Uneasy Rhetoric

Gerri Willis on CNN Money has a column called “How to manage your manager, 5 Tips: Improving your work life.” (via LifeHacker) The column lists five relatively common sense tips:

1. Ask: what’s the problem?
2. Have regular meetings.
3. Toot your own horn.
4. Learn from it.
5. Know when to bail.

I want to expand on the first one:

Is [your boss] a micromanager? According to Katherine Spencer Lee, the executive director of staffing firm, Robert Half Technology, this type of boss is controlling, overly involved, and needs to develop more confidence in you. Your solution is to prove you’re capable. Start asking for complete control over small tasks to prove you’re able and keep asking for more.

To put it simply, this won’t work. There is no question that micromanaging is about a lack of trust. However, it doesn’t matter how much you demonstrate your trustworthiness, or how successful your ideas are. Micromanagers are the way they are because they have internalized their work to an unhealthy degree. Managers are ultimately responsible for the work of those they manage; micromanagers take that responsibility into the realm of paranoia.

The micromanager will always feel threatened unless he or she has control over a project, no matter how large or small. If your manager is willing to give you complete control over smaller projects, then you don’t really work for a micromanager. A micromanager can’t let go of projects.

Micromanagers are generally intolerant of error, even though that is how we learn (the phrase is “trial and error,” but working for micromanagers is just “trial”); their solutions to errors often involve adding more layers of oversight or taking on a greater workload themselves. Micromanagers are far more likely to believe that they should only speak if something is being done wrong. They tend to be criticizers and not praisers.

Working for micromanagers is demoralizing, so much so that “proving you’re capable” may seem like it is more trouble than it is worth. The reason? One false step, one error, even if corrected, can set you back to square one. So you develop coping strategies which often involve procrastination and suppression of creativity which, of course, leads to more error.

There is no easy way to handle a micromanager. Worse, if you’ve made it to step 5 and decided to bail, it can be very difficult to determine whether your next position will be working for someone who is exactly the same.

The best way to handle a micromanager? Become a manager yourself and swear upon pain of death that you will never become a micromanager. Be open with your staff and allow them to tell you when you aren’t giving them the space they need to do their jobs effectively. Make sure they see you praising someone for speaking up. And take criticism without becoming defensive. Save the defensiveness for times when it is truly warranted.