Ep. 229 - Micromanagement Monsters: Turning on the Light for More Effective Leadership Behaviors

It's happening again. Welcome to Work Cookie, a Seabot podcast. As we broadcast around the world, get bite-sized morsels and tidbits from our industrial organizational psychologists, other experts, and the latest research on the workplace to boost your organization's effectiveness. Sign up now at Seabot.com that's seboc.com to engage with our community. Cana sense of belonging, access our other media, and get rapid advice from our experts at seaboc.com. Welcome. I'm Dr. Jeremy Lookable, industrial organizational psychology consultant and workplace communication and negotiation coach. Also, we have Tom Bratchell with us, a voice in speech coach and a damn good actor too. He is the official voice in speech coach for the industrial organizational psychology community. Well hello and welcome to Work Cookie, our weekly gallery of I/Os, HRs, recruiters, and one actor. As we try to make the world of work just a little bit better. And today Heather, we're going to continue our discussion. Good morning to you. Good morning. Today we're going to look at micro-management monsters, turning on the lights for more effective leadership behaviors. So we've been sort of getting our progression down here. And now we're actually going to deal with some of these monsters. So, you know, we've had some chats and culture in the workplace is probably not at a good place right now. We're hearing lots of stuff on the news about things that are going on. I see that a lot of downtowns and major cities are still trying to get workers back in the downtown cores. And generally it seems that, you know, workers are not that happy. There's probably a lot of cultural issues that need to be addressed. And it does create some of these monsters. So, what can you tell us about these monsters? Maybe they're good people who have just had a bad time. How do we deal with them? Right. So, yes, I agree with everything that you said. So, in terms of micro-management, it's kind of in the name. We are trying to control or manage every little aspect of the employee's work. And I like that you brought up that, you know, in COVID, we went to remote work. And now COVID's not as, I mean, it's here, but it's not as prevalent. And so, trying to get those workers back into the office, even though like we have seen that productivity and engagement were still good when we were at home doing remote work. So, that micro-management aspect can be really damaging to employee morale. And it kind of boils down to a few things, but like one is trust whether or not the leaders or supervisors or managers trust that their employees will be able to do what they're supposed to. And also communication. So, if expectations are not communicated, then we see that micro-managing come into play because well, you're not doing it this way. Well, was it communicated? I didn't know that. And so, there's a few things involved there, but I like the topic of micro-management. I think we've all probably had a micro-managing leader in our past. Yes. And they get in the way. Right. And it really doesn't feel good, you know, especially with my experience working on projects and stuff. When you're on track with something that all of a sudden micro-management comes in and all of a sudden your schedule is blown, you almost basically have to start out. And it's really like, well, if that's the way you want it done, why did you tell me that to start with? So, yeah, there's a lot of issues, but I see we've already got some hands up. So, let's go to Lee. You know, I think at its base level, it's a figure of leadership. You know, like the old adage, you know, you manage things, you lead people. And, you know, and like Heather said, communication, especially managing expectations is massively huge and stuff like this. You know, and I love, I think it was General Patton that said, you know, tell people what to do, but not how to do it. And they will astound you with their ingenuity, to paraphrase. I'm not sure that's exact. But, and I find that that's true because I don't need to know, necessarily, the details as long as you're not breaking any rules or laws or you know, whatever, just get me the thing done by the deadline. I do it correctly. And, you know, my current team, I took over from Michael Manager. It was horrible. Oh, my goodness, it was horrible. And the guy was working himself the day. He was working crazy hours, trying to do everybody's job. And, and I mean, this guy would get on a team's call with you and dictate an email for you to send, which I always rewrote because his writing was terrible. But it, it, so when I took it over, you know, the first thing I did was to empower people to do their jobs because I would tell them, if I need to do your job, that I don't need you, make me need you. And, and people, if it was the culture of fear, oh, my lord, it was palpable. I mean, people would just be, are you sure? Yes, I'm sure, do your job. I have other things to do. I don't need to worry about this. And as soon as people became, you know, felt empowered, I mean, it took off like a, like a space act rocket, man, it was, it was astounding. The productivity increases and everything because morale was terrible. Turnover was high. I mean, just ridiculous. And I mean, unnecessary meetings and check-ins and, you know, I mean, come on, people, let's treat people like adults. If you treat them like adults, they have a tendency to act like adults. It's kind of an amazing concept. Well, maybe not for an actor. I don't advocate adult. Let me ask you, Lee, because, you know, I've, I've been in situations where I've had to deal with a supervisor who maybe gets into a little micromanagement. But I often have felt, well, if they're micromanaging me, are they being micromanaged? Like, does this start with just one person or does this become the culture of the organization where, if you're being micromanaged, likely your supervisor's being micromanaged? Possibly. I mean, you know, go back to our usual answer. It depends. Um, the, it's a culture of fear. So whether or not they are being micromanaged, they are fearful in some way. Whether that's their afraid that they're not going to get credit for something, you're going to outshine them, uh, that they are, um, being closely scrutinized by, by those above them. Maybe not necessarily micromanaged, but, but maybe, you know, have been making the grade and are, you know, getting beat up for it. And so, you know, there's that fear. And, and, you know, stuff rolls downhill. Um, and some people, it's just a lack of training. I mean, they really don't, I mean, they know how to do the thing, but they don't know how to manage people doing the thing. And so, and, well, when I did it, we did it this way. Maybe that's not the best way, you know, and, but, but they want to, they want to keep their fingers and all the things. And because they don't know how to be a leader, they don't know how to let go and let do. Um, so yeah, I mean, it can't be cultural, but I mean, and quite honestly, it doesn't necessarily have to be systemic throughout the organization. I mean, you know, the, the supervisor, I was speaking of, he was not being micromanaged by people. In fact, people were like, dude, knock it off, you know, but, and ultimately, that's part of the reason that he was asked to do something else, uh, because he just wasn't getting the message. Um, so yeah, I mean, sometimes, sometimes that may be the case, but ultimately, it's a lack of, it's a lack of leadership skills. It's a, it's a fear, fear based response, uh, and often it's a lack of training, uh, possibly of the subordinates, but also of the person who's in the management role who has not been trained to be a leader. True. And I think very much for that, you know, I, I remember once having a supervisor who I suggested that perhaps they practice a little bit more leadership and a little less management to which they informed me, they get to make any decision they want. And then they sent me off for training because I spoke up. Thank you very much. Dr. Matt, let's go to you. Oh, man, a couple of things there first to, to add on to what Lee was saying and, and to your question around is this sort of an example of the larger organizational culture. Sometimes it is, but that doesn't, just because that may be the case doesn't mean that that cycle has to continue. And so there's a sense of ownership on that leader to be able to break that cycle of, hey, you know what, this is my experience, but just because I have that or had that doesn't mean that I have to continue that. And oftentimes that can come down to, it could be things, you know, like a lack of confidence or competence. And so just defaulting to, you know what, this is how I see it's done. And I'm going to continue to do it that way, whether or not that's actually the most effective or supportive way. But when I first saw the topic for today, that my management monsters turning on the light, the first thing that actually came to mind was the Hawthorne effects, which was a series of studies in the 1920s and 1930s at Western Electric. So again, turning the light on, I was like, oh, light bulb and Hawthorne effects. And with that research, what the researchers were wanting to look at were different working conditions like lighting, breaks, work hours. If these factors were changed, how might they impact worker productivity? And initially, what they found was this is really cool. As we adjust these things, the workers respond and they're more productive. And all of a sudden, as more research started digging a little deeper, they went, wait a minute, it actually has nothing to do or very little to do with any of the working conditions, the lights, the breaks, the work hours. And it had more to do with people being aware that they were being watched, that they were being observed. And so it was again, not that the working conditions actually made that difference. It was the attention that they were receiving. And the mere fact that someone was giving them attention made it had increased in feelings of being valued. That boosted motivation and performance. The takeaway though that what has continued research has continued to look at that. So we know that that observation can lead to better performance. But there's a fine line. And when leaders cross into micromanagement, that feeling actually goes the opposite way. And employees can start to feel over scrutinized, is trusted. So instead of boosting performance, which was maybe what the intention was, it actually has the opposite effect. More effective approaches can be empowering employees, some of the stuff that Lee and Dr. Heather were talking about with that trust and that psychological safety. Research shows that trust and psychological safety are key drivers of performance. We've talked about that here on different episodes and what Tom or you were just sharing. Your example of you spoke out and you were reprimanded by, hey, you know what? I'm going to I'm the one in charge. I'm doing it my way. And here's your quote punishment is more training. That's a lack of one of the levels of psychological safety where you don't have the ability, the freedom or the support to be able to speak out. And when leaders, when you find that balance and again, to Lee's point, it depends. When you find that balance for you as your organization or as your team or as you as a leader, between what is management, what is micromanagement, what is empowering my people versus leaving them out to dry. You know, there's that fine balance that you want to, the practical balance that you want to find and that you want to set, you set that expectation. And instead of managing every task, maybe look at that things like, you know, adopting a coaching mentality. How many coaches have, you know, are out there that and I'm thinking, you know, sports coaches, for example, they know how to run that play. They've done that play a thousand times. That's why they're in that position. One of the interesting facts with like professional baseball, I'm a big baseball fan. Some of the best coaches started, they played the game and they were catchers because as a catcher, you're seeing the whole game. You're controlling that you're you're communicating with the pitch with the picture on every pitch. You're seeing where players are. You're seeing the larger picture and the smaller picture all the same time. And so that shift from micromanagement to coaching, you know, it can it can help build that confidence. It can help develop those new skills. It can empower your individuals to do what they are hired to do to at least point. I brought you in for a reason. If I'm doing your job, I don't need you. And so having that that coach mentality versus the micromanagement mentality empowers those individuals to do what it is they know how to do. They may they may not know perfectly. They may need additional support, training, development, whatever it might be. But that's where you as that manager as that coach can say, okay, how does this look? How are we doing on this? How are you developing this area? How can I support your growth? And you know that I when I hear and I see and I experience situations with with very intense micromanagers. A lot of what it comes back to is I'm curious to explore. Is there a reason behind that behavior? Is it a default or is there something again that goes back to a confidence or competence issue where maybe there's an opportunity to provide stronger leadership development to show another way? If you're not aware of another way of how to do it, then yeah, you're going to default to that. And if there if there are opportunities to learn this is how it another way can go. And here's why it might work. That communication is going to be have such a strong impact to the individual and to the teams that they're leading. Yeah, I agree. And you know, I love your baseball analogy. And isn't it interesting that the catcher of all the nine players on that team, the catcher is the only person looking in one direction. Everyone else is looking back at them just like a leader. Yeah. And I'm guessing that if I see an organization and there's a team which is dysfunctional, chances are I'm dealing with a team leader who's a micromanager. That's a good that's a good guess. And I would I would love to agree, but I'm going to default on that answer. It depends. Let's take a closer look at that organization. Let's take a closer look at what's actually going on. The behaviors that are being exhibited. And then we can start to uncover a little bit more. And then we can make some interesting guesses and hypotheses. Well, see we should do some research on that and it's sort of like online betting. And we can bet and see, you know, which is the most dominant. Anyway, Nick, let's go to you. Yeah, it's, you know, we talk about leaders who provide psychological safety. And I think the key damaging factor of micromanagement is you're stepping in and you're telling somebody in the smallest possible unit how to do their job. And so then, you know, it roads pretty quickly of, oh, you know, I guess this is just the way that I'm about to do it. And I think it's even more insidious because somebody might not be a micromanager all the time. But if early on in training, they've set this standard of, well, this is the way that I want it. And you know, every little step of the way and they have set expectations in a way that takes away the autonomy that puts a little fear of if you mess up this step, I'm going to come after you and things like that. And that's not necessarily their default, but it was just the way they were, they were training to establish something. So how do you balance that point between their R standard operating procedures? There are a certain level of ways things need to get done. Being in hospitality myself, the devil isn't the details. It's the little things that will set you apart. And so when you get down to that level, it's very easy to sound like you're nagging somebody and constantly reminding them, but you know, there's a way to do that that's, hey, this is the standard of the route set. These are the ways in which we see it happening and we need you to be on board with that. And so it's constant reminders and all of that. And it's hard to say, okay, you know, my standard line of people is as long as we're talking like adults, you know, and everybody is on the same page and we're taking care of the guests in our building. Go for it. But I think that that that lasting sort of imprint of, okay, well, they they slapped my hand because I missed a comment in a sentence. Can have a lasting effect. And that may not be a, you know, all the time, maker manager, but one time is enough to damage a relationship and an understanding. You know, you're absolutely right, Nick. I just from my past experiences, you know, I had super positive, it was a micromanager, but it wasn't all the time. It was, you know, about every three months. But you know, you just start to build that confidence back up and that trust with that manager. And then they do that micromanagement thing and you're starting again at ground zero. So thank you very much for that. Emmy, hello, let's go to you. Hello, hello. So I love this topic, but mostly because one of the many book ideas it has come to my mind over the years is describing the worst leader and all of the terrible facets that your worst leader quote unquote would embody, right? And so it's interesting to think about micromanagement as one of those aspects among many other things, but it's definitely one of the key areas that I've really broken down in that context of what it looks like to be a really terrible leader. And one of the words that Lee said that really just resonating in the word down there is the empowerment aspect, right? So what does it mean to be a micromanager on the opposite? And I'm big on looking at things over a spectrum. So when you think about micromanagement on one end of the spectrum, you know, being an empowering leader is really not the other end of the spectrum, right? It's actually being hands off, not being involved at all and being completely absent as a leader. And so where on the spectrum of leadership is success. And I think something that I just heard now as well from Nick was really talking about kind of situational, right? And situational leadership doesn't get in a fair time. And I really love to focus on what situational leadership looks like because it considers the system, the context, the people, the individuals that are really in a circumstance and then addresses a response to the circumstance appropriately. So although I think that theory doesn't get enough airtime, I'm going to go ahead and shout it out. Situational leadership is a really big area that we can look at to think of how can we do this better. And one of the authors that I really, really like is Bernabé Brown. And I've probably mentioned her a few times. And she's got a book called Dare to Lead. And in that book, there's something called the braving inventory. And it looks specifically at teams. So my area of expertise is teams more than organizations. It's the teams within the organization. And I'm just going to briefly describe the braving inventory, which is how to kind of look at a team from the leadership lens and say, where is the trust not happening in this team? And how can I as the leader start elevating these elements? And so there's boundaries. So are there issues with boundaries? Reliability. It's the acronym braving. Reliability. So are you doing what you say you're going to do? Are you consistent in your work? Accountability. That's a huge thing topic that I could talk probably for 10 days about. So I'll move on from it. Accountability is huge. The vault, which is, are you sharing information that you're not supposed to share? Are you keeping close to the pocket? The items that should be in the vault, right? Are you being reliable in that sense? Integrity, which is probably another huge topic area that I could talk for days about non-judgment, which I think is one of the big ones that we've already kind of hit on here. If we're talking about micro-manage, management and when you're responding to failure, quote, unquote, with non-judgment is really the goal there, right? And then a generosity. So what does it look like to be a caring leader or to be a generous leader in practical terms? And so I love that braving inventory as kind of a tangible, practical way to start assessing what your team looks like, your own leadership skills, right? And since we've recently talked about policing, I actually did a consulting engagement with a police officer to assess their leadership. And situational is what really came from out of it, that they have to respond and consider laws, policies, general orders in the circumstance. They have to consider the officer that's involved in the issue. And then even the person on the other end, is this a circumstance where there's criminality involved? Is this a circumstance where there's a mental health emergency? What is the context of the situation and then respond appropriately there? And so I'm really a big fan of the braving inventory and really also situational leadership to start moving away from micromanaging leadership along that spectrum of super over-involved and completely distant and absent. Let me ask you, maybe because you hit on training for leadership. And once again, we were talking earlier about people who were working online, remote workers, and one organization just recently announced that they're bringing all of their employees back into the office because the managers couldn't deal with it. And I'm sitting there going, did you train them to deal with it? So we often say it starts at the top with leadership. But once again, this is reframing that it's those managers, those people stuck in the middle, they're low on the leadership scale, but they're above everybody who's not a leader. They really seem to have been almost a lost generation where they haven't been well-trained and now work is changing. So they were behind, but now they're even further behind. So do we really have to get that message out there that it's really your organization, especially those managers that need this type of training? 100%. Yes, I think training is such a soft skill part of your budget line item, right? So organizations don't tend to want to invest in the leadership development aspects of managing. And I think that's such a miss, right? It's such a key miss when you look at research and when you look at your own anecdotal experiences, it's such a miss. In fact, that's actually one of the areas that I'm working in right now. I'm going to be launching in January is a specifically a leadership development program for remote and what I've called tech hybrid team leaders, which are those who are rolling in AI, robotics, and other modern technology in a role that maybe used to be a humans role. But that's a really critical part of it that is central to that development program is the notion that development is something that you need. It is something that we can, there's a lot of aspects of this we can teach. Even empathy can be taught in some senses and some organizations do really well at the development, even in their yearly training, right? But this is critical is to train your managers, your leaders, and bring them up into those roles, especially if you're hiring them because they were technically good or good at their jobs. Well, they might be soft skills, but they have a hard impact on a company's bottom line. So get in my folks. All right, thank you very much. With a hand, let's go to you. So when I think of micro management, you know, first as most people have said here, it's an element of trust is a trust issue, right? And can do I trust you to be able to do that job? And when I think of that and someone who's micro managing, I think of, well, whose incompetence are you overcompensating for? Is it your own or is it truly the employees? And I think that part of that goes back to the way you train people. If you think it's the employees issue, we'll have you done the right training to get them up to speed before you even decide how you're going to manage them. And then if it's, whether or not they have a person acknowledges it's their own incompetence, is it because you don't have the competent? The competence to accept responsibility for whatever your team does, right? So are you willing to go to whoever you report to and say, yeah, that's my team. We did that regardless of who did it on your team and then go work with your team to make sure that doesn't happen again. But really, I think it has a lot to do with the training process and the competence level of the person who's doing micro managing because I can see in a, especially in certain kinds of training, there does need to be when someone comes on board or starts a job or whatever, there does need to be some micro management and how you get up to speed. But beyond that, I think it's, or if someone else is, if they truly are failing and you originally trusted them and now they aren't doing their job and going back to a micro managing kind of process is valid until they start performing it where you expect them to. But in general, I think it's a lot of fear, lack of trust in themselves and a lack of confidence in themselves if you're doing that as a leader. And you don't lend an, I sometimes find that, you know, someone in the C suite goes and takes leadership training and then they train the people underneath them to make sure they have leadership skills. And then they want those people to train the people underneath them, but those people didn't actually take the training from an expert. They took it from the person who took the training and it's like the rate of diminishing values because, you know, you end up three levels deep and there's no leadership. Well, and then is this a three year program because I was in a three week program that we do this in? Yeah. Well, thank you very much. Peter, let's go to you. Yes, sorry, I was muted. Hi, everyone. Glad to have a chance to come back into this discussion after being away for a little while. Yes, something that I haven't really heard much about today, but I sincerely believe is an issue that needs to be dealt with that, frankly, it's societal level, probably across all industries is the way we develop and promote people, career ladder approaches, basically in almost any, you know, from the smallest to largest organization, the only way to advance is by being promoted into management. And very frankly, there are a lot of people who probably shouldn't be managers and therefore you know, what do we do about that? There are people I think who don't want to be managers yet, that's their only root up. And there are also I think, you know, people who shouldn't be managers, but again, that's the way the advancement works in the organization. So, you know, I'm just putting this out there. I'm curious about thoughts and experiences and organizations that have done, you know, dual career ladder systems, the management track versus the SME track and so forth where they try to, you know, kind of equate their both equal value, you know, they one is not better than the other and so forth. I know Google tried that and my understanding is it didn't actually work out that well. I don't know whose fault, if you will, that was. I think they may still have it, but my understanding is it unfortunately kind of depends on who's in charge how well that works, ironically. I believe MasterCard still has the system and I've worked in organizations that have had something along those lines, although very frankly, it sometimes the SME route was reserved for people who probably shouldn't even work in the organization, but they had been there so long, no one wanted to kind of show them the door. So here's an idea. Let's just take them out of the loop and put them over here. So anyway, you know, my take is just simply that there is, I think, a fairly big opportunity but it's also a challenge to think about who really needs to be in a management role versus who doesn't. That's what I got. Well, that's a great piece to add there, Peter. And yeah, I've seen it so many times where someone is good at their job so they get promoted into leadership. Doesn't mean they're a good leader. They don't really need to train them. Yeah, and I'm not saying that, well, I think there are people who just have a real aptitude for key leadership skills and sometimes it's recognized, but a lot of times it's not. And again, it's my experience and is that unfortunately very often the wrong people, frankly, are moved up into those management or leadership positions and that leads to these a lot of these micro management situations, the sort of not dealing with the toxic employee situations. It's so forth. - You know, I've worked in organizations where I've wondered, if you flip the food chain, would this be a better organization? And sometimes it would be, thank you very much. - Thank you, thank you. Alexander, let's go to you. It's good to see you again. Been a while. - Good to see you too. You weren't here last time I joined. All right, so I am going to state your tour name here and I've got four sources for us in the chats. So I'm going to talk about a little bit, the same thing that has been curaging up here and that we're not really upskilling our employees. So on, I believe it's my fourth source there. It talks about recent data published by Gartner that shows only 48% of digital initiatives are being met by businesses. But yet, when we look at what is the upcoming 2025 budget planning, only 16% of the CIOs are actually planning to invest in getting those skills upgraded in their workforce, which kind of puts it back to as Gartner points out that's going to continue to perpetuate this low less than half of being successful with their digital transformations. Just 18% of the CIOs said they would be prioritizing sharing technology choices with leadership and other business units. And so this really starts to bring in those aspects to it. Now, I'm working backwards here. On my third source, we actually have an article from a PWC leader who really works with businesses on CIOs in the digital transformation space. If you click on the link there, it'll take you to a highlighted text that says, if I were hiring a CIO tomorrow, I'd be looking for someone first with demonstrated leadership capabilities, not someone necessarily with a networking or applications background. You can teach technology or hire great technologists to work for you, but it's hard to teach leadership skills, listening skills to a senior person. Now, the other two sources are academic in nature. One talks about 90% of businesses, according to IBM. This was a study published actually this year. It was a projection only out for next year, so not a hard prediction there for us. 90% actually are lacking the employees who have the skills to work with cloud platforms. They really don't know what cloud platforms are. 90% of organizations. This is a major problem. We look at 33% on the second source is businesses missing the financial objectives because of the cloud lack of this. This really ties into, we know we need to have better skills. Obviously, if 90% of organizations don't have the skills, but we're not investing into it. It's 16% looking next year on their budget to upgrade those skills. That's a real problem there. And so we really have to start making the decision. Are we just going to continue to try to outsource these skills to some magical place where someone else does that upskilling? Are we going to kind of make that decision and investment for ourselves at this point? You know, Alexander, corporations spend millions of dollars in training. Are they not focusing it in the right way? Are they training the wrong way, the wrong programs? Do they need someone like yourself and Iosai call just to come in and tell them how to train their people? You do, by and large. Yeah, you get into a lot of the training comes into what's regulatory, regulatory required. So you're talking about maybe the AI or cybersecurity training. If let's blast out an email that tries to trick you and you clicked on the wrong thing, now you have to do a training. It's not necessarily at what is truly going to help you in the long term. And that really is where yeah, you need to have an IO to do it. Yes, an IO is an investment, but it's an investment that'll return value way more than it's going to cost you. Yes, it will. Thank you very much for that, Alexander. Matt, let's go back to you. So a couple of things came up while I was listening to everybody talk and going back to when I was talking earlier. And I said, you know, the light bulb and the Hawker effect and turning the lights on. I was like, oh, that's kind of serendipitous. There was another comment made that's quite serendipitous as well. I'll get to that in a second. But first, Tom, to your conversation with Emmy, you know, it just drives me bonkers when one of the things you know that just when people say leaders say, OK, Tom, go to this half day seminar. Come back and you're going to teach the rest of us. It's like, that's nails on a chalkboard to the end degree for me, because even if that half day seminar provides the greatest of information, that's fantastic for that individual, but so much is likely to be lost in that translation. But we've already kind of gone down that route. The other-- so that's serendipitous piece, though. Peter, you were talking about-- you were talking about the transition from people that are good producers, good in their position and then they get promoted in the management, right? There's actually a concept called the Peter Principle. That's what I thought was pretty funny. You were the one that brought it up. So the Peter Principle-- Well, who do you think-- who do you think coined it? Come on. Well, you know what? We could definitely give you credit that or shared credit. What I was thinking of, what it reminded me of was a book from about 50 years ago, Peter Principle, why things always go wrong. And it's a researcher, Dr. Lawrence Peter, he's from Canada, educator and management theory. And the principle really suggests that in a hierarchy form or in a traditional organizational structure, every employee tends to rise to the level of their incompetence. And so essentially, people are promoted as long as they perform well. But eventually, they reach a role where they're not competent because the skills required for that role are very different. And that-- And Matt matters. Excuse me. I think the corollary to that, if I understand it correctly, is what's known as the 80/20. Sure. That 80% of the work's done by 20% of the people. Yeah. And when you take employees from one role and they're promoted up and then let's say they go from a producer role to a manager role, that transition-- and I use that word intentionally, because it's not just a promotion. It's a transition. There's a whole new set of skills that are required for that new role that are very different from the skill sets that made them successful in previous roles. And once that level of incompetence or that level of, hey, this is a totally new skill set, once that level is reached in order to transition your skills, there is a lot of development opportunities training in management and leadership in people and behaviors, all sorts of these things that come into play, that without those resources, in a way you're setting up that individual-- I don't want to say setting them up to fail, but you're not setting them up effectively to do their job. And the ripple effect that that can have on the people that they lead can be very detrimental. And now all of a sudden, you start going, well, how do we end up with this micromanagement culture? And before you know it, it's so ingrained in everything that you're doing. You're going, oops, where do we find the off ramp to try to hit a reset? And so this is one of the things-- the other thing that it made me think of was a lot of micromanagement. When we've talked about this, a couple of people talk about it. To me, I would guess, my theory is that a lot of it comes from a lack of self-awareness. It's that competence piece. Leaders might not realize that they're being two hands on. And there's a lot of research that shows that when people, when leaders who are aware of how their behaviors and how their actions are being perceived, if they take that knowledge and turn it into actionable practical development and growth, they can be more effective. So one of the ways to improve that is by asking feedback. We're getting closer to the end of the year where there's a lot of companies that are going to be doing their annual employee engagement surveys. Those are great. And I say that with the biggest asterisk next to it. That's great if you do the survey and then take action, or at least communicate that you're going to take action. If you're just doing the survey and, well, all right, we did it. This is how we scored. Cool, moving on. Your people aren't going to feel valued. They're not going to feel heard. They're not going to feel respected. And they're not going to feel seen. And that the ability, the opportunity that that engagement survey is going to provide is going to be lost. And so outside of those by annual or annual engagement surveys, during your one-on-ones with your employees, ask, am I being too involved? How can I support you without overstepping? How is this working for you? That sort of self-reflection can help leaders adjust their behaviors and build that stronger, more trusting relationship with each of the members of their teams and that awareness around, hey, you know what? Maybe I am being a little bit of a micromanager. Or to Emmys Point, the other side of the spectrum. Maybe I'm not even present enough that I don't even know what the heck's going on with my people. They need me there a little bit more. It's all about having that self-awareness, having that conversation, and continuously adapting and evolving your skill set and your behaviors to do your job the most effective. Let me ask you this, Dr. Matt, because I've had to build those yearly evaluations. I hate them. They're usually used for evil and not good. But they're always tough. I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, that's my life. But they're always top-down. It's like, my supervisor is evaluating me. Where's the evaluation for me to evaluate my supervisor? Like does any organization do it both ways? Yes. Unfortunately, not enough to do that. And I just saw the way your face lit up. And even-- so for any leader who's out there who's going, wait a minute, companies do that. We can do that. Yes, you can. Even if your organization does not formally have that structure, You have that authority. You bring that in and don't just wait for the annual performance review where okay Tom you and I are going to check how you did the last 12 months. Well I don't remember you messing up too bad so I guess you're just going to get good scores. If you or your employee is going to that performance review at the end of the year not knowing what the conversation is going to be about you've had 12 months that you've missed those opportunities for that conversation. So Tom you're saying when is my opportunity as the employee to give feedback to my leader in a healthy dynamic every opportunity you meet with your leader every one-on-one check-in every even if it's not a formal check-in if it's hey you know what Tom can I we talk for a little bit I just want to let you know on this project we're really micromanaging every nitpicking detail or hey Tom I haven't seen you in two months can you and I talk do you even know that I'm working on this having that communication is is going to help you find your balance between micromanagement and effective leadership and to your question do companies do that provide that opportunity for employers but employees yes they do and even if it's not a formal structure you've got that opportunity and go for it. What a wonderful world it would be. I really like that thank you very much for that Nick let's go to you. Yeah it's kind of struck me you know we think about you know the devils in the details and that small focus and I think one of the things that is rolling around my head about considering micromanagement is oftentimes it's let's check the box let's do the little things let's be down on this you know day-to-day level and the manager's not zooming out to be like what's the general strategy why are we taking this box and so I think that that's you know a lack of focus a lack of understanding of the complete nature of management and I know you know with an aisle background you're really good at looking at big statistical picture and then bringing it back down to the individual team and that sort of zoom in zoom out is not an easy skill to to have or to teach and I think that is one of those things where you know somebody's saying okay well why are you making sure that you know my eyes are dotted and tees are crossed when you you know don't see that this report doesn't mean anything and I'm just wasting my time anyway you know and so I think that's where innovation gets lost and I think that far too often the power dynamics at play you know you don't get that up with feedback because you don't realize oh we're both working professionals and I just happen to have a title of supervisor or manager um but I I have some sort of authority over you um and so I don't need to listen or or anything like that I think that's where you get a lot of bad management um and I think you know people oftentimes take that authority and say I've got to get everything right because now now I'm a figurehead now people see me as somebody is important um and you know a micromanager is exhausting themselves I think we gave the example of the guy who was you know working 60 hours a week because he was doing everybody his job you know that's going to have cascading effects in their personal life along with the organization and living in a surveillance state you know where you feel like somebody's always watching you when the shoe could drop at any time that creates that heightened level of anxiety that nobody wants to be in I was in a role where I think probably the better part of three months I walked into the office every day thinking is today the day they let me go and I couldn't get out of that mold enough to actually do the job because I was so worried that you know I was not checking all the boxes and somebody was going to catch me and then and surprise me with it and so it is something that does have real lasting psychological and physiological effects um with relationships and in the office space and whether it's intentional or not there's there's there's that impact that needs to be addressed and I don't think there's one magic bullet one magic training one sentence that we can say that will you know fix this problem across organizations because there's no there's no standard of it you know what works in engineering may or may not work in software works in software may or may not work in sales um and so it does have to be that situational leadership and that situational awareness to to create the best situation for where you're at knowing what your goal is yeah you know how many people go to work for the smile on their face not enough and we got to improve that so thank you very much for that Nick and me let's go back to you situational leadership for the win I just want to call that out again so um thanks guys for for that um I have a couple of comments and one of the things that Dr. Matt talked about that's um really amazing action step right is the feedback to action in leadership and I actually was in uh delivering an OCM or organizational change management training um this last week and that was one of the big takeaways from even the people who were attending the training is that in their in their um roles or in their jobs they haven't seen a lot of feedback to action from their leaders so they would offer the feedback and it would be hey I can see that's going better in this way and they had a forum or an avenue to provide the feedback and then it would kind of fall dead on the leader's desk and so then the leader had this graveyard a feedback that never actually turned into an action step and I'm trying to use a little bit of the monsters uh fun analogies here so but this graveyard that existed on their desk right as a leader and so um one of the actual tangible tools that you can use for that other uh amazing word that you use yourself reflection is the 360 feedback um I remember the first time I ever asked for 360 feedback which is uh your resource is giving you even feedback right and and kind of your whole team or everyone around you providing that I remember asking my team for this and then I started getting these emails back and I'm like I don't even want to open these so I'm not told me a lot about my openness right or lack of it in the moment to receiving feedback to which of course I had to kind of grit through and I'm like okay I'm gonna take all of us with a grain of salt but I realized that I was not super open at that time and thankfully this is almost a decade ago now but I was not super open to hearing feedback from my team um that wasn't great and I knew that there were several questions on there that asked about that but it was really helpful once I finally opened these emails that I was dreading looking at the feedback from my team and now I recommend 360 feedback really to everyone and you have to be a person that knows that you can digest it or if you're not going to digest it well do it in private where you have time to self reflect about why you're feeling the way you're feeling about the feedback um but you got to get through these things I mean it's a muscle you're building right nobody became a bodybuilder by sitting around and eating chips and so that's you got to you got to do the workout that to get there and you've got to do the hard heavy lifting to get through some of these kind of natural tendencies we have to not want to be rejected to not want to receive feedback that's negative to feel bad about ourselves in some way and get through that and move to the other sides that you can be the bodybuilder leader because I've worked in the tech space for almost 15 years now and this happens a lot where the technically great folks then get elevated to the next level and sometimes continually and it's because they're technically involved they're technically great and they can succeed I have places where there's CIOs that are still doing development at that level if you're that involved in your day-to-day work then how are you as involved in the strategy as you need to be right and that to me is telling about where there's a little bit of a disconnect in the micromanagement space and so 360 feedback is a great practical tool to use to get feedback from your resources know that you're not going to get all the wonderful fuzzies only in that feedback and then that feedback to action you know the last note I want to make quickly I was in a training one set a library and somebody came in because public libraries allow everyone in which is fantastic and one of the feedbacks he shared during this training I was giving was that he had been working for a company that's when they went remote for COVID made them keep their cameras on the whole time they were working even if they weren't in meetings and that it made him physically ill to feel like he was being monitored and know that he they were going to tap into his computer whenever they wanted to to see what he was doing that it made him physically sick that he was always under surveillance and I'm very sad to have heard that feedback he ended up retiring from that job and never wanted to go back to work at a regular job again because of it I mean there's a huge impact to what that level of micromanagement to the point of surveillance can have on an individual and that speaks way more about the organizational culture and leader than the individual who was working there and I don't know the man but I do know that no one should feel sick going to work well you know you you hit on a really good point because trust especially during the lockdown when you know cyber security stocks skyrocketed because everybody was spying on their own employees it really destroyed that trust factor and I'm not sure that the trust factor has been rebuilt yet but we really seem to be damaging it again so it's just something we really need to focus on in all organizations is that culture of trust because it just doesn't seem to be there yes and I think the other word that comes to mind when we talk about trust is also transparency right if we are being as leaders transparent with your organization and saying these are some of the things that I'd like to implement and these are the reasons why and if you're not ready to be transparent about why you're implementing something then maybe it's time to assess why you want to implement it to begin with because it can be a trust destroyer in that sense so if you can't tell your employees I'm implementing this and this is why maybe that's the thing to start kind of diving deeper into and figuring out why you want to do it in the first place because it does destroy trust and that once that's gone that there's There's also, here I mentioned, Brane Brown. Again, there's an illustration she makes about marbles. That trust is made from a jar of marbles, right? And so every little action that you make builds a trust over time and steps and something like that knocks over the jar, all the marbles go away. And so you've got to rebuild in your marble-like state again from there. Yeah, trust, easy to build, hard to build, really easy to destroy and real quickly. Thanks for that. Rich, let's go to you. Can you hear me okay? I can. Awesome. So, as I was thinking about this, I recently saw the movie Van Helsing, which my kids are like, "Dad, why did you watch that terrible movie?" But I couldn't help but think of the Frankenstein Monster that was in this movie. And if anybody's never seen it, the plot is pretty simple. Van Helsing's a vampire hunter and the Frankenstein monsters there who was supposed to be used for evil, but it turns out that he's actually a good guy. That's kind of the simple story of that. But there's just it. People were afraid of him. And they were, because of how he behaved and his appearance and all that stuff. And I was thinking about that with regard to micromanagers because I think that there's maybe well intentioned people, right? But they're doing what they know how to do because that's how they do it. Earlier this morning, I was teaching my HR class and we were talking about assessments. So there are some assessment tools that can be used to find out, does somebody have a proclivity towards being in management? For instance, a pretty standard assessment that is actually used at ONET online and they're my next tool. It's based on Hollins codes, which is a realistic, investigative, artistic, social enterprise using a conventional and how's that for somebody who's stuck in Chicago traffic to remember that. But if you have interests in things like enterprising and conventional and maybe investigative, you might be more apt to have a proclivity towards management. And there are linked to those codes are a whole bunch of possible careers and career paths. And that's not to say that somebody who's social and artistic and enterprise and my code is can't be a manager. I'm going to manage in a different way than somebody else. And I think for organizations to understand who they have working for them and to gain that understanding, it makes it more impactful to how they train their people as well as what role to put them in. You know, Richard, it kind of gets to the point where I'm starting to go, if you want to be a leader in an organization, maybe you should take some psychology classes just to better understand your employees. If you're a CEO, you can go and take some night classes and get a psychology degree. Is that really something we need to consider to have leadership do or isn't it just the fast track to get a neuropsychologist? Well, maybe so, maybe so. But certainly today we have so much education at our fingertips. So that development piece, another thing that we were talking about in this class today, it's so ironic that we were talking about this, right, is that for career development, there are three legs to that concept, right? One is the individual taking ownership of their own career. Two is the organization providing the materials and resources and three is management. So we have the ability and the resources available to us individually to be able to do our own career development if we choose to do that, right? The organization has those resources available or at least can point people in the right direction for that type of stuff. And then there's management themselves that can help. So I guess I answer your question. I think if we want to develop into more effective leaders and if we want our management to develop into more effective managers by reducing that amount of micro management, I think we do have to look at having some psychology background of some kind. Well, there you go. Thanks very much for that. Good to see you as always. Let's go to you. Hi, thank you so much. I'm going to stick from the receiving end, you know, as an employee and all from what have been about to notice. Everything, you know, everyone has talked about, you know, it's all, I mean, it has all been good points that I really, you know, I'm like, you know, those are all points of staff. But then when we talk about things like reflection, things like feedback, somebody talked about being open enough, you know, to receive that to get that feedback. And then it talked about the 360 or something that I was also experienced because I've really been a born receiving end of people measuring my level of intelligence because of how I speak and stuff and I've really experienced, you know, micro management and workplace abuse for the longest time, like I guess for around two years since I came into the United States. And one thing that I really notice also kind of like put it around ego, entitlement and lack of accountability with these people. So when I talk about the entitlements, when we talk about the knowledge and skills, yes, organizations at some point really change these people with the skills that they need to really to be practical with their work, but then lack the people's skills one. But then also the entitlement that they don't need to do any work, it's supposed to be my work. Me could be the ones to be doing my work to impress them. At some point they kind of like have that entitlement. So to me, I speak from the culture point of view in terms of how we communicate because some of us are direct communicators and others are indirect communicators. So when you don't have that self awareness, when you lack that self awareness, and I communicate to you in the non in a non direct way, some of you, some of them, some of the leaders were offended. And I saw them just kind of like being aggressive towards me and they kind of like kept on tight marking me thinking that maybe at some point, maybe I didn't know what to do or some of them get afraid because of maybe insecurities and fears. But what I really saw was the lack of knowledge also goes into the people's skills. It's not just a training that they need because most of us are saying that they're promoted without training them and stuff and blah, blah, blah. But I just went to kind of like crappy, if I just say, if the money is that good for you to jump into these leadership skills, please be, have that accountability to be able to also educate yourself on all around kind of knowledge that can equip you to be able to support these people rather than just kind of like being in your bubble, especially from the rate that they just see the ego entitlement and lack of accountability. And then when you talk about people, you need to go do say, "Colourist studies for them to be able to lead in these spaces." They don't even really have to. It's just having small things like just getting emotional and intelligent. Just having the so far awareness and then being regulated because when you're so mature, when you're aware, you kind of reflect and you're able to assess what it is that you're missing. What kind of trauma response are you responding from? Because when you talk about trauma responses, those are easy things to ask them, easy knowledge. If you know that quality of what's needed in a job, you can still know about the trauma responses like site, flight, freezing or founding. So it's just a matter of it just to assess where am I responding from in terms of fights. Or if they tell me this kind of thing, if an employee is responding to me in this way, "Am I responding from the flight mode?" "Oh, am I responding from the flight mode?" Like someone over said that they gave me feedback, but I wasn't ready to go really face it until I kind of like face it. So it could be that kind of like flight, you know, a trauma response. So it's just just as being aware of your own emotions, how they trigger you or how are they block it for you to be able to receive this, to receive feedback and then also be supportive enough to be like a teamwork. Because some of them are going to be intimidated with employees who have more knowledge than they do. And most of them would want to, the insecurities who play on them because the employees are here, they have the knowledge and then they would start to really kind of like fit them in a certain way to make or manage them like trying to show them who has the title kind of thing. So you just have to just, you know, just be an all-around person. I'm going to be co-gengesting a more. emotionally intelligent, I think it's going to really work for you when you're kind of so far where you're going to be really regulated in how you know you live with people because it's all about us being regulated in how you know we relate and how we collaborate, which kind of at the end of the day, it's in two things that having the trust, you know, or building the trust within organizations. And then also maybe having the empathy, because when you have the empathy, you're going to be able to read these employees in motions even without them speaking in terms of reflecting. Am I being, you know, am I making money from managing? Am I really going off really to have the next people? All that needs for you to step out of yourself to be empathetic. So no, you don't need to go study the whole psychology. You just need to bring in people who are well balanced. I also colleges who have stepped into the business world and the psychological world who will be able to imagine that for you in terms of building organizational safety, psychological safety, also also psychological contracts. That's something that we really forget about, which also runs into perspective. All those things kind of like who come into balance when you just come, when you just simply just be emotional intelligent. I think that's all I just wanted to say. Thank you. There we found that button. Thank you very much, you man. Some really great points. And you know, Heather, one of the things she talks about is, you know, having leadership itself aware, you know, as an actor walking around on this planet, there's not a lot of people who are self-aware out there. Most people are, you know, living in a foggy haze of a bubble. So is that one of the things that we really should be looking at when we look at leadership, especially when we're looking at micromanagers is people who are self-aware? 100%. I wholeheartedly agree with that. And you're right. Many people are not self-aware. It takes practice and consistency to reflect on how you behave, how you interact with others, your skills, your limitations. And so taking those steps to refine that and better yourself is so important, especially if you don't want to be a micromanager. Well, there you go. And thank you very much. We're out of time. Once again, great conversation and you know, this is an hour that seems like it goes by in 15 minutes. I know. Isn't it great? Are you going to be leading us again next week or? I will. Yes. We have one final podcast for October. Yes. We will be talking about Imposter Syndrome. So this will be a super fun topic. I hope to see you guys there. As an actor, I get that one completely. Maybe we'll bring a little acting skills into that one. It's not Halloween. It's Halloween, right? What's that? It's not Halloween, yeah. Right. Masquerade. Oh, yeah. Everyone's going to come in and cost you them next week. Deal. And we can't all be pirates, but you know, thank you very much for that. And Lee, how is the networking going? It's going well. We got a we got a good solid group to show us up every week and we get a few few new people and we always love to see it. And so six thirty Eastern. Come on out and join us and we'd love to see you. And so yeah, always good time. And you can find about all the events that Seabuck by going to Seabuck.com. Take a look at the events page of the lots of listing and become a member. And if you do become a member, you get these great sessions. Once a month with one of the Seabuck masters, take advantage of that. A few people have contacted me about improving their communication skills. So become a Seabuck member, take advantage of all of the broadcasts, all of the opportunities that are out there and have a lot of fun with these people. So thank you very much, Heather. Great once again. And if you want to go this out, we'll see everyone back in one week's time. I love it. Well, thank you guys for coming and I'll see you next week. Five, four, three, two and one. [Music]