Micromanagement kills.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: On Management

MICROMANAGING ERASES LEADERSHIP POINTS YOU MAY HAVE had, limits your promotion prospects and makes you a lousy coach or teacher. Otherwise, it sometimes gets the job done.

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If you want to see how to destroy someone with micromanagement, just stop at some soccer field in your area where young kids are playing. You are bound to find a parent somewhere micromanaging his or her kid. You've seen it before. It goes something like this:

"Run to the ball Billy! Faster! No, not that side, the other side! No, the other way! Kick it with the other foot! Harder! No, not to him! To him! Back up! No, the other side! Get it! Get it! The other foot! Harder! Now turn!

(The kid, for some strange reason, falls down.) Don't fall down! Get up! Run! And so forth. When someone is learning something, obviously he can't think about the process as fast as someone who already has the skill. So it is easy for the teacher (manager) to one-up the learner at every step because the learner has to pause at each step and think through the process. It's like when you study a new language. At first you have to translate each word before going to the next. When you start to get good at a language you skip the translating part and just use words for their meaning.

When a kid is trying to learn something new or an employee is trying to think through a new idea that has been presented and the manager (parent) will not let him have the time to take even one step on his own, bad things happen. The person being badly managed loses interest, resents the manager and never gets good at soccer or selling or whatever.

I was once trying to learn to operate a boat that was bigger than anything I had run before. This was a serious machine with two big diesel engines. A captain helped me as I learned to go from A to B and how to get into and out of slips at crowded marinas. The basic problem was that I never thought I could catch up to what he was telling me. He would say something like, "Come left!" and before I could process the command, understand why it made sense, and then move my hands on the helm, he would say, "Come left!!!" I could never please him...