Episode 30 | Micromanagers in the Age of Remote Work: The Final Boss
Reimagining HR with Trina Sunday tackles micromanagement in remote work
Trina Sunday: Let’s talk about why remote work has exposed micromanagement like never before and what it’s really about and what HR can do to shift that dynamic. Micromanagement isn’t just annoying, it’s corrosive, especially in hybrid and remote teams where trust, clarity and outcomes matter more than ever. If we want impact over oversight, then we need leaders who know how to let go and HR teams brave enough to help them get there. Welcome to Reimagining HR with Trina Sunday, the rule breaking podcast where we challenge our thinking and our, current people practises. This podcast is for time poor HR teams and business leaders who are feeling the burn, lacking laughs and not feeling the love. I’m Trina, your host and I’m here to cut through the bs, explore different ways of thinking and create high impact hr. Ah, functions because happier, healthier organisations are better for our people and our bottom line. So if you are keen to flip traditional HR on its head, hit the follow or subscribe button so you’re the first to know when new episodes drop. I’m, here to help and also to shake things up. So let’s get started.
One person on Reddit said their manager made them do three end of day updates
Okay, Real talk. One person on Reddit said their manager made them do three end of day updates, Trello board task list and a summary email. If they forgot one, they’d get a gentle reminder. Around 10pm Someone else on Twitter said that they weren’t allowed to turn off their camera for eight hours, not even to eat their lunch. And a digital workplace researcher on LinkedIn shared how her manager made her send a screenshot of her calendar every single morning. When she questioned it, the manager said, I just need to see where your head’s at. If you’re thinking, wow, that’s unhinged or worse. That kind of sounds like my team. Then you’re in the right place.
Nearly 70% of employees say micromanagement tanks their morale
Today we’re talking about micromanagers in the age of remote work. The ultimate final boss, why it’s happening, why it’s toxic, and what HR and people leaders can do to turn control into trust. Plus a new way to think about fix, shift or exit. It’s our, HR responses, people and how to coach without conflict and what the line between accountability and overkill really looks like. Whether you’re a recovering micromanager working for one or just tired of being asked for. Just one more quick update, then let’s get into it. Why is it happening? Micromanagement to me is a symptom, right? It’s not a strategy. And let’s be clear, micromanagement doesn’t mean someone’s a bad person, doesn’t even mean they’re a bad leader. What it does mean, more often than not is that there’s something deeper going on. Visibility feels like control, and remote work has basically removed it. Remote work challenges how many managers have traditionally measured performance through presence? If I can’t see them, how do we know they’re working? That’s the anxiety that we’re talking about here. And Dr. Thomas Comoro, premesic, he calls out in his work this as an illusion of control. In environments where visibility is limited, insecure leaders overcompensate by grasping at what they can control. Updates, meetings, deliverables, often to the point of obsession. But at the end of the day, micromanagement is an anxiety response. In his book, why do so Many Incompetent men become leaders? Dr. Thomas explores how ego, fear of failure and insecurity often get disguised as leadership traits, especially in male dominated or performance obsessed workplaces. But as he says, micromanagement is rarely about the employee. It’s about the manager’s own anxiety or their unresolved, need for control. And micromanagement is more often than not, it’s anxiety in action. Fear that the team’s going to fail, that that leader’s going to be blamed. It’s perfectionism, you know, the belief that only the manager can do it right, and that lack of trust in the people, but also the systems that are supposed to support them. It’s also about identity shifts. You know, like, I don’t know who I am. If I’m not managing, if I’m not walking the floor and I can’t see who’s on task, then what am I here for? Some leaders build their identity on being seen as present and involved. When the shift to remote work happened, their leadership toolkit as they knew it, which relied heavily on facetime status meetings and desk drop bys, it became obsolete pretty much overnight, right? And that disorientation often turns into micromanagement. And Dr. Thomas argues that many leaders confuse confidence with competence. I’m sure you’ve all seen that. And confident micromanagers may believe that they’re leading decisively when in fact they’re projecting their own fears onto their team. Which reminds me actually of an awesome quote from Dr. Thomas during his TEDx on surprising qualities of great leaders or something like that, where he said, the problem in leadership is not the presence of too many incompetent people, it’s that we often reward the wrong traits. Overconfidence. Instead of Competence, charisma over humility. So it’s not that we have too many muppets, it’s that we keep rewarding their overconfidence and their charm. That’s the problem here. And there’s a cost, right? Not just emotionally, although, yes, it will crush your soul. But in very real terms, micromanagement leads to turnover, burnout, lost ideas, and that special kind of workplace trauma that sends people straight to their therapist couch or to seek.comau@ the same time. We can start with some numbers. Nearly a third of employees with micromanaging bosses are actively job hunting. And nearly 70% of employees say that micromanagement tanks their morale. That means, though, that if you have 10 people on your team and you’re a micromanager, you can safely assume that three of them are updating their CV while pretending to work in your 8am Check in. And then of course, we have the classic, people don’t leave their jobs, they leave their manager. I would say they definitely leave their micromanager. And I’m pretty sure Liz Ryan said that, she’s a Forbes contributor. But I would upgrade that to say they also leave their slack pings, their 11pm just checking in emails, and that suffocating feeling that someone is watching them like a hawk while they’re trying to eat lunch off camera. But what micromanagement actually does, it’s innovation dead on arrival. Like when people feel watched, judged and second guessed, they don’t pitch bold ideas, they stick to the safe zone. You don’t get the creativity, you get compliance. And compliance doesn’t build the future, it builds boring status quo org charts and stuff. Ownership that’s gone. Like, why bother taking initiative if everything I do is going to be rewritten anyway? Micromanagement breeds learned helplessness. Basically, teams stop problem solving and they start waiting to be told what to do. That’s not high performance, that’s professional babysitting. And trust and psychological safety eroded. You know, micromanagement says loudly and clearly, I don’t trust you. And when people don’t feel trusted, they don’t speak up. No stretch, no shine. And let’s be real, psychological safety isn’t just a fluffy HR term. It’s the foundation of every top performing team. Google even studied it. Look up Google’s project Aristotle. And as a sidebar, it’s actually super interesting to look at because really, for 15 years from around the millennium, the term psychological safety was relatively well known. Maybe in academia, but it was barely mentioned in my world of HR or the world of Work itself. But it was a project that Google did that was led by Julia Rosovsky that changed all of that. It kind of catalysed, our interest in psychological safety in the workplace. And it was essentially a research project undertaken by Google to understand what makes teams successful. And for two years they studied nearly 200 teams at Google to look at that. And one of the tangible outputs of that research is actually a team effectiveness kind of discussion guide that they created. And it leads through some really awesome stuff on factors that make successful teams and how you can make sure you can protect trust and psychological safety. So Google project Aristotle. Interesting.
What micromanagement actually does. Burnout. When you’re constantly monitored, it’s exhausting
But where were we? What micromanagement actually does. Burnout. That’s what it does. Absolutely. When you’re being monitored, messaged and managed within an inch of your life, even when remote, it’s exhausting. Like, constant visibility leads to constant vigilance. We need to worry about the presenteeism at the office now we’ve got zoomteism and it’s just as toxic, or Team Zism, whatever you’re using. But if we want to challenge the status quo, we need to get a bit uncomfortable with the truth here. A lot of micromanagers think they’re being helpful, that they’re showing up, being across the details, driving outcomes. But the team’s not feeling supported, right. They’re feeling surveilled. So you have to ask yourself, like, are, your team’s results the product of trust and ownership or fear and over functioning? Are people thriving or just surviving your collaborative quote unquote oversight? So, bit of a call out to, watch for if your team goes quiet every time you join a Zoom or a teams call. If no one challenges your ideas, if your turnover rate is suspiciously high, it might not be a fit issue. It might be you, it might be you. But that’s good news because if it’s you, you can fix it. But you can’t fix it if you don’t acknowledge it or own it.
Gartner has developed a framework to help you identify micromanaging tendencies
So are, you micromanaging your remote workers? Gartner’s done work on recognising and correcting micromanagement, and they offer this framework where you can self assess your tendencies towards micromanagement and look at some steps on how to build trust within your remote teams. And I was looking at those questions the other day after a coaching call, and it’s like, if you want to ask yourself some questions to determine if you are a micromanager in the world of remote work, ask yourself these things. Do I often have concerns about or question employees Productivity that could be outspoken or in your own head. Do I find myself constantly wanting to be informed of every bit of progress made? Do I peek into system records to check that someone’s actually done what I asked? Do I find myself limiting others authority to keep myself engaged with initiatives? Do I find it difficult to delegate tasks because I don’t trust that they’re going to get done? If you answered yes to any of those questions, you’re likely a micromanager. Hi, my name’s Trina Sunday and I have 100% been a micromanager. If I’m honest, I still go through bouts of being micro with the reimagine HR remote team. The best thing about knowing that you’ve got micromanagement tendencies, you can do some stuff about it, right? There’s actions that you can take to curb micromanaging, you know, to avoid crossing the line from supervision into micromanagement. And there’s two sides to that. There’s the things you can do for yourself. The me actions, what I need to work on myself to tame my micromanagement tendencies, or the them actions, you know, what I have to work on with my team members to build trust and engage in the right ways at the right times.
Gartner talk about taming your inner micromanager
Gartner Talk about taming your inner micromanager. And you do need to reflect on some key questions to see if you kind of got some room for improvement here. You know, looking at, do you add value to the business with the amount of time that you’re spending supervising people, and should you be dedicating that time to more strategic activities or activities that raise more money? And at the end of the day, you need to block time out and devote time to looking and reflecting on those questions. But not a lot of us block time out to do reflection. There’s another thing that they recommend to curb your micromanagement that’s around setting a perfection scale of 1 to 10. So perfection can refer to the amount of functionality of a project or a product. You know, how perfect do you want it to be? And ask yourself, are you pushing for a 10 where an 8 is actually enough? And then the one that I look at is my way is not the only way. And I have that written above my desk. And it’s about applying the 8020 rule. You can use the 8020 rule in lots of different ways quite creatively if you think of 10 ways to use an 8020 rule. But in this case it’s in 80% of the cases leave your employees to approach an activity their way. And in 20% of the cases, guide them to do it your way. 80% of the time, do it your way, have a crack, fully empower the team is actually giving them the grace to push ahead with approaches or decisions that you don’t in fact agree with. And that’s the most difficult thing to do, especially if you are a micromanager. It’s about trusting more and engaging less. And for the them actions first, follow the golden rule of leading remote workers. Default to trust. Let your team members work through challenges autonomously and reduce as much as possible the number of checkpoints. You know, control meetings that you’ve put in place. Ask how your team will benefit from your engagement, not how you will benefit from engaging with your team. And this has actually been really, really helpful in terms of how I’m showing up to try and empower my team more. I actually ask my team, am I going to add value if I come into this conversation and if they say no, not really. You’re here because you want to understand where we’re up to. I’m like, fine, I’ll learn that another way. It’s about guardrails, right? We need some guardrails to put up before, during and after initiatives to try and keep ourselves from micromanaging. Because to empower our team members, they need to understand the impact and the scope of what’s expected of them.
Like it’s our job to fully articulate how their activities are crucial and how they fit together and what they’re going to need to get the job done. If we don’t do that, they can’t run with it and we’re forced into a micromanagement by default because we have not done the empowering bit, right? And so if we want to focus on outcomes, then don’t waste our time getting caught in the weeds around how the job’s done. Focus on the outcomes and what’s agreed in terms of the timeframes. You know, we want to be flexible and plan for worst case scenarios and things, but we then can’t just blame the team and crush their self esteem and completely spoil the bonds we have and the trust that we have with our employees by focusing on failures instead of just learning from them. executive leaders, we know this, who make a concerted effort not to micromanage their remote workers. They have far more successful teams in the end. Who doesn’t want that? Remote work is the new norm for many employees. But some leaders remain so concerned about achieving the same productivity that they once, saw when everyone was on site and Leaders perceived lack of control compels them, many of them anyway, to micromanage. But doing so just makes employees less engaged, motivated and productive. Right? Less. Less, less. Not more, more, more, which is what we actually want. So we have to gut check if we are micromanaging and then apply some changes to be a bit more productive and have trust building behaviours as opposed to controlling ones. And I can hear the deep sighs from here. Great, Trina, but it’s way more complex than that. Our organisational culture precludes it. Blah, blah, blah. I call bullshit, not about you lacking the constructive culture. that’s probably actually a given, that’s actually really common and it’s needed to naturally foster this stuff. But I call BS on giving up and then just leading in a toxic way. And micromanagement is a toxic style of leadership. Hi, my name’s Trina. I’ve been known to be a micromanager, but I don’t want to be. So let me change how I choose to lead so my team has a better experience and we can collectively get better outcomes. If you’re a micromanager, you’re probably a control freak, so don’t tell me that you don’t have any control over your management style. So between us, are you a micromanager? If you’re in HR though, or the people function and you’re convinced that you’re not a part of the problem, then you should be exploring the patterns and red flags that we can identify for micromanagement, rising turnover, low engagement, those kind of things. But also how to coach micromanagers without it feeling confrontational and what the line is between accountability and micromanagement, then we have to do something right? And generally, when we look at the, HR response framework, we’re generally ordering something from the fix, shift or exit menu. If we’re fixing it, then that’s generally going to be leadership coaching, clarity on team outcomes, feedback from reports. If we’re shifting it, we’re redesigning something, whether that’s roles scope, if control issues persist or exit, you know, when behaviour doesn’t change despite the support or feedback. But before HR can do much, we need more people to understand how remote work has resulted in micromanagement being on steroids.
Many leaders remain concerned about achieving same productivity through remote work
And one thing that I say to my corporate clients is we do say remote work is the new norm for many employees. And many of our leaders remain concerned about achieving that same productivity. Right. Like I said, if they can’t see everybody in the workplace, the leader point of view in this, the counter argument if you like, is we can’t see what people are doing anymore. Productivity slipping. Accountability’s hard to enforce when people are out of sight. But I get that. But my rebuttal if I may. You know, studies from Gallup, Microsoft, Atlassium consistently show that, that most remote and hybrid employees are more productive when measured by outputs and not hours. The real issue isn’t productivity, it’s the discomfort of letting go, of outdated visibility based leadership models. So if you’re measuring productivity by physical presence, you’re measuring the wrong thing. So when I’m talking to clients, you know, I say leaders perceived lack of control compels them to micromanage. But doing that’s just going to make your employees less engaged, less motivated, less productive. Their counterargument. If I don’t stay across every detail, Trina, things are going to fall through the cracks. I’m being thorough, not controlling.
Okay, thorough can go with that. And thoroughness is great. But when it turns into control, it signals distrust. And trust is foundational in any high performing team micromanagement. It creates that bottleneck. So instead of raising the standards, it erodes ownership. So when people don’t feel trusted, they stop bringing their best thinking. Real leadership’s about enabling performance, right? Not hovering over it. And when I’m coaching HR leaders, a lot of the time I might say gut check, are you micromanaging? And then apply some of the leadership changes to stop yourself from doing it and introduce more productive and trust building behaviours. What you get back. Trust sounds great, but what if my team hasn’t earned it yet? I can’t just blindly trust. I have to manage, not even them. But trust isn’t about being blind, it’s about being clear. High trust environments are built on clear expectations, feedback loops and mutual accountability. And micromanagement is often a sign that expectations or roles actually aren’t clear. It’s not a sign that people aren’t, capable. So we need to shift the focus from control to clarity. Are your team members actually failing or are they just unclear on what success looks like in reality? If you’re saying I have to micromanage because I don’t trust my team, the real question from me is why did you hire people that you don’t trust? Or have you created an environment where trust is possible? HR’s got a powerful role in this, HR’s role in identifying, addressing and shifting micromanagement dynamics. Before they burn out your people and drive away your talent. There’s a lot to do. There’s also A whole heap of stuff that we shouldn’t do just quietly. And there’s red flags that HR should watch for. And most HR teams are looking for these symptoms, you know, like high turnover in a particular team or a leader span of control. You know, HR will often look for pockets of low engagement scores. But I would encourage honing in on autonomy, trust and leadership support type questions. If employees are actually reporting excessive check ins or lack of freedom to make decisions in exit interviews would tune into that, right? Increased sick leave or psychological stress claims, we would tune into that. Managers who rewrite their team’s work or jump onto slack on the weekends, we would tune into that. But we need to actually label it, name it, to tame it. If it’s micromanagement. Because if we are putting a label on it and we are forming a view that we have micromanagement issues, then there’s certain things that we need to do. And Gallup’s Employee Engagement Survey and others are, useful resources in this. It uses questions like, do I have opportunity to do what I do best every day? You know, does my supervisor seem to care about me as a person? Those things can gauge some warning signs. If you are trying to pinpoint if you’ve got micromanagement, but then it’s like, what do you do with it? How do you address micromanagement without escalating conflict? What you don’t do is call them a micromanager. Yeah, I learned that really early. It feels accusatory and instead we want to reflect on what the team is experiencing. So we focus on the outcomes versus the behaviour, you know, your team is consistently delivering. Do you trust them to keep up without needing daily check ins? Call them on it. We’re getting the outcomes. Why are you forcing their hand to tell you every five minutes where they’re at? And use the data. Right? Peer feedback, engagement results, turnover numbers. Let the numbers start a conversation and normalise it. Micromanagement often comes from care or high standards. It’s not coming a lot of the time from a bad place. So we need to explore how to shift that energy in a way that builds trust. And there’s a few people that would use something like the GROW model for leadership coaching for that, which can be a great framework to help leaders set goals, assess reality, explore options, build trust based action plans. That’s a really practical coaching model.
The line between micromanagement and accountability is a fine one
I’m not sure that the line between micromanagement and accountability is a fine one. I think that line is pretty strong. You know, micromanagement is focusing on process. Montre not like accountability, which focuses on clear outcomes. Micromanagement is excessive check ins and revisions. It’s not about strategic progress reviews. It’s about low trust and high control. Not like accountability, which is high trust and high expectation. Micromanagement’s redoing other work. Accountability is empowering others to deliver their own work. You know, micromanagement creates dependency where accountability builds confidence and ownership. They’re quite different. But the key thing is are we measuring performance or presence? And a useful read would be a McKinsey one where it’s around redesigning performance management for hybrid teams. There’s some really good discussion in that around accountability and how you can look at performance management in a different way. But so what? So what’s HR going to do? What’s our role? Well, I talked about fix it, shift it or exit it. It’s basically our three step model. It’s pretty standard HR response framework really, isn’t it? If we’re going to fix it, that’s around coaching and capacity building. Right. And when we would use that is if micromanagement stems from inexperience or insecurity or a past failure. And so yes, we can offer leadership coaching, whether that’s internal or external and we can create more clarity around the team’s outcomes. But it’s also about encouraging upward feedback. And one thing that I really love in this, if we’re trying to fix it, is getting like upward feedback and using skip level meetings. So what I mean by that is like you jump up and not have a meeting with your next one up manager. but you skip that level and you go the next level up and it can be really interesting the conversations that happen in that space and the clarity that you can get around if micromanagement’s in the workplace. And the radical candour toolkit that comes out of Kim Scott’s work is really cool to look at. That’s all about being a kick ass boss without losing your humanity. But radical candour is everything in this. If you want to be able to address micromanagement. But so is Julie Zhu’s book the Making of a Manager. It’s all about what to do when everyone’s looking at you, which can be tough if you’re a new manager and without support, your default will most of the time be to micromanage. It’s just what happens. And so as organisations we need to be able to wrap some support mechanisms around that.
Micromanagement thrives if there is bottlenecks in decision making
Shift is an interesting one. When we talk about fix it, shift it or exit shift is around where we might redesign roles or expectations. And you would use that when a leader’s current role is not aligned to kind of their strengths or the scopes beyond their capacity. And you can adjust KPIs. I don’t mean lower the standard, but you can look at what’s fitting and redesign what the targets are or where the goalposts are, or the team structure, or move towards peer delegation as opposed to pushing everything down. But it’s also about reducing decision bottlenecks. This is where I think it’s really key and clarifying decision making rights. Micromanagement thrives if there is bottlenecks in decision making or our lack of decision making. Clarity allows people to avoid making decisions, which means that we can micromanage, all the time to be across things. So Raci models are good for that, right? Who’s responsible, who’s accountable, who needs to be consulted with, who needs to be informed. And Atlassian’s team health monitor was interesting for that too. That helps leaders and teams assess collaboration health and reduce friction. And so things like that can really help you shift things. But I feel like this is where we are most of the time when it comes to micromanagers and where we often get stuck. There’s a whole heap of employees, leaders, executives and HR teams doing not a lot to address the micromanagement that’s growing rampant in our organisations, especially when we have remote workers. And when I talk about exit as an option, a HR response. I’m not talking about sacking everybody, but it’s what do we do when change isn’t happening? We’ve tried to fix it, we’ve tried to shift it, whether that’s redesigning the work or shifting goalposts, but it’s just not happening. So despite the feedback and support, the managers got no willingness or ability to change behaviour and it’s affecting the team. So a lot of approach for that is obviously you’re documenting things, you’re looking at internal mobility or managing transitions out, but our job there is to protect the team culture and morale.
Micromanagement becomes supercharged in remote work
So now that I’m done with trying to exit stage right, here’s what I’d like to take away from this episode. Micromanagement isn’t a character flaw like, it’s a leadership glitch, one that becomes really supercharged in remote work. It’s what happens when fear meets ambiguity, when control feels safer than trust and when presence is mistaken for performance. But just because it’s common doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. And just because you’ve done it doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it. I know because I’ve been there too. So whether you’re a HR leader seeing the warning signs, a, manager clinging to control, or a team member trying not to scream during your third daily stand up, this is your moment to try and reframe. We don’t need more check ins. We need more check ins with ourselves about why we lead the way we do and about what trust really means. About whether we’re creating the conditions for people to do their best work or just perform productivity theatre really for our own comfort and hr. Well, we’ve got a job to do. We don’t exist to babysit the status quo. We exist to shape the culture, coach the humans and challenge the systems that reward control over clarity. We fix it, we shift it, or we call time on it. So we need to gut check our own habits, have the hard conversations and for the love of psychological safety, stop asking for calendar screenshots. Remote work is here and we’ve got an opportunity to get remote leadership right.
Imagine that.
Thanks for tuning in and leaning in to this week’s episode. As we look to reimagine how we show up for our people, organisations and community, reach out to us via our website at reimaginehr.com.au with your HR horror stories or suggestions of people you’d love to hear from or topics you want to explore.
It’s all about people, purpose and impact and we are here for all of it.
Until next time, take care, team.
