How To Get Out Of The Weeds Of Micro-Managing & Build Team Trust

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Becca Banyard: Micro management can be the silent killer of creativity, innovation and job satisfaction. And this managerial tendency not only hinders employee empowerment, but it also needlessly immerses managers in operational minutiae. So how can managers avoid falling into the micromanagement trap? 

Welcome to the People Managing People podcast. We're on a mission to build a better world of work and to help you create happy, healthy, and productive workplaces. I'm your host, Becca Banyard.

Today's guest is Lia Garvin, Founder and CEO at The Workplace Reframe, and she's going to be shedding a light on micromanagement, why it happens and how to break free from its clutches. So stay tuned!

Lia, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you here today. 

Lia Garvin: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. 

Becca Banyard: So we're going to be diving into the topic of micromanaging, which I think many, if not most of us have probably experienced being micromanaged before in our careers. But before we dive in, I'd love to know just a little bit more about yourself.

Could you share with us what you're passionate about and how you spend your days at work? 

Lia Garvin: So I am an organizational effectiveness or business consultant and I support teams in both big and small companies on how to work better together, how to work more effectively and have more motivated and profitable teams.

So for bigger companies, that looks a lot like doing manager development workshops, feedback trainings, employee engagement work. And then for small businesses and entrepreneurs, I support them in figuring out their team operations so that they can get out of the weeds and really scale their teams and help their teams grow.

So that's what I love to do. I think what really motivates me is helping people enjoy work a little bit more. And so I think some of the tools that I use are like workshops and establishing playbooks and SOPs, but the real passion there and my, I think like my real superpowers are recognizing, well, what's, where are people getting stuck on?

What's getting in the way from people operating their best and where are people getting frustrated or feeling demoralized and how do we make really subtle shifts to help people work in a better way? And I like to call this disruption without destruction because it usually doesn't take major overhauls for a team to be operating in a better way.

It's often really small targeted shifts that help teams go from feeling like, maybe people are excluded or not feeling valued or recognized or feeling like unclear on priorities. Making some really subtle shifts can kind of turn that whole thing around really, really quickly. 

Becca Banyard: So let's focus on micromanagement and I want to start off kind of why we're having this conversation in the first place. So from your experience, what are some of the negative impacts that micromanagement have on not only the employee and their performance, but also the organization as a whole? 

Lia Garvin: So you know, you mentioned the why behind micromanagement. I think, a lot of times when managers or team leaders, and so this could be in a small business or a corporate setting, then when someone is micromanaging, a lot of times that is because they're feeling a lot of pressure from someplace.

Maybe they're feeling pressure on deadlines, on budgets, getting it from their own management chain. And that often leads people to grasp for control or something. And so I think we rarely micromanage because we're like, Oh, I want to get in this business. But we more so we're like, I got to have more of a handle on this.

And so I think when that already points to a situation of, you know, for that manager not feeling very secure, maybe they have a learning curve in their own role. Like I've noticed when I worked in, in team operations and program management in the corporate world, sometimes I'd have managers that would jump in and start to micromanage me because sort of like team related work was more comfortable for them.

They liked doing that. And so it was like, Oh, like I'll just get involved in this. So that was one of the reasons that sometimes. Sometimes it was because they were, as I mentioned, they were getting pressure from their stakeholder or the client they were working with. So they were like, okay, I want to make sure that I've covered myself.

And so I think the first thing is like when people are micromanaging, it's a symptom of some unease that's happening somewhere else. And I think to solve it, it's both that manage themselves has to think about it, but then we got to figure out how we clear up that thing that caused the micromanaging in the first place.

Now, another reason people micromanage is maybe there's not a lot of trust on the team. And that's going to be something that's really tough for people to acknowledge. We don't want to say like, I don't trust my team member. That's comes off kind of harsh a little bit. Not something that we really want to acknowledge a lot of times.

But if we are having to check constantly on the status of something that says we don't trust them, like whether we want to admit it or not. So that's another thing that's coming up a lot right now, especially with remote and hybrid teams of I want to feel like I'm up to speed on everything, but I don't see someone every day, so I'm feeling uneasy and I need to be checking in.

So we know kind of like why, what the drivers are. Now the cost of micromanaging, I would say it's probably the single biggest driver of the low engagement we're seeing in the workplace. And this is not just coming from me and my observations in working with teams. It's also coming from all the data that the Gallup organization has been collecting over the years on employee engagement and they're seeing, and I think McKinsey has a lot of data on employee engagement, a lot of stuff on HBR around engagement. We're seeing engagement on the decline and managers are really at the center of it.

And I think right now because of hybrid work and less kind of contact with our team members, there is less feedback that we're seeing happening right now because of that. There is more grasping for some of that control and the cost is people feeling, what is low engagement? It means I don't feel very excited about my work.

I don't feel connected to it. Maybe I don't feel a sense of purpose. I don't feel very motivated, kind of just doing the job. You know, we had the great resignation, but then a lot of people are staying right now because of all the economic uncertainty doesn't mean they love that job, doesn't mean they're that engaged.

And I think you also have all this stuff with quiet quitting and people are still there working really hard. And I'm like, Hey, I'm not quite quitting. Like I'm working hard. I don't want a perception that I'm not doing enough. And so there's just like a lot happening in the workplace. And so I think for a team, when a manager is micromanaging, like I said, the biggest cost is team members starting to feel demoralized, either feeling like, well, I'm not going to take responsibility for this work because my manager is going to just do it anyway. So you start to see less of this ownership mindset, start to see less accountability.

You actually start seeing more balls dropped because people are relying on their manager to come in and like do it anyway. And so for organizations and businesses, you start to see a ripple effect of that. People are just feeling down. They're not moving as there's probably like lack of effectiveness because they, they're not really seeing things through.

They're kind of waiting for the next marching orders from their managers. So think across the board, you really, it really starts to chip away at both engagement and the effectiveness of the organization. 

Becca Banyard: Yeah. Do you think that there's the possibility in some situations that micromanaging is actually increasing in an employee and manager relationship because of things like quiet quitting and the great resignation and so from management standpoint, they're struggling to trust that their employees are actually engaged and going to follow through in what they're being asked?

Lia Garvin: I love the question and I absolutely agree. And I've actually been saying quite a bit, I talked about this a little bit on my podcast, Managing Made Simple, but I think that talking about quiet quitting, talking about I'm just doing the bare minimum, talking about I'm just doing my job until I can find the next thing, I think that's really harmful. And I think for folks like, like a little bit overshared and there's like a little bit too much of the TikTok trends right now because I think inadvertently there is now this perception that employees are like barely doing anything and that's not the case. 

When it's not the case at all, it's not what I've seen. It's not what I've observed working in the corporate world, working in big tech throughout the whole pandemic, working with teams across all different kinds of industries. People are really working hard. People are burning out. They're working as much as ever.

And so these trends that became really, these concepts that became trendy, I should say, and being these viral trends, it's created this belief that no one's doing anything and that they should be, yeah, under more scrutiny. And instead of then micromanaging or setting up like monitoring tools on keyboards and eye tracking or whatever, instead of monitoring, we have to have more conversations around setting expectations.

We have to build more trust with our employees. We have to have feedback conversations. And these are not conversations that happen once. It's like, Hey, let's talk about expectations for this week. Let's talk about it midweek, how we're going. Let's talk about the end of the week. But then we step back and we let people run with it.

You can have expectation setting and resetting conversations frequently. You can give feedback frequently based on those expectations. But I think the, you know, right now we're seeing a little bit of mistrust as you called out because of some of those trends and some of the things that are in the ether.

And then not a lot of expectation setting, because it takes some time, or the belief that it does. I don't really believe it takes a lot of time, but there's a belief like I'm busy, like just run with it. Then we don't get a lot of feedback and then we want to track people's work, like monitor it because we didn't see what we wanted.

So I think there's a real breakdown right now that could be solved with less of the viral trends and actually like talking about, well, like here I am working hard, like kind of going back to that. And then building trust, having clear expectations, and then having really an open loop around feedback. 

Becca Banyard: So what can a manager do to either build or repair trust between themselves and their employees?

Lia Garvin: You know, if you're finding yourself in this trap, like, Oh, I realize I am kind of micromanaging. There's always something you can do about it. It's not too late. And I think the first thing we would do is we own up to it. We say, Hey, I recognize I've been a little bit too much in the weeds lately. And I've actually had a manager say this to me and it was really, really powering.

She came to me and she said, Hey, I got some feedback in our manager survey or whatever. I mean, it was like, and she said, I recognize like, yeah, I have been doing this a little bit. I have been in the weeds too much. Can you help me stay kind of a little bit of distance? Can you flag it when you feel like, Hey, no, I got this handle.

Can you give me feedback? And when she acknowledged this, it really started to repair the situation. And quickly I said, Oh, wow. Like, she didn't mean to do it. It wasn't because she didn't trust me, it was because she was under a lot of pressure and that was her way of coping with that. And so just by hearing that, it was so much repair to the relationship.

And then because she opened the door for feedback, I could say when she started to step in like, Hey, I think this is something that I can run with. I would love to get your feedback once I have it to this certain point. So it created a really easy way to be able to give feedback because she had opened the door.

And so I think absolutely, like, it's not too late to fix it if you're feeling that way. And you'll be so pleasantly surprised that the relationship can shift overnight when you own up to it. Because when you take responsibility, that brings you so much closer to someone. And so if you say, Hey, you know, I noticed I'm doing this thing.

It's not how I want to show up. When they do give you that feedback, you're receptive to it and you don't get defensive, but you say, Oh, thank you for calling it out. This is going to transform the relationship. And it's going to increase that engagement because someone says, Oh, wow, like I have a manager that actually values my perspectives and so on and so on.

Becca Banyard: So when your situation, you said your manager, it wasn't because of a lack of trust that they were micromanaging. But what if as a manager there is a lack of trust with a specific employee, what do you recommend in those situations in order to kind of call the employee to a higher standard and to give them a second chance to meet that standard?

Lia Garvin: Absolutely. I mean, in any relationship, we have to build trust through communication, through predictability and communication is a huge one. And so I think starting with getting to know our team members is really important. Even if it's someone that's like a contractor working temporarily, like it's really important to spend some time getting to know someone, to understand what is their work style? 

What are their preferences? How do they receive feedback, constructive feedback and appreciation, right? Because when we get to know someone, we start to see, like, we can start challenging our own assumption and biases, right? If we, people don't all work the same as us. In fact, people rarely work the exact same way as us. But when we kind of used to expecting things to be the way we do it because that's like, everybody thinks like things are going to be the same as they do them. So the first thing is really to get to know our team members, to spend time, have conversations, make a little bit of upfront investment in understanding how they work.

So that when something comes up, you have that foundation to go to instead of like, oh, it's because they don't care or, oh, it's because of this assumption. Oh, it's because they didn't bother with this. This is going to be critical in being able to do the next thing, which is like giving someone the benefit of the doubt based on that thing.

And recognizing, you know, okay, when something doesn't happen the way I wanted it to, was it because an expectation gap? Was it because a skill gap? Or was it because of some kind of other sort of communication gap? And the expectation gap is solved through setting clear expectations that we talked about.

Not just saying like, Hey, here's what I expect, but getting grander like, Hey, I want you to run with this project. You know, I'm going to need to, let's check in on it midway each week. In that check, and I'd like to see this and this. Being really clear about all the pieces that go into it and not just assuming the person is going to know exactly what you want to share.

And then part of expectation setting is talking about what success looks like saying, Hey, here's what done looks like. You know, we have these three things included in the final project. We have met with these people and gotten this alignment from stakeholders. The client has given this kind of feedback, right?

This is what, how we get people to know, like, it's not just what's in my mind, but I have said a clear goalpost. And now we can come back and give feedback based on that. So that conversation is going to allow you to have a foundation that you can then build trust upon. But if you haven't set expectations, like then you're just hoping that both people are reading each other's lines and that doesn't ever happen that way.

So that's how you address like, is it an expectations gap? Now we can also see sometimes that we've set expectations, success, clear. It's like we are on the same page. And then the person is not meeting the mark. And I think through, again, talking to someone, having regular feedback, asking them like, Hey, you know, we talked about this and I'm not seeing this, like what got in your way and using open ended coach like questions.

So this is like, what got in your way or what do you think is missing here or what do you want to try next time? Questions like that. We can see, Oh, it's actually a skill gap. So I asked this person to do this thing and maybe they said they could because they wanted to, but then when it came to actually doing that task, they weren't quite there.

So like maybe it was running a client meeting in a certain way or, wrangling some big project across it by just stakeholders from different kinds of teams. Like maybe that was something they weren't quite ready. Well, we found that it's a skill gap. Now we can help give them that support.

So maybe they can shadow someone, look at some examples, maybe they can bite off a smaller kind of projects related so they can build up the skills. But that's, I think the biggest way to build trust and start to establish is like, you know, not just assuming someone can't do it because of some thing, like they're not cut out for it. They don't care that I'm motivated enough or they're, you know, whatever, but saying, okay, I'm the manager. I'm here to support them. I got to make sure that I've been super clear on expectations and given them the support on the skill side. And now what are we left with?

And then I mentioned there's like maybe a third bucket, like other communication, like catch all. If we've addressed expectations and it's a skill gap and we're just not seeing, then I think there's a different piece where like, there's a really an accountability gap. Which I think is often solved through the expectation setting.

But when there's an accountability gap and the person's just really like, you know, I'm not seeing it. I'm not getting, I'm not taking responsibility. Then that's another moment to have some maybe more hard, constructive feedback conversations around what does it mean to be a team member in your team, organization, or your company?

Becca Banyard: So I'm curious for smaller teams or for entrepreneurs who maybe they only have like one or two employees and they don't have all of these feedback loops set up and established. I think it can be quite intimidating as the employee to share with basically the CEO of the company that they are feeling micromanaged.

So what can an employee do to kind of identify or bring that issue up with their manager or the head of the company and vice versa? What can or what should a manager or CEO be asking themselves when they're considering whether or not they're micromanaging? 

Lia Garvin: So from the manager or CEO or business owner's standpoint, I think there's a few tells that show us that we're micromanaging and we could actually take a step back.

And both of these are solved in a very similar way. So the first one is when we're finding ourselves constantly in meetings, like sunrise to sundown, we're in every single meeting and we're the one doing all the talking and all the meetings, right? Because this is an opportunity where we can see, okay, if we're in every single conversation.

We're not letting our team members to step up. We're not letting our team members lead. We're not letting our team members either build relationships with clients or stakeholders or whoever. We're kind of running all this stuff. So when we're finding ourselves in every single meeting, that's an opportunity to do like an audit of how are you spending your week and say, Hey, where are there moments that I could delegate to a team member to run with something?

And if I'm not delegating because I'm worried how it's going to go, maybe I give them some coaching beforehand and say, Hey, for this kind of meeting, here's how we want to run this. And maybe you shadow it for a while and then you let it go, but really taking a step back. Now it's really similar for the next thing.

That's another tell is when we're making all the decisions. Right now, when we're making every single decision in our business from company strategy to like hashtags and social media copy, this is telling us that we're not letting our team members be autonomous and being actually able to step up as owners.

And I think the ultimate goal on any team is for team members to have an ownership mindset, to bring proactivity, to solve problems before they become problems, to say like, Hey, I noticed this small thing, but this bigger solution would actually fix it better and for longer. That's the goal. We have to let people step up.

So we can't be making every single decision. So in a really similar way as auditing your meetings, you want to audit the decisions that you're making on a typical week and say, Hey, which of these do I absolutely, absolutely have to make? And it's only like one or two, trust me. And then what are the ones that I can be pushing down the chain? And that's going to really be game changing for the micromanaging. 

Becca Banyard: Earlier, you said that often micromanaging is because of pressure that's coming down, down the pipe to a manager. Are there any things within an organization or within a corporate culture that particularly contribute to manager's micromanaging?

Lia Garvin: I think, yeah, a couple of things in corporate, I think are communication gaps. And I would say, a lot of times without clear, like very lightweight. And I say the word process and everyone's like, well, like when we don't have a clear process of like how information flows through a team, then people don't know.

And then they're like, wait a second, what happened with that thing? I need to know right now. Like tell me what's going on. So I think one of the biggest gaps that I see in every single team I've ever worked with in the corporate is like really not a lot of clarity on communication norms. How do we communicate decisions?

How do we communicate status? How do we communicate risks, mitigation? How do we talk about trade offs? When we don't have little processes for each of those things, and by process I mean, like, it can be two steps, like, here's who's included in the decision making, here's how we give inputs, this is when we share it out.

You know what I mean? It's like, I'm not talking about, like, having a 30 page process for this. We don't have clarity. Simple, simplicity and clarity around these different things. That's where I think people start micromanaging because that's where you get anxious because you don't know when you have to like grab onto something.

So I think when we feel ourselves leaning towards wanting to grasp for control, instead of that, the question is like, what can I do to create more flow and communication? And then you're going to find that actually introducing something really simple there, like saying, Hey, every Friday, we're going to have each team member send an email or sort of bubble up for their team, like, you know, one highlight, one low light.

That's a very simple process that can give more visibility into what's going on. Or every, at the end of every week, we're going to summarize, like, what were the key decisions that were made this week? Or you say, at the end of this week, we're going to talk about three goals for next week. You know, these things, like, this is what I mean by process, very, very simple communication norms that just create more flow and communication and it starts to alleviate that anxiety about not knowing what's going on.

Becca Banyard: So it could be communication that's missing. It could be that there's not enough clarity. Is it possible also that middle managers, they are perhaps lacking certain skills to manage well? 

Lia Garvin: I think a lot of managers are moving into the role of being a manager because they were a great individual contributor or they were on the team for a long time and they're not given the support of how to manage effectively and it's not the manager's fault.

It is, you know, it's like, Hey, we could do more though to make sure people are set up for success. So I think, I love, love to support managers because, and that's why I have, you have your podcast or I have mine because I think the more managers are getting support, the more everybody both up and down the organization is better off.

And I think when there's micromanaging, I do think it's because a middle manager is getting kind of pressure on both ends to like kind of know all the things that are going on. A lot of times they're doing their own individual contributor work. And I think it can be really helpful through a, in a team to have some of these communication norms so that managers can uphold those and then not feel the squeeze of it. 

But I think the biggest place, and I do most of my work with managers in my workshops around this is building skills around delivering feedback. Because gaps and feedback is directly related to micromanaging because you didn't address this thing that you should have addressed and now you got to like come in and kind of like be helicoptering in the situation. So much can be solved when we get better at giving feedback and recognizing feedback's not just criticism, that it's the positive stuff. It's the recognition. Also the difficult conversation, but it's when we get better at feedback, and this is why it's my favorite thing that teams on, it's transformational.

It builds that trust that we talked about. Feedback is all about expectations. So it makes sure we have the clarity and expectations. It allows us to build a relationship. It allows us to take responsibility. Like I said, with that manager example, like opening the door, making feedback to a street. And one of the biggest reasons people are citing, I know in with great resignation and really typically, you know, women leaving the workforce in higher numbers, even after the great resignation is a lack of recognition and a lack of appreciation for your work. 

That's feedback. Okay, feedback is saying this thing that you did was awesome because, and this was the impact of it, giving very specific, actionable, positive feedback and recognition. This is also game changing for your team. So I think that's one of the places that I think are really important for managers to get a lot more comfortable around is delivering feedback, talking about feedback, mystifying feedback, making it a two way street, because that will resolve a lot of these issues of micromanaging. 

Becca Banyard: Just real quick before we wrap things up, how can upper leadership support their managers to grow in these skills? And if we're talking about a small business or an entrepreneur, what are some ways that they can get the support that they need to grow in these areas? 

Lia Garvin: I think recognizing that we all really need to be continually building these skills and practicing these things and spending the time, whether it's working with external facilitators or reading books about or listening to podcasts like, like we run. I mean, I think like it's really important to acknowledge like that, you never become a perfect manager. You're never finished. I mean, a lot of the stuff that came up with the pandemic and managers having to be a lot more hands on with dealing with people's, with distributed teams and people's safety and different things. 

There's all these new stuff, now we have more generations that are in the workforce. There's more to think about, more to understand. And so I think recognizing that we're always want to be developing ourselves here, I think that's a really important thing. And so, if you're in a smaller business, I think having a lot of, actually in any size business, let me say this. In any size business, I think having regular meetings with your team's conversation, asking people like what's going well, what do we want to improve?

Having that open loop of feedback, that's going to be really critical. And then as a manager, if you're feeling like, ah, you know, I don't have the skills to get through this, or I know I can do better. Getting a coach, getting a mentor, participating in professional development and really taking an active role in continually upskilling yourself.

Like I said, listening to the podcast, reading the books, because, and then putting these things into practice so that you're actually, you're doing the work and you're trying to get better at it. Things like feedback can be intimidating, can be scary, can be uncomfortable if someone has a reaction where they're really frustrated or get upset about something.

But if we just avoid it, it's going to be harder the next time, right? So I think, we can work through all of this if we take an active role and engage in it. 

Becca Banyard: Yeah. Thank you so much for being here today. It's been a pleasure chatting with you. Where can folks connect with you or stay in touch with all that you're doing?

Lia Garvin: Definitely reach out on my website at LiaGarvin.com. I'd love for folks to check out my podcast, Managing Made Simple. You can find it on Apple, Spotify, Google, wherever podcasts are, or LinkedIn is another great place. You can find me on there or Instagram @lia.garvin

Becca Banyard: Awesome. We'll put all of those links in the show notes, so be sure to check them out. 

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