Rethinking micromanagement and the use of soft power

Effective managers are those who can find the balance between the extremes of micromanagement and more relaxed management styles, helping to share the value of their experience without imposing it, says Alper Yurder 

As managers and business leaders, you may have found yourself in a position where micromanagement was inevitable. The question is when and how you do this as you deploy soft power in the office. This challenge has been exacerbated by the pandemic and the shift to remote working en masse.   

The pandemic prompted a polarisation of approaches. When employees moved online, some panicked. They looked for new ways to track how their workforce was managing the shift. During the first lockdown, a friend told me that her boss would call her the moment her online status changed from ‘active’ to ‘away’. In protest, she took extended breaks, leaving something heavy on the spacebar to stop the computer from registering inaction.  

She was not alone. More than half of professionals said that the pandemic hurt their relationship with their boss. A similar share felt micromanaged as they worked from home. Micromanagement is one of the main reasons why employees leave their jobs, and the significant uptick through the lockdowns is surely a contributing factor to the Great Resignation. 

The worry is that ‘progressive’ managers are swinging too far the other way. A new wave of ‘hands-off’ managers purports to be the solution to excessive, demoralising micromanagement. But neither is this the answer. 

The new seat of power 

The pandemic was pivotal in shifting power back to the employee as businesses reopened and the demand for talent outgrew the supply. For too long, employers had unanimous authority to make decisions from the top about how employees should be managed. It is only in the last year that this balance has been unsettled. And it was about time it did. 

One of the main lessons from the lockdowns is the importance of communication. Managers who over-manage are a problem. They are involved but they are not engaged with the needs and priorities of their workforce. They care about results – good – but may not consider the sustainability of their method. Accountemps reported before the pandemic that micromanagement was slowly killing the culture of work. Further back, it was listed as one of the top three reasons why employees leave their jobs. The shifting sands of power make micromanagement an unsustainable model for business. 

But so too is under-management. Believe it not, some employees do express a preference for micromanagement. Those managers who take the hands-off approach can be guilty of neglect. The truth is that employees cannot always be left to their own devices if they hope to progress in their careers and evolve in step with the company. One in five employees had appraisals postponed through the pandemic as communication broke down with line managers, and the challenge will be to find healthy levels of engagement – not necessarily less. 

Communication breakdown 

This problem did not end with the return to work. Today, 89% of employees cite frustrations with in-office experiences. 96% call for intelligent workplace technology to improve the environment, including digital signage to better communicate company news and events. The point is culture has suffered – and continues to suffer  where managers have taken a step back and failed to engage with their direct reports. Employees today navigate the hybrid workplace unclear about their role, their culture or the company vision. They do not know what they are doing or where they are going, and then they leave. 

The answer is not a regress into autocratic micromanagement and top-down leadership. The answer is to rethink the role – and tools – of management to improve the experience of work. The technology complaint should not be overlooked; the digitisation of the workplace over the last two years has given most offices the building blocks to improve their understanding of employee needs and priorities. 

Understanding is the operative word. Micromanagers often have the right intentions. But tracking is no replacement for understanding. In recent years, Google’s HR team has collected better data on employee sentiment and engagement to inform a string of policies that make it one of the most rewarding places to work in the world, and with unrivalled employee retention rates. Google aims to understand the challenges facing its workforce in earnest, creating an environment in which employees can report dissatisfaction or obstacles to productivity without fear of punishment. Compare this to the manager who interrogates his employee every time their computer goes on standby. 

Management for the modern age 

We are left in the position of finding a new ‘golden mean’ for management. The trend of consultative management styles is to be welcomed and promoted, of course; managers, facing dramatically new challenges since the pandemic, are doing well to understand better the varied new priorities and difficulties facing their employees. At the same time, they must be careful to understand their own shifting responsibilities. 

Management, in short, must democratise – but not to the extent that it loses its purpose. 

A starting point is deciding how best to use physical spaces. Hybrid work – itself a happy medium between potentially isolating full-time remote work and highly inefficient full-time office work – offers employees the benefits of flexibility and the contact hours needed to build and maintain professional relationships.  

But effective management of this system cannot be left to individual discretion. Even today, employees report significant concerns about Covid vulnerability, which is influencing their decision to come into the office. Leaders have a duty here to take an executive decision on attendance, consulting first with employees on availability and preferences and then managing the process of grouping them into smaller collaborative teams that will work effectively together and avoiding the office reaching over-capacity. 

In this capacity, the manager becomes a vessel for communication, aggregating and drawing on the information shared by employees and then acting decisively in the interests of the whole. Where individuals face natural limitations in managing the working patterns of others, the manager is best placed to mediate. 

Technology not only allows managers to gather information and understand their employees. It also allows them to communicate how the hybrid office should be organised in a clear, streamlined way. Employees today come into contact with an average of 16 SaaS applications as they move between home and the office. To report an incident requires one application. To message other staff, another. To login to the intranet, buy lunch or park a bike all require their own applications. Technology can help reduce frustration among employees in the hybrid workplace – but not like this. That’s why Witco has been so effective as a single digital touchpoint for employees and managers alike.  

The golden mean 

Management now faces two key challenges: first, to synthesise the advantages of the hands-on and hands-off approaches of management fleshed out over the last two years, creating a culture of understanding and a dialogue with employees. Second, to use technology to deliver on the lessons that follow, smoothing out processes and creating a more rewarding experience of work. 

Micromanagement has become a dirty word – and rightly so. For many, it will conjure up uncomfortable memories of excessive reporting at the expense of efficiency. This kind of leadership is, by its nature, obstructive to good work. But so is its antithesis. The truth is, excessively controlling management is as harmful as excessively liberal styles because both fail to meaningfully support employees through their careers. 

One lesson from the pandemic is that employees need space to make decisions in their own best interests – especially as those needs become more peculiar and complex. Managers simply do not have all the information to effectively steer their direct reports in real time.  

The second is that employees still need guidance. There is – and always will be – a role to hierarchy, to the division of labour.

Effective managers are those who can find the balance between the extremes of micromanagement and more relaxed management styles, helping to share the value of their experience without imposing it.