Call me a Micromanager

🎧 Listen to this week’s edition · 6 min (New!)

Happy Thursday,

I’ve been called a micromanager plenty of times in my career. And it hurts. Every single time.

You can’t help but feel judged, and it always brings up a little insecurity or self-doubt. Often, your first instinct is to back right off. Those reactions are understandable, but they’re not always the right ones.

Later in my career, I had to learn not to take it personally, not to react, to get over it in the moment and do the job I needed to do anyway. Because when I reflect honestly on some of those moments, I wasn’t micromanaging. I was usually either supporting someone, or holding them to a standard we’d agreed on in the first place.

So when someone asked me recently how to handle being called a micromanager, my answer was short: there’s no such thing as micromanagement. Or at least, not in the way we use the label.

🧠 LEARN something.

Research on leadership and management points to something more interesting. Micromanagement isn’t actually an objective leadership style or approach at all. It’s simply a label, and one that doesn’t always get used in the right way. In reality, it’s the word we reach for to describe a closely supervised, highly involved approach to leadership that’s applied at the wrong time or in the wrong situation.

The behaviour itself isn’t the problem. The context and timing are where we run into trouble.

So forget the word micromanagement for a second, and think about autonomy instead. Think of it as a dial rather than an on-off switch, one you turn up or down depending on the person and the task.

Someone new to a role, or new to a task, needs you close: clear expectations, regular check-ins, quick feedback. Most people would call that supportive leadership. But the exact same behaviour, aimed at someone who has proven again and again that they deliver, feels suffocating. It reads as a lack of autonomy, a lack of trust and, ultimately, micromanagement.

Now think about someone who isn’t performing. They may need you to supervise them closely to make sure standards and expectations are met. They might not like it, but that may be exactly what you need to do as their leader.

None of this is new. We’ve studied and applied it under the banner of situational or adaptive leadership for decades. Yet the moment the word micromanagement gets attached to you or your leadership style, we forget the situation and the context. We feel accused and judged, and we’re compelled to react rather than lead.

🤔 THINK about it.

Two nuances matter here.

The first is that autonomy is earned, not always given, especially when the outcome is important or carries high risk. It’s earned through predictable behaviour and consistent delivery. And it runs both ways. Just as the person needs to build confidence in their own ability to do the task, you, the leader, need to build your confidence in their ability to do it.

So micromanagement only really exists when someone has earned the autonomy, and the leader still won’t fully let go. That problem sits with the leader.

The second nuance is trickier. A person’s ability, and your confidence in them, can vary from task to task. Think about your best salesperson. Ten years of hitting targets. You’d never dream of interrogating their call list. Now ask them to run their first team meeting as a leader, organise a project, or prepare a strategy for the first time. On that new task, checking in regularly and supervising closely is exactly what they need.

Same person. Different task. Different setting on the dial.

Yet the fear of the label, warranted or not, does its own damage. Leaders step back when what’s needed may be the exact opposite. And nobody calls it out, because micromanagement has become a dirty word that’s often misused, misunderstood and sometimes even weaponised.

✅ DO IT to get results.

Next time you hear the word, don’t flinch, don’t defend and don’t immediately back off. Get curious, and ask yourself one question: has this person earned more autonomy on this specific task?

If they have, hand it over, and say so out loud. If they haven’t, say that too, and make the path visible, so they know exactly what they need to do to build their capability and earn your confidence. Once you’re both clear on where you sit and what it takes to earn the autonomy, the label of micromanagement loses most of its power.

Until next week, keep it real, and stay curious!

Kenny

CEO & Founder | The Bridge Leaders