Micromanagement: What Is It And How To Deal With It

Ask most managers if they micromanage and they'll say no. Ask their teams and you'll get a different answer.

The gap between self-perception and reality makes micromanagement particularly destructive. Managers genuinely believe they're being thorough or supportive whilst their teams feel suffocated and infantilised.

Defining Micromanagement

Micromanagement means excessive control over employees' work - constant monitoring, detailed instruction on minor tasks, reluctance to delegate meaningful decision-making authority.

It's not the same as close supervision during training periods or high-stakes projects requiring careful oversight. The distinction lies in appropriateness to context and individual capability. A manager reviewing every email a new team member sends during their first month might be providing necessary support. The same manager reviewing every email from a five-year employee with an excellent track record is micromanaging.

What It Actually Looks Like

Micromanagers struggle to delegate. They assign tasks but hover constantly, requesting updates every few hours and jumping in to "fix" things before problems develop.

Process matters more than outcomes. How you complete the task becomes more important than whether you complete it effectively. They want detailed explanations of your methodology, intermediate steps, timeline - not because the project is complex but because they want control.

Approval processes become bottlenecks. Simple decisions that should take minutes require multiple check-ins. Initiative gets punished rather than rewarded because it represents deviation from the micromanager's preferred approach. Communication often increases in inverse proportion to actual issues. When everything's going well, micromanagers generate numerous emails, messages, meetings. They struggle with silence or independence, interpreting both as potential problems.

Why Managers Micromanage

Most micromanagement stems from anxiety rather than malice. The manager worries about failure, fears losing control, or lacks confidence in their team's capabilities.

Sometimes the micromanager was promoted from an individual contributor role and never transitioned from doing the work themselves to enabling others to do it. They know how they would complete tasks and can't trust different approaches.

Organisational culture contributes significantly. Companies where mistakes get punished severely create managers who try to prevent any possible error through excessive oversight. This becomes one of the signs of a toxic management culture more broadly - when the system incentivises control over development.

Some managers micromanage specific people whilst giving others autonomy, which often reflects either personality clashes or legitimate performance concerns that haven't been addressed directly.

The Real Cost

Micromanagement destroys productivity in ways that don't always show up immediately in metrics. Team members spend more time reporting on work than doing it. Decision-making slows to a crawl. Innovation stops because nobody risks trying new approaches.

Talented people leave. Professionals who could work independently choose to, at companies where they're trusted. The team composition gradually shifts toward people who either don't mind being micromanaged or lack confidence to work autonomously - neither of which builds high-performing teams.

The micromanager suffers too. They create unsustainable workload for themselves, become bottlenecks, and never develop the delegation skills necessary for advancement. Their stress levels remain perpetually elevated because they've made themselves responsible for everything.

Is Micromanagement Harassment?

People sometimes wonder whether micromanagement constitutes harassment. In most contexts, it doesn't meet legal definitions unless it involves discriminatory targeting based on protected characteristics.

That said, persistent, excessive micromanagement can create hostile work environments and contribute to constructive dismissal claims in extreme cases. The impact on mental health proves real even when legal remedies aren't available. Chronic micromanagement correlates with increased anxiety, decreased job satisfaction, and symptoms of depression in employees subjected to it over extended periods.

Dealing With It as an Employee

Direct conversation works surprisingly often. Many micromanagers lack self-awareness about their behaviour.

Request a meeting and approach it as seeking clarity rather than lodging complaints. "I want to make sure I'm meeting your expectations. Could we discuss which decisions you want me to run by you versus which ones I can make independently?" This frames the conversation around process rather than personality.

Build trust incrementally. If your manager struggles with delegation, prove reliability on smaller tasks first. Provide proactive updates before they ask for them. Demonstrate competence consistently. Sometimes the micromanagement stems from genuine uncertainty about your capabilities rather than compulsive control.

Document your work when micromanagement involves constant questioning of your decisions or timeline. "Here's what I completed this week" summaries provide objective records whilst potentially satisfying the micromanager's need for information.

Understand your manager's pressure points. If they panic about client communication, perhaps copying them on significant client emails reduces their anxiety without requiring their approval. Sometimes small accommodations significantly reduce micromanagement without compromising your autonomy on what actually matters.

Setting Boundaries

Boundaries matter even with difficult managers. You can push back professionally on excessive oversight.

"I'm finding the hourly check-ins disruptive to focused work. Could we shift to a daily end-of-day update instead?" proposes a specific alternative rather than just complaining.

If your manager insists on approving routine decisions, ask for decision-making frameworks. "What criteria should I use to determine whether to run something by you?" helps establish guidelines that create autonomy within acceptable parameters.

Be prepared for this not to work. Some micromanagers can't or won't change. At that point, you're making a calculated decision about whether the role is worth the frustration.

If You're the Micromanager

Recognition is the first step. If multiple people have mentioned that you're "very hands-on" or "detail-oriented," consider whether that's code for micromanagement.

Ask yourself what you're actually afraid of. What's the worst that happens if you don't review every email, attend every meeting, approve every decision? Often the feared consequences seem less catastrophic when examined directly.

Start small with delegation. Choose low-stakes projects and genuinely let go. Resist the urge to check in constantly. When things don't go exactly as you would have done them, ask whether the outcome was actually problematic or just different.

At scarlettabbott, we’re focused on improving every touchpoint in the employee journey - and we recognise that management style significantly impacts experience. Micromanagement at any stage - onboarding, development, project work - degrades that experience and undermines the broader employee value proposition.

Ultimately, the goal isn't abandoning all oversight: it's calibrating your involvement to what's actually necessary rather than what feels comfortable.