Do you track the hours of your employees work daily? Do you require your remote employees to cc you on every project-related email? Do you constantly overcorrect your employees’ work? You then might be micromanaging your team.
For most employees, being micromanaged can be annoying and demoralizing. When you micromanage, you’re telling the employee that you don’t trust them enough to work on their own and still produce good results. Micromanaging also discourages employees to evolve how they work proactively – wouldn’t your confidence in your actions diminish if everything you did was inspected?
Below we have some tips on how to avoid micromanaging.
1) Manage expectations and goals by setting frequent 1-on-1s
Effective managers will do their best to ensure each individual member of a team knows what is expected. One of the best ways to manage expectations is to make sure you communicate with everyone on a frequent basis. Set up weekly or biweekly 1-on-1 check-ins with your employees to clarify goals and provide guidance. Moreover, ensure that your team’s objectives have clear metrics and deadlines, and consider involving the employee in goal setting from the start-to-finish. Decisions are more effective when employees are involved from the get-go. In fact, employees whose managers involve them in goal-setting are 3.6 times more likely than other employees to be engaged. For more tips on setting effective goals, check out our past blog.
2) Trust your team
Irrespective of where your team works, as a leader, you need to be able to trust your team. For remote work, trust is vital. Asking for daily status updates or constant interventions will appear as though you don’t trust your employees and make it harder for them to stay focused. Check-in with employees weekly to clarify goals and help them overcome any challenges.
3) Create an open line of communication
Maintaining an open line of communication with your employees is a vital factor in any team. It is important that your employees know they can come to you with problems or questions. Ascertain the preferred method of communication (Slack, email, Teams, etc) and implement those methods in the office. Encourage your employees to communicate often, and ensure a timely response to their pings, emails, or messages.
4) Understand how your employees want to be managed
Have honest conversations with your employees about how they would like to be kept apprised. Each of your employee will prefer a different style management – for example, a new employee might prefer extra instruction and guidance at the start, while your top talent might prefer more autonomy. Bottom line: People are different. To optimize your team performance, your managing style will need to vary between employees.
Let us know your tips to curb micromanaging!
