How to Deal with a Micromanaging Boss

Leadership

Nov 19

Episode 281 | Author: Emilie Aries

I recently heard from a Bossed Up community member who was dealing with a micromanaging boss at work. She wrote:

“I am a senior member of the leadership team at a nonprofit, but my boss treats me like a manager, at best. I have very little leeway to do anything without her approval—including sending emails, scheduling meetings, and making decisions related to my team. I am often stuck waiting for her approval, or don’t even have a chance to run big strategic things by her, because she’s so busy and bogged down in the details. She has been super critical of me in the past, and while I know I have made mistakes, I don’t think her critical response has been warranted (ie the punishment hasn’t fit the crime!).
My performance review is finally coming up, and I’m feeling a little on the defensive already. How can I communicate professionally to a micro-managey boss that the biggest barrier to doing my job well is.... her??”

First off: I’m so sorry this is happening to you! This sounds like a total nightmare, and I’m sorry you have to deal with this. My friend, Therapist Lena Derhally, would tell me about folks who come into her office with PTSD symptoms after having to work with a toxic boss, and I can totally see why!

In today’s post, I’m going to share a few different perspectives and practical strategies for how to consider handling this. But remember: you know your boss better than I do, so only you can decide how to move forward. Furthermore, only you know your own risk tolerance. Got six months of savings in the bank? Quit today and figure it out starting tomorrow! Living paycheck to paycheck? You have to be delicate to protect yourself. This, dear reader, is a reminder of the importance of having a f*ck off fund.

Why do people micromanage?

The underlying problem behind micromanagement is almost always anxiety and stress. Odds are, your boss is projecting her stress onto you in the form of grasping for a sense of control. According to Jenny Chatman in the Harvard Business Review, a professor of management at Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, “Micromanagers are obsessed with control. You know you are working with one if he or she gets involved in a level of detail that is way below his or her pay grade.”

This overbearing form of asserting control may also stem from a lack of emotional management, which Dr. Marc Brackett, founder and director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, discusses at length in Permission to Feel. I bet he’d argue that these kinds of leaders are reverting to controlling strategies by default, without really thinking through whether it’s helping to achieve their goals. One of Brackett’s emotional management tools, the meta-moment can help:

We call it “meta” because it’s a moment about a moment. It might mean mentally counting, as in 1, 2, 3, or 1 to 10, depending on the severity of the emotion. Taking one or several deep breaths may also be a part of it — anything to give ourselves room to maneuver and deactivate.

Beyond stress and anxiety, or poor emotional management, micromanaging can also be a byproduct of poor communication and low trust. If your boss is breathing down your back, it may be a sign that they don’t know how else to be kept in the loop.

Why is micromanaging so bad?

We all know it’s terrible from the employee perspective: it’s demoralizing, you feel stuck doing piecemeal work, you feel like you’re not trusted to make decisions with impact, you feel like your creative input is unwelcome. It’s especially damaging because long-term micromanaging can have lasting consequences: it can actually begins to chip away at your own sense of self and your own capacity.

But what’s rarely discussed is how damaging micromanaging is to the boss themselves, too. Delegating to and empowering others is what expands your leadership capacity. Can you imagine delegating tasks or projects and then having to essentially do them yourself on top of everything else you have do? What a stress-inducing, time-limiting, isolating way to lead! You must feel like you’re in it all alone and have no belief in others’ willingness to help or ability to do so well. That sounds awful, too! And frankly, it sounds like this is a boss who simply needs to work on her leadership and management development.

How to stop being micromanaged

1. Whatever you do, don’t say the word “micromanager”

Seriously, this will not help your cause. Whether you approach your boss at your review or not, do not say “micromanage” or “micromanager” to describe their behavior or them. It will not help your cause. It’s kind of like asking your mentor if they’ll be you mentor. Awkward.

2. Try to get at your boss’s underlying anxiety

More than likely, your micromanaging boss is dealing with a lot of stress and anxiety. Ask them about it! What’s underlying their stress? How can you help alleviate it? Approach this with an observational comment like, “I noticed on Friday when you said you had to work until 7pm that you’ve got way too much on your plate. What’s got you feeling overwhelmed, and how can I help?” No matter how much emotional intelligence and psychological safety you try to bring to the conversation, realize that you can’t force them to level with you. But you can create a non-judgmental space for them to choose to be brave and share what they’re going through.

3. Get clear on their hopes, fears, and priorities

I’ve shared this before and I’ll share it again: one of the best things you can ask your manager is this: “How can I align my priorities with yours?” What this does is give your boss the opportunity to think critically about where they need your help now. It’s a way of catering to their sense of urgency. Similarly, you’ll want to get a sense of what their hopes and fears are - and how you can help support them in the face of those. Who are they reporting to? How can you help them look good in front of their boss? What are they hoping to achieve?

4. Establish clear communication expectations

Remember: part of the underlying causes behind micromanagement is a need for control. One way you can directly play into your boss’s desire for control while still getting them off your back is to keep them in the know. CC them on important emails you know they’re going to want to monitor. Send an end-of-day or end-of-week update via email with a catalog of all the progress you’ve made and a list of outstanding items you’re waiting on them for. Taking initiative in this way isn’t annoying, it’s convenient! Make their life easier by being proactive about communication.

And of course, you don’t have to come up with these protocols in isolation: talk about how you want to talk. Discuss what communications best practices will work best for you. Revisit the topic regularly and adjust as needed. Keep them in the know regularly and they won’t feel the need to constantly peer over your shoulder.

5. Do everything you can to earn their trust

Micromanagers are anxious and stressed in part because they don’t trust you to get the job done as well as they would. Put your bruised ego aside for a moment, because I know how insulting that can sound, and instead focus on doing everything in your power to earn their trust. How can you inspire confidence in them? Author Brené Brown uses a “marble jar” metaphor to talk about trust: she says that every action someone takes showing you that they respect and care for you earns them a marble in your jar. It takes time to fill that jar all the way up and build a fully trusting relationship! But every time someone does you wrong, the marble jar empties out and you have a long ways to go to start over.

So a big part of how you’ll build trust with a micromanaging boss is through honesty and integrity - when things are going well and when they’re not. A mentor of mine way back in the day told me, “Emilie, bad news doesn’t age well.” When things go wrong, or are looking like they might go wrong, flag it for your boss early! Don’t try and cover it up, figure it out on your own, or delay. Deal with it openly and position yourself and your boss on the same side of the team, tackling the problem together. It takes hard work, consistency, and candor to build trust with anyone, and especially someone who anxiously clings onto a sense of control. Talk about it with them openly and consider trust-building part of your job.

How do you deal with a micromanager?

Weigh in via the comments below to share what’s worked best for you! Or, if you’re looking for more resources on leadership and management, join my upcoming free online training, What Women Managers Need to Lead!