Summer is not over yet, but the start of the school year is already looming with the return of August vacationers and projects for the last quarter. It is time to try new managerial approaches to gain efficiency, by developing a precise count of each action. It is in fact the time spent and distributed over its multiple tasks that is the key to its organization, its exhaustion (“I am underwater”) or its capacity to absorb other missions. For example, micromanagement enthusiasts are unable to detach themselves from their obsession with control and spend an infinite amount of time on it. However, 73% of employees consider this habit to be toxic and 46% identify it as a reason why they would leave their job (Monster Poll: Micromanagement is the biggest workplace “Red Flag”December 2023).
“Workaholics” who want everything to be perfect – according to American psychologist Taibi Kahler’s categorization of the six unconscious “drivers” (The Process Therapy Model: The Six Personality Types with Adaptations2008) – make life difficult for others. Constantly stressed, these managers can be victims of the famous “imposter syndrome” (they feel like they have usurped their role). Ultimately, they are model students who do not want to be unworthy.
If their work absorption seems impressive, the risks of exploding or overloading teams are obvious, even if organizations reassure themselves with personalities who give as much. A false good idea, because are they really effective? Having little confidence in others, picky, they are perceived as authoritarian, extremely present, in surveillance mode. Micromanagement is often accompanied by reporting, mountains of reports, to check again. Exhausting to read for them and to write for others. Time-consuming for everyone and for what result?
Others go beyond this and work in place of those who are too slow, too hesitant. “I sometimes display a sign that says ‘Caution! Helping can hurt’, to trigger a debate on the difference between the types of help: the one that consists of doing something for someone, as opposed to the one that consists of assisting, doing something with someone,” analyzes the American psychologist Thomas Gordon, nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize (1997, 1998 and 1999), who has given educational advice to parents and has also theorized interpersonal communication through collaborative leadership. “The proverb: ‘give a fish and you feed a person for a day. Teach a person to fish and you feed him for life’, underlines this wisdom. Competent parents, teachers or managers implement this principle to encourage autonomy in their children, their students or their employees” (Effective Relationships. How to Build and Maintain Good Relationshipswith Noël Burch, Marabout 2011). This is the only solution: 71% of employees believe that micromanagement hinders their professional performance (Harry E. Chambers, My way or the highway: the micromanagement survival guide, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2004)
Reduce your dose of meetings and emails
Two other pitfalls can affect management: endless emails and meetings. “Email is poorly suited to collaborative communication and generates a lot of digital noise: more than 30% of emails are due to the use of ‘copy’, 25% to ‘reply to all'”, indicates the Observatory of Infobesity and Digital Collaboration (2023). Better direct them to the person who should read them.
Furthermore, the main reasons that cause employees to lose attention during meetings are that they are too long (39%), with irrelevant information (30%) and points already covered (26%, Capterra, February 2024). In addition, 56.8% of employees participate in 1 to 3 meetings per week and 31.2% admit to scrolling on social networks. 89.2% of them even “do something else” (Deskeo, June 2024), such as perhaps imagining their next vacation destination. It is up to the manager to reread Horace and his “carpe diem” (Odes22 or 23 BC) to prevent his troops from fleeing the present.