THAT’S NOT MICROMANAGEMENT!

Steven Cesare, Ph.D.

A business owner from Michigan called me the other day to discuss a recent comment made to her by one of her office employees. After several instances in which the office employee failed to meet performance expectations (e.g., missed deadlines, inaccurate work, misspellings), the business owner began to remind the employee of various expectations, hoping to instill basic time management, administrative efficiency, and professional initiative within the employee. That’s called feedback.

Surprisingly, the female office employee responded with emotional indignation to the business owner by saying “Stop micromanaging me!” Poignantly, the business owner did not respond in kind to the adolescent theatrical outburst, and simply stated, “Are we clear about what you are supposed to do? If you need my help, let me know.” With muted emotion, bereft of professionalism, the office employee verbally acknowledged the business owner’s inquiry. That’s called support.

The business owner then called me to discuss the background, context, and the proper steps moving forward to improve the office employee’s tone, productivity, and attitude, while of course, always remaining wary of the ubiquitous threats related to potential claims of harassment, discrimination, and litigation. As a capitalist, in case you still don’t want to admit it, everybody’s a victim; just get used to it. Parenthetically, “yes,” the business owner does have Employment Practices Liability Insurance. Back to the point: In turn the business owner summarized the office employee’s performance goals, strengths and weaknesses, and the steady decline in the office employee’s work that has forged the business owner to schedule weekly one-on-one sessions with the office worker to assist her in meeting clearly-stipulated and readily-accepted task responsibilities. That’s called coaching.

All the while remaining calm, despite the tacit injury to her professional pride due to the fact that she felt she overstepped her bounds with the office employee, the business owner recounted in precise written detail the employee’s previous successes and current failings to me. That’s called documentation.

To allay her unstated embarrassment, I told her that she was not micro-managing the office employee. Needless to say, she was profoundly relieved to hear that absolution. I reminded her that micromanagement is a controlling supervisory style focusing excessively on elemental aspects of an employee’s behavior that serve to draw inordinate attention onto tactical minutiae at the expense of the overall performance goal. Case in point, picture yourself driving a car with someone constantly telling you what to do: put on your blinkers, slow down, get in the right lane, check your mirrors, watch out for that kid on the bicycle, okay we can go now since the light is green. Better yet, picture yourself with someone telling you how to complete a computer task: type that homepage in your browser, click on that button, type in your logon ID, type in your password, now expand the window, double click to view the pictures, unzip the file, click on download, hit the save button, move the file to your hard drive, etc. No one wants to be micromanaged. The business owner clearly did not provide that level of specificity to the office employee, only seeking an accurate, timely conclusion to the delegated tasks. That’s called supervision.

I informed the business owner that it has become an increasingly common tactic for employees to make the micromanagement allegation against a supervisor as a means to pivot the power dynamic from the supervisor providing guidance to the employee, onto the employee claiming that the supervisor is at fault by giving extreme insulting detail on small-minded facets of performance that the victim, I mean employee, already knows. So, rather than completing the task as directed, the under-performing employee deflects his/her inadequate performance onto the supervisor’s method of follow-up. That’s called manipulation.

I admonished the business owner to not fall prey to such cunning unjustified comments in the future. Shifting the conversation back to the office employee’s actual performance, I suggested the business owner develop a 30-day Performance Improvement Plan for the office employee, highlighting desired performance expectations, describing current performance while specifying performance gaps, proposing action items to get the employee’s performance to a satisfactory level. That’s called accountability.

Let’s be clear: The business owner did not micromanage the office employee.

That’s called management.

If you have any questions or comments about this topic or anything else related to human resources, Sign Up for Steve’s HR Helpdesk!