micromanagement can be advantageous in certain situations, especially in short term management where there can be no questions of who is in charge, e.g. controlling high-risk issues, training of new employees etc. However, long-term micromanagement results can be very detrimental and costly to an organization (SK, 2002). Micromanagement is highly associated with high employee turnover, low employee morale, reduction of productivity and dissatisfaction of employees. In the long run, it affects the performance of a department and the overall performance of an organization. According to SK, (2002), micromanagement has been labeled as one of the top three reasons why employees resign and therefore it is necessary for people in supervisory positions to continuously evaluate their leadership skills to ensure that they do not practice it on their subordinates.
References
Mulholland, B. (2018, July 20). Don't Micromanage: How It Destroys Your Team and How to Avoid It | Process Street. Retrieved January 14, 2019, from https://www.process.st/micromanage/
Riggio, R. E. (2018, August 9). 5 Reasons Why Micromanagers Fail. Retrieved January 14, 2019, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201808/5-reasons-why-micromanagers-fail
SK, C. (2002). Micromanagement--a costly management style. Radiol Manage , 24 (6). Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/12510608/
