Lia (00:00)
When I worked at Google, I had a manager that I absolutely loved. I was a high performer and she recognized that. She would volunteer me for great projects, was always, you know, saying great things about me to leadership, but she was also a freaking micromanager. And it drove me nuts because I had demonstrated that I was doing a good job. I was getting great performance reviews. She said that she trusted me and she showed it in some ways, but she was still involved in.

Every single detail of the work.

And I say that because we can support our people, we can boost them up, we can say the best things to them. They can feel like, okay, I'm getting that recognition I want. But if you still are holding on to every single detail, that person's not gonna stay, even if they really like you. And I know because I was that person. And eventually,

Feeling like, hey, like, do you have to double check on every single thing that I do? Like eventually that wears you out. And as a team member, when you have a manager like this, you find yourself having to overcompensate proactively, finishing stuff more than maybe it was needed to. So like writing, I I was ending up writing emails to her saying, Hey, here's how I'm gonna approach this just in case you have questions later. Like it's just spent hours and hours of busy work.

So that this person wouldn't micromanage her high performer. And I'm telling you this because a lot of times you ask me the question: am I coming on too strong? Am I micromanaging? How do I know when? You know, I should let go. And it all comes down to three things. So today on the show, I'm going to talk about three tells that you are a micromanager and what we do instead. This is something that I can't talk about enough because when you micromanage your team,

They they leave. Microm high performers, I should say, leave, low performers leave. Nobody wants to be around a micromanager because you are signaling to people, I just want to do it myself, and I have a team to help do some little like tasky things when I feel like I don't want to do it. We don't want to be that person. And I know you don't wanna, I know you're not doing this on purpose. So I first want to say that. I know you are not micromanaging like on purpose.

You've decided I'm gonna micromanage everyone. I wanna be that person. Nobody does. Nobody decides they want to be a micromanager. And I've talked on the show before. So if you're kind of thinking, well, isn't expectation setting or isn't delegating all this, how do I micromanaging isn't about what, it's about when. And I have another episode on that, maybe a number of episodes on that. Micromanaging is defined by really getting involved in all the details of the work once it is happening. Okay, we always want to set expectations.

We always want to make sure people know how to be successful, that they understand the task and what done looks like, what a good job looks like, when you're going to be checking in. None of that is micromanaging. Micromanaging is when you're dipping in, controlling the how, you know, really, I don't know if that's how we wanted it after you've gotten started. But it's not just that. It is the level of involvement that you have. And my business owners listening, I know you're feeling, I want a team that can run without me.

I know you're saying, I don't know why I have to make all these decisions. I don't know why people are coming with me with everything. It's likely that you're doing one of these three things that I'm gonna talk about. And you don't realize that that creates the behavior that sort of keeps you stuck in so deep. My corporate managers listening, you're feeling like I don't even have time to have my one-on-ones or like do other stuff I'm supposed to be because I'm sucked in so deep. But you're probably doing these things too.

And I know you are because that's where I experienced them in the corporate world firsthand with my own managers. And now I see my business owners every single day falling to the same trap. Nobody is safe from the accidental micromanager. And we're also not safe even if it's in relation to our high performers. Because if it's about you, and this is real talk for a second, when when you're micromanaging, it's because there's something that you don't feel control over.

You might feel in the case for my manager at Google, she was working for the VP of our department. And for her, she was worried that if he asked her a question and she didn't know all the details, that it would look like, well, what are you even doing here? Or she was worried that she wouldn't just be able to appear so buttoned up and have every answer ready, right? Because maybe he wasn't even gonna think that. But she had her own fears. So that was her concern. For a business owner, a lot of my clients, you're thinking, well,

If this thing isn't done well, this is literally taking money out of my pocket. Of course I can't have someone screw this up. So you're holding on deep for that. Or this is my reputation. This is my business on the line. Of course I'm not gonna let some team member that's not even doing the right thing mess this up. Both of those things are about the confidence that you have in your team. And if you want to have a team and you wanna be able to scale, you've gotta figure that out.

Sorry, right? Like you have to. So this is not an optional. What we're talking about today is how to be able to recognize when you're like, well, I did sex citations. I I feel like I did this. These tells that I'm going to go through in a second, a lot of people don't realize and they kind of wake you up to it. Because you may not be line line editing every email someone's going to send out. That my Google Ant Manager also did, and that drove me nuts.

saying like okay and I take a quick look and then was like correcting every email like little stuff that was not you know significant. now we all have Claude for that so nobody needs to be doing that. all the way down to asking me after you know a big meeting did you send you know are you gonna send a recap? Stuff that I've of I always did, you know wasn't needed to be asked. Right. So that was really a her thing because I was doing those things all the time. But now that created

Meaning to go, hey, we have the meeting later today. Here's my prep. Here's the stuff I'm gonna do after, this, this, this. Like, what a freaking waste of time so that she wouldn't ask me these dumbass questions, right? Okay, still frustrated about it. Don't worry. We're okay. So, how do you know if you're not line line editing the emails and you're not asking all these questions, but you feel like, well, maybe, maybe I do have a blind spot to this.

Here are the three tells. Number one, you are in every single meeting. And this one hurts. You feel like, hey, maybe my team asked me to be in the meetings. They, they, they want me to be there. There's a difficult client or difficult stakeholder or a cross-functional team you're working with. And your team's like, hey, it's really helpful when you're in these meetings. And so you're, you're there. Other times maybe you feel like, people aren't ready, or I don't know how they're gonna answer that question, or this client's really particular, so I gotta be there.

When you are in every single meeting, you are giving your team members no space to operate without you. You are essentially paying for them and you to do the same job. Like it's just, it doesn't scale. It doesn't make sense. And they come to rely on you to be there to answer the hard questions. Now, I talk about this a lot in the New Manager Playbook because like this is one of those things that everybody feels like.

I don't have enough time. I'm spread so thin. It's a time, time, time thing. It's not a time thing. It's a trust thing. You don't trust your team members to say the right things if you're not there, or to make the right decisions if you're not there, or to carry out the meeting the right way if you're not there, or you don't clut trust the client to be able to feel faith in your team, whatever it is, it's a trust thing. So you start to build that trust by having your team members shadow you, see how you answer hard questions, or briefing the client, saying,

Hey, I put my best team on this. They're gonna be running the meeting. If you have questions, you can come to me. But you know, like you set some context so that people can run without you. But if you are sitting there and you are in meetings from dusk till dawn, or dawn till dusk, I should say, and you're can't step away, you are definitely micromanaging your team because you don't need to be in every single meeting your team is in. I'm just gonna say that. And we can figure that out. You need help with that.

Reach out Leagar.com slash contact, send me a note about what is going on, and we can free up. I would say, I could probably free up 10 hours a week. I'm just gonna go out and said that, say that. I pretty I'm pretty sure at least 10. I could probably get more, but we'll start with 10. Number two, if you are making every decision, okay. Decisions are tricky. A lot of times making decisions are scary for your teams. They don't want to get it wrong.

They wanna just run this by you. But when you are the final decider on every single thing, again, you don't have a team, you have like a list set of like worker bees halfway finishing a task, but bringing it back to you. I've talked about it before in terms of are you delegating or are you dispatching? If you are making every single decision, you're actually dispatching. You're playing fetch with a task. Go do this, bring it back. I will decide. Whenever the ball comes back to you, you're deciding.

So you're not scaling yourself, you're involved in too many things, and it's it's micromanaging because you are in charge of the small things, right? Micromanaging, literally textbook. Now again, I said that decision making can be scary. Sometimes you're this doesn't present as your team members being like, but I want to make the decisions. You know what I mean? A lot of times they come to you out of habit, or they come to you because they're scared. They don't feel empowered to make decisions. You flip this.

By asking your team members what they think, how they would solve this, what would they decide? You don't just make the call over and over and over. You've got to flip this, you've got to instill that confidence in them. And if you're like, well, I can't have this make making this huge decision, start with smaller things and then build and build and build. But you're making all the decisions, you're in all the meetings, no way. You're not gonna scale. It's impossible, right? And then in it's going to be because you're a micromanager.

Again, the word sounds like an insult, but if you are in charge of all the minutiae, you are managing the micro, right? We we arrive at the same conclusion. Last but not least, lucky number three, you're not delegating. When I had that manager at Google, we the whole team would look at her and be like, my God, she's in every single meeting. She is spread so thin. She had this to-do, she was like, God, if I can get through half my to-do list, I'm lucky. She would always be saying like she had no time.

She was spread so thin. And I remember saying to her a number of times, hey, like I've got some bandwidth. Can I take something off your plate? And she's like, yeah, yeah, let me get back to you. And would never, ever delegate. Never. And again, while looking back, I know it was her own control thing potentially. What it's told me, and the reason I left that team, was because it told me I have some important things.

And you're never going to do those things because I don't want to let go of those. The important things are for me. And you over here, you can do like the little things that I want to delegate. Because she would hand off, like, yeah, it'd be great if like after this big meeting, you can send the deck out. Like, are you serious? That was what the big task you delegated to me to advance my career. It was insulting. And and and so we cannot forget this: that when our team members come to us and say, Hey, can I take something off your plate? Or I've got

Ban with, I've got cycles. When they actually say that, because a lot of people these days just would rather have less work. Like, let's be honest. A lot of people would be like, phew, I got less to do. I don't have I'm not busy. I can chill. Maybe I can, if it's a work from home day, I can just get to that yoga class, whatever. Or they just want to not feel time pressure, even if they are fine, you know, just like staying at the desk, whatever. If people are coming to you and asking you for projects.

Give them projects. I mean, w is it any more obvious? And again, you got you can hear it. I'm still I'm still heated up. I'm fired up about this because it it's like, why in the world would we turn down a person that's good at their job that's trying to help you? And if you think about the moments when someone asked, Hey, can I take more on?

Can I do this project or I've got cycles? How that person, when they ask you that, that is one of the three tells that I have shared as a signal a high performer is going to leave.

How how deep does that cut? Team members asking for more work and you saying no, that's you being a micromanager and that's your team member deciding, gosh, there's no future for me here. Because they don't want me to take on any kind of this business high impact work. The big projects that could actually move the needle, that could get me a promotion or get me further in my career, like I've got time, I can do it.

You you're showing them like, nah, nah, I'm good. I'd rather just like stay up later. And I know you're not doing this on purpose. But I'm saying this as like this is my redemption story. I'm saying this as the team member that just wished that this manager realized what she was doing. Because I said there was a lot of great qualities. She was a big advocate for me. And we got along really, really well.

But the more this behavior continued, the more just like, what? Like this is just exhausting. It became exhausting. And I knew that I would never be able to demonstrate my impact because I had like the the person that was right there next to me that was like higher up in the hierarchy. That's never gonna be work for folks. So a big reason people leave, again, is w one, like I said, feeling like you don't trust them.

But two, feeling like, well, I don't really have a a career here. There's not a path for me. And the reason they feel this way is when you're sitting there in the sidecar, how are they going to be able to race on their own? It's not possible. These three tells that your micromanager, when you shift out of these, not only I already told you I'm gonna save you 10 hours a week by not being in all the meetings, and the decisions one, there's another probably.

How about another five hours a week? Maybe together those things are about 15. You could save half the time in your week by not doing these things. and then when you've delegated some stuff now, now you have another 20 hours a week freed up to do actually important things that aren't the same things as you're paying someone else to be doing. Because that's where we really start to feel it. Business owners, I know you are taking on this work because you feel like this money's coming out of your pocket and you can't afford to lose it. But you're actually.

using your like higher value time to do the job that you're paying someone else to do. So you're already losing money by doing this. And man, my corporate managers out there, if you are doing work that your team members are gonna do, especially your high performers, you're gonna have a revolving door. You're gonna lose those folks. You are going to cut yourself off from growing and from like rising through their ranks because you're doing work that you've hired a team so that you do not have to do.

You're missing out on all this high-level work that you're just leaving, leaving by the wayside because you'd rather do the kind of tactical things that you have other people that are supposed to be doing that work for. So I hope this sunk in. I hope my story helps you see how this plays out. High performers leave. That's the first thing that happens. You burn out, you lose out on a promotion, the ability to scale.

You lose out on having that revenue freed up so that you can maybe hire another person or invest into your business. All of this is a losing game and and it doesn't even get you anywhere. I think if if micromanaging actually led to better results, we'd be having a different conversation. But the more you're involved, the less people step up because they either think, well, they're signaling they don't want me to step up, or they get used to it and they're never going to be accountable. So either way, we don't want to do this.

Now, if you want to dive into your team, your schedule, your situation, and save that 20 hours a week, I assure you it is when we add it all up, yeah, at least 20 hours a week. You reach out, hello at liagarvin.com Share where you're feeling like, ooh, this started to hit home, and we can identify immediately.

these places that will save you time. This is something you cannot afford not to implement. So I think today gave you some places to start and I'd love to help you get the rest of the way. All right. See you next time.