Md Consulting

I don’t know if you have ever worked with a micro-manager?

This is someone who thinks he or she needs to be involved in everything that happens within the company.

These leaders are closing out the talents of others by not divesting themselves from the day-to-day problem-solving activities of the company.

Great leaders let go of the day-to-day, problem-solving activities of the company.

Rather, they choose to maximize strategic and relationship-building efforts.

The majot risk of micromanagement is  disengagement.

Fundamentally, it is a state of distance from one’s work.

A disengaged employee puts in time but little else, and his apathy affects not only his own productivity but that of his colleagues.

Because a consistent pattern of micromanagement tells an employee you don’t trust his work or his judgment, it is a major factor in triggering disengagement.

By contrast, engaged employees are more likely to show up to work, to stay with a firm longer, and to be more productive while they’re on the job.

Interesting to read within Gallup research that highly engaged teams average 18% higher productivity and 12% greater profitability than the least engaged teams.

The good news is that you, as a manager, have enormous influence over your direct reports’ engagement levels.

So what can you do to increase their engagement and hence their productivity? For starters, you can take a page from the Gallup playbook and make a practice of building on employees’ strengths.

My take-out is 4 tips to create more enguagement from your team :  

– Say you have a direct report who rarely submits sales reports on time or fills them out correctly. Ask yourself, “At what tasks does this person excel?” Maybe he’s great at troubleshooting customer complaints. Or he’s a consistent source of creative ideas for the next promotional effort. Whatever his strengths, think about ways to build on them so that they can add more value to your organization. At the same time, see if you can minimize or redistribute some of the work at which he’s less successful. This is not always easy to implement but this is key to be flexible !

• Be clear about performance expectations for new hires. As they grow more comfortable in their roles, lessen your direct supervision of their work. I realy like the ONE MINUTE MANAGER approach for this. We’ve implemeted this approach within my TEAM and I think this works. The One Minute Manager reveals three fundamental concepts:

• One Minute Goal Setting—Understand the importance of clear goals
• One Minute Praisings—Learn how to help people reach their potential
• One Minute Reprimanding—Learn how to correct poor performance and keep people on track

• If you find yourself feeling consistently negative about a particular employee’s performance, check that you’re not falling into the set-up-to-fail syndrome described by Insead-affiliated management scholars Jean-François Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux. This syndrome is marked by a downward performance spiral. The manager, expecting poor performance from the employee, starts noticing only mistakes and overlooking or minimizing successes. To avoid this pattern, regularly challenge your perception about the employee by asking yourself: What are the facts about her work? Is it as bad as I’ve been thinking? Of course, it may be that her performance is so bad that you’ll have to let her go. But in some cases, adjusting your lens might reveal that she’s actually doing some worthwhile work.

• You don’t want to create a culture that says you’re always right, and the employees are usually or always wrong. So invite employees to challenge your opinions. Over time, as they grow more comfortable in this role, they’ll feel freer to discuss any performance concerns they have with you.