5 ways to stay sane if your boss is a micromanager
My boss, Janet, was clever, hardworking and had an amazing eye for detail. She had high standards: if you e-mailed with a question at 10 p.m., she replied by 10.05. She worked hard, delivered on time, hated mistakes and expected the same from her team.
She was driving us mad. We had been working on the project for weeks and every Tuesday morning we would sit for hours as she ground through endless detail. For every insight from her years of experience, there were a dozen trivialities. On a presentation she would change the fonts on the bullets and complain if the angle of the staple was wrong – (top right, horizontal, equal distance from both margins). Janet knew best: at two hours you felt patronised and inadequate, after three your life force had drained away never to return. You’ve guessed it; she was a bona fide, micromanaging, control freak.
Don’t be surprised that control freaks, such as micromanagers, get promoted. At first sight a workaholic, detail obsessive can look like a high performer. Rewarding pathological behaviour is always a bad decision. They will sacrifice themselves and their health through excessive hours and stress as they rush from issue to issue, creating bottlenecks for their department. The worst thing an organisation can do is to appoint them to a leadership position where they will suck dry team morale and destroy productivity.
A compulsive need to control is usually a way of binding anxiety and of coping with a deep inner fear of falling apart. There is often a chaotic childhood and they will seek to achieve increasingly senior positions and higher levels of control to counter their feelings of inadequacy. Some will fanatically count carbs, be clean freaks or seem obsessed with details, rules and lists. Micromanaging as a leader never works beyond the very short term. Control of complex environments is an illusion and stifling others ends in conflict and the chaos they dread. Divorce, breakdown and a drinking problem often appear in the final act.