Micromanagement Hurts

This morning I was working through Ecclesiastes CH 8 when I can across a curios phrase. “There is a time when a man lords it over others to his own hurt.” Ecc 8: 9b (NIV)

I have been operating in one leadership capacity or another about 20 years now. I have practice positional leadership, middle management, relational leadership, servant leadership…. And studied many other forms and practices. As I have grown as a leader I have had to temper my natural personality’s push to give direction to people, even at times when asked to do so.

Over time, and with the Lord’s challenge to become more humble, I have come to realize that the people that I am leading with, and leading, have great skill, wisdom, and passion. That influence, like many other dynamics of life, is a stewardship. If we use it improperly it can yield poor results. That is caution I think the author of Ecclesiastes is pointing to in the verse above. The Lord can give us a preferred vision, he can give us a passion to achieve that vision, but we often forget that He wants us to work with a team to do so. If you are constantly micromanaging high-level leaders around you they will eventually do one of three things: they will move on to another leader (change jobs), they will become apathetic to you and your vision (dispassionate), or they will wait patiently for a season to see if you get it or wear yourself out not getting it. No matter how a leader responds to a micromanager, the hurt affects the organizations ability to achieve a God sized dream.

In organizations that have issues like this, you tend to find more managers than you do leaders. That is because micromanagers prefer those that they can manage and are typically uncomfortable with leaders. How do I know this? I was one of the worse micromanagers early in my career. I have seen this happen right in front of me, and then only too late in the game come to realize that I have been the bottleneck to what God wants to do. That humility thing is tough to be confronted with in those seasons. So, what do you do if you are a micromanager?

What helped me the most was to come to the place where I understood Maxwell’s leadership principle of the inner circle (http://www.u-leadership.com/the_21_irrefutable_laws_of_leadership-w.pdf) and the humility that the Bible describes in Philippians 2: 5-11. When you have surrounded yourself with the right people who you can trust to lead, it helps to alleviate your tendency to micromanage. In that process you have to give them permission to know you and communicate when they feel they are being a micromanager. That is where the humility factor comes in. You have to have the humility to understand as a leader that you need others on your team and that those team members at moments may have better ideas of how to achieve an objective than you do. When those moments come you are really able to build people up on your team as you show them how important they are to achieving an objective!

There are allot of articles out there on how to improve if you are a micromanager. If you are one, then have the humility to admit it, surround yourself with a great team, and continue to have the awareness to constantly learn to better address the problem before you hurt the vision that God has given you.