Some managers think that they need to be in control of every single aspect of a project they are leading. They simply can’t let go. They want to have a say in everything. They want to check the quality of every little task, they even want to do it themselves to make sure it is perfect. Perfection seems to be extremely important to them, so important that they end up spending vast amounts of time, potentially alienating their team. Even considering all of this attention, they may end up with a low quality service or product since they stop listening to others.

This is known as micromanagement. It is about taking positive qualities such as need for perfection and attention to detail to the extreme. When managing projects and leading teams, micromanagement can lead to several problems:

• Team members become increasingly frustrated
• Work slows down as everyone waits for the leader to manage, check quality of work or even do the tasks
• Team members start to switch off and think less about the problem knowing that their views can be easily overruled by the manager
• The manager will have a lot to do and this can have a huge impact on the quality of this leadership
• Can damage team members’ confidence

The first step in handling micromanagement is to know that you are micromanaging. The following are specific signs to look for:

• Managers constantly immerse themselves in overseeing others
• Managers resist delegating to others and want to do everything themselves
• Focus on tiny details as oppose to overall problems
• Actively discourage others to make decisions on their own, fearing that they will lose control over the quality of the work
• If they find a mistake in a delegated work, they immediately start to work on it themselves without providing feedback and ways to correct the mistake

The next step is to know what happens when you micromanage. This can significantly help you to improve your leadership skills. Here is a list of impacts of micromanagement:

• Micromanaging stops people to think. It creates a non-caring atmosphere since people’s inputs are not valued
• When micromanaged, people don’t grow. This in turn makes team members inexperienced and incapable of making important decisions. Micromanagers would then use this as proof of the inadequacy of their staff and why they need to micromanage. It is a vicious cycle.
• Deep analysis of every detail leads to losing the whole picture and not seeing where the team is really heading before it is too late.
• Micromanage can be self-defeating in term of quality control. More micromanagers intend to increase the quality of the work by controlling everything. However, this alienates people, reduces enthusiasm and simply backfires when people no longer care about the work. Considering that there is only so much a manger can do on his own, it is easy to see why in the long run, micromanagement is not sustainable. These mangers are likely to quit due to exhaustion or lose their teams entirely.

Leadership skills training can help manager who are involved in micromanagement to wake up and realise the significance of their actions. Organisations can also use leadership skills training materials and present custom courses for their line mangers, supervisors, project managers, technical leads, etc. and to show the dangers of micromanagement. Anyone involved in project management should simply be aware of the long-term inefficiencies of micromanagement and actively resist the temptation.

Chelsea Elm is a training consultant with many years of experience in the training industry. You can buy downloadable management training resources on leadership skills, personal impact, train the trainer, time management, telephone skills, customer service skills, team building, negotiation skills, decision making and many other soft skills. For more details related to this article see project management training materials . Also see training for trainer, power point slides, quick team building activities, corporate training, conflict resolution exercises, trainer games and leadership activities .