Three key steps to prevent micromanagement

It is natural for leaders and managers to fall into the trap of micromanagement, but it is crucial to break free from it for the sake of the team and productivity. What is the alternative? Adopt a ‘coach’ approach (1). This means stopping dictating to employees what they should do and giving them the means to come up with their own ideas. Training courses are available, but managers can acquire key leadership skills on their own fairly quickly.

Here are the key ingredients for developing your coaching skills:

1. Developing empathy: the foundation of trust

Empathy is the cornerstone of trust and good working relationships. Once overlooked, it is now considered an essential leadership skill (2).

Employees expect their company to care about them. Executives and managers are the first representatives of this. First and foremost, they must learn the codes of empathy (3), distinguishing between appropriate and inappropriate gestures. Investing in practical training will enable them to put this kindness into practice effectively.

Empathy is not an innate talent, but a skill that can be cultivated. While the principle – putting yourself in someone else's shoes – seems simple, putting it into practice is often more complex. Furthermore, managers tend to compartmentalise their professional and personal lives, confining empathy to the latter.

Here are a few steps you can take to foster a more empathetic approach at work:

• Listen carefully and let the other person express themselves.
• Sincerely inquire about the other person's well-being, without resorting to clichés.
• Ask questions about feelings: ‘How do you feel?’ rather than ‘What do you think?’

2. Let others find their own solution

Micro-management consists of telling others what to do (4). The “coach” approach could be defined as letting others find their own solutions (1).

Leaders and managers often tend to pride themselves on their ability to solve problems and find answers for others. However, the best way to acquire coaching skills is to understand the fundamental difference between micromanagement and coaching: rather than giving answers, it is about letting others find their own solutions.

Remember that even if you present a ‘perfect’ solution as a leader, it is still your way of doing things. Individualisation is key. The idea is to offer solutions tailored to the circumstances and situation of each team member. Creating a personalised path is more motivating than following strict instructions.

Furthermore, innovation and creativity can only flourish if individuals are encouraged to come up with ideas. People who have in-depth knowledge of a subject (often more than their manager) are also best placed to come up with new and actionable ideas.

3. Techniques for listening, questioning and setting objectives

Active listening, the art of questioning, and the ability to set clear and motivating goals are the fundamental skills of a “coach” approach that every leader should strive to develop.

Active listening

Some leaders find it difficult to practise active listening because they feel uncomfortable with silence. They cannot stand it when the other person does not speak immediately and rush to fill the void by speaking for them. This attitude prevents them from really hearing what the other person has to say. In addition, impatience to find solutions can also interfere with listening. Leaders may become impatient if problems are not resolved quickly enough in their eyes, and interrupt the other person to offer their own solutions.

As a leader and/or manager, you need to give others the space they need to think and express themselves. Simply voicing a problem aloud, summarising it and outlining the solutions already considered can often shed light on the best course of action. Offer others the most precious gift: time to think and express themselves. Let them speak and listen to them carefully. Pay attention to what they say, what they don't say, and their body language.

Try to understand:

• Actions already taken by the other persons.
• Their priorities and values:
• The best way forward.

The art of questioning

Ask more useful and open-ended questions. Avoid closed questions that only confirm your own ideas and encourage micromanagement. Focus on questions that begin with ‘what’ or ‘how.’

Micromanagement can be useful in certain situations, such as asking one team member to put themselves in another's shoes and offer advice. Instead of asking a direct question such as ‘How would you solve this problem?’, which may elicit an uncertain response (‘I don't know’), it is more constructive to ask the individual to give advice to someone else.

A variation of this technique is to ask an employee about people they admire for their ability to handle the task in question. You can also ask them what they would recommend you do as a leader if they were in your position.

Examples of useful questions:

• ‘If it weren't you but your colleague X, what would you recommend they do in this situation?’
• ‘What would you do in my place as a leader?’
• ‘Who do you admire for their ability to handle this type of situation? What would they do?’

Setting clear and motivating objectives

Although aligning objectives with the organisation's strategy is crucial, it is also important to seek input from your team members and allow them to take the initiative in setting their own professional goals.

Focus on approach goals, which define the actions you want to reinforce, rather than avoidance goals, which focus on the actions you want to limit. Focusing on approach goals is more motivating for most individuals. This is because it directs energy towards improvement and achievement, rather than the frustration of no longer being able to do something.

Take the example of eating healthier. Instead of banning chocolate, which can create obsession and frustration, set a goal to include more vegetables in every meal. This allows you to focus on positive actions that nourish your body.

When it comes to avoidance, it makes more sense to talk about trading time for priority tasks. After all, our to-do list cannot grow indefinitely. If you have decided that a goal is a priority, you need to determine what other task you can give up in order to devote more time, effort and energy to it.

Here are a few points to consider when setting goals:

• Is this an approach or avoidance goal?
• What more can you do to achieve this goal?
• What do you need to stop doing in order to devote time to this goal?

Leveraging individual strengths to find solutions

Too often, organisations focus on weaknesses, seeking to correct them in order to achieve a barely acceptable level of performance. This approach overlooks a crucial asset: individual strengths.

We have all learned that we need to correct our mistakes and work on our weaknesses. But what about our strengths? Leaders and managers should devote at least as much time to helping employees discover their strengths, providing feedback on what is going well and how this can be replicated in future projects.

Helping team members explore their strengths means asking them the following questions:

• What works well for you?
• What are your passions, talents and skills that contribute positively to the organisation?
• How can you make the most of your strengths to shine and make a difference?

Adopting a coaching approach is therefore a way to counteract the tendency towards micromanagement, which many leaders have inadvertently fallen into. Coaching aims to help others find their own solutions by drawing on empathy, active listening, relevant questioning, assistance with goal setting and an approach that values their strengths.

Organisations should not assume that leaders and managers naturally possess these coaching techniques. Instead, they should offer them training and development opportunities to acquire these fundamental skills.

Finally, companies must invest in long-term support for their leaders. This includes ongoing feedback, opportunities for peer exchange, and a point of contact within the human resources department for complex or ethical situations. By making these efforts, the power of coaching can be harnessed to empower individuals.
 

References

(1) Empowering and encouraging: how the 'coach' approach can counter micro-management (2024) Julia Milner, Harvard Business Review France - https://www.edhec.edu/en/research-and-faculty/edhec-vox/empowering-encouraging-how-coach-approach-can-counter-micro-management

(2) ‘Empathy in Leadership: Appropriate or Misplaced? An Empirical Study on a Topic that is Asking for Attention,’ Journal of Business Ethics 105 (1):95-105 (2012) by Svetlana Holt and Joan Marques, Springer, 2012 - https://philpapers.org/rec/HOLEIL

(3) Empathetic leadership and employees’ innovative behavior: examining the roles of career adaptability and uncertainty avoidance. Front. Psychol., 22 May 2024. Sec. Organizational Psychology. Volume 15 - 2024 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1371936

(4) Are You a Micromanager? (2024) Julia Milner, Harvard Business Review - https://www.edhec.edu/en/research-and-faculty/edhec-vox/are-you-micromanager

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