Bombs are flying. Pistols are firing. Soldiers are crouching in the trenches, ready to attack. This is often the scene in a micromanager’s mind. It’s like the devil sits on one shoulder and an angel sits on the other. They battle each other to focus the micromanager’s attention on either the good or negative aspects of life. It’s a daily struggle to deal with the internal war zone.

The primary thought that creates conflict in a micromanager’s mind is lack of trust. The statement, “I can’t trust this person to do what I want to be done the way I want it done,” rings like a clanging cymbal all day, every day.  Can you relate?

The truth is that trust is integral to the successful growth of a business. You understand the benefit of building a remote team versus having full-time employees. But building a remote team only intensifies your lack of trust. Working with virtual employees who you often can’t see and have minimal control over can be frightening.

Little do you realize that your fear is causing you to micromanage. There’s a reason you created your team and you need to trust them to do their jobs. Here’re 12 ways to determine if you’re truly a micromanager and some strategies that you can use to become a better leader.

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1. You’re doing things a lower level employee should be doing.

Your responsibility as a leader is to motivate your team to produce their best work consistently. How can they do this if you keep doing their work for them? If you find yourself spending too much time doing work that your team should be doing, you’re a micromanager.

All jobs have a learning curve. The truth is that you must monitor new team members, in the beginning, to ensure that they’re clear about what is required. Monitoring them, however, doesn’t mean that you should do the work for them. Your job is to provide guidance and constructive feedback. Help them learn how to do it right and produce good results consistently thereafter.

Trust the learning process. Yes, mistakes will be made but these mistakes teach important lessons. They help your team morph into an inspired powerhouse committed to producing results. Lessons learnt facilitate individual growth and strengthen the team.

2. Your organization suffers from approval paralysis; all tasks must pass through you for approval.

Does your team call you the “bottleneck queen” behind your back? It becomes infuriating when team members must seek approval for everything before they can move on to the next stage of a project. In fact, this approach causes delays, missed deadlines and dissatisfied clients.

Approval paralysis creates a toxic work environment. Your team members become resentful of their lack of autonomy and you may find that your company has high turnover rates. That’s not what you want as an entrepreneur. A stable, loyal and happy team is what you need.

3. You require progress updates too frequently.

Checking on your team’s progress on a project is important. You don’t want to be on the other end of the spectrum, giving your team complete autonomy. It's not about never checking on their progress so they either miss the deadline or produce something that’s not presentable. But, requiring a daily update isn’t necessary either.

The time an employee uses to prepare daily reports could be better spent working on crucial aspects of the project. Instead, discuss with your team important milestones throughout the life of the project. Outline where an update would be necessary.

When you and your team come to a consensus about these milestones, set a timeline for when each milestone is due and require samples of the work at that point so that you can view the progress. This will help your team stay on track without overwhelming them.

4. Delegation is your archnemesis.

You view delegation as the worst thing that you could possibly do. After all, if you want things done right you must do them yourself. That’s not how teamwork should be approached.

Each team member has a unique skill that adds value to the team. Excellent leaders can motivate each team member to use their innate skills for the good of the team. This requires relinquishing autonomy to team members so that they can work freely.

Delegation is actually your best friend. It helps your team feel that they’ve contributed meaningfully to the project thereby boosting team morale. It also helps free up more of your time so that you can focus on developing other areas of your business.

5. All emails must be routed through you.

According to Templafy, “between 2014 and 2018 the average office worker received about 90 emails a day and sent around 40 business emails daily.” You’re already receiving lots of business-related emails. Why would you want to further cram your inbox by asking to be CCd on all correspondence?

Emails should only be sent to you if something has spiraled out of a team member’s control. These are the critical emails with problems that can only be solved at your level in the organization. Asking to be CCd on every email only makes your team feel like you’re constantly looking over their shoulders.

6. Your instructions are too specific…too detailed.

Giving clear instructions is important. However, giving complex, detailed instructions for even the simplest tasks is too much. There is little room for employees to explore their problem-solving skills and find new ways to approach a challenge.

People flourish in environments where creativity is encouraged. Yes, you must make your expectations clear but that doesn’t mean that you should be so rigid that a task must be completed the same way all the time.

Theodore Levitt describes it perfectly in an article he wrote for the Harvard Business Review entitled “Creativity is Not Enough”. Creativity must be equally matched with follow-through. Therefore, while it is important for a leader to create the environment for creativity to flourish, it’s also important for the leader to hold those with the creative ideas accountable for implementing these ideas.

For example, you could be working with a team of content creators to create content for your blog. It’s great to be very detailed about the topics you want, the sources, how the document should be formatted, the tone, where keywords should be placed, the number of paragraphs per heading and so on. However, the more restrictions you add is the more cumbersome the writing process becomes for the writer.

A better approach would be to give a guideline for the types of topics you want covered, how you want the article to be formatted and the keywords you want to be used. The writer then has the freedom to create a title that addresses the topic and write freely. Chances are you’ll get a better piece from this writer than from the writer who was given too many restrictions.

7. Team members don’t feel that they can give their input.

Are you an authoritative leader? Authoritative leaders take minimal input from their team and always have the final say. Reality check! Your opinion isn’t the only opinion that matters. Strong leaders listen to the input of others and facilitate the implementation of good ideas.

Your team members shouldn’t feel like they’ve taken an oath of silence. If you notice that staff meetings are very quiet and you’re the only person talking all the time, something is wrong. You have a lot of work to do to get your team members to feel like their voice matters. Don’t be a dictator. Be a leader.

8. Your team consistently misses deadlines.

This point was alluded to earlier. A team that consistently misses deadlines usually has one of the following issues:

• Unclear expectations

• Approval paralysis

• Lack of motivation due to an overbearing leader

If your team consistently misses deadlines, it’s time to analyse your approach as a leader.

9. Your team has a high turnover rate.

No one wants to work with a micromanager. Team members who feel stifled won’t stay longer than a few months. It can become very expensive to constantly replace team members.

These costs don’t include other related employee turnover costs such as the cost for lost productivity since the new hiree may take at least a year to reach the productivity of the other employee. You can’t afford these costs at any stage of your business. Instead of criticizes team members and watching their every move, support them. Contribute to their growth instead of their demise.

10. You’re working 80 hours a week.

Since no one can do the job as well as you, countless hours are spent doing more work than necessary. You’re overworked and highly stressed. There is never enough time in the day to get everything done. How can there be if you’re trying to do everything yourself?

What’s even more concerning is that you begin to resent your team for not being as good as you. Are you really questioning your hiring choices? These people were hired because of their skills and creative minds. Why can’t you trust them to get the work done to an acceptable standard?

11. You’re known as the Meeting Ranger.

No one enjoys meetings more than you do. In fact, you arrange meetings before meetings to ensure that your team is ready for the next meeting. You send countless follow-ups to ensuring that everyone knows about the meeting and is present.

More often than not, these meetings are a complete waste of time. MeetingKing reports that about 37 percent of employee time was spent in meetings in 2013. Additionally, 47 percent of the employees surveyed viewed meetings as a waste of time. That isn’t an unreasonable statement if you’re really someone who only calls a meeting to prepare for another meeting.

12. Strategic planning is the last thing on your agenda.

Strategic planning is the last thing on your agenda because you really don’t have time to get it done. You’re too busy dipping your hands into everyone’s projects, monitoring what everyone is doing, tracking emails and doing all the things that micromanagers do.

The reason you have a team is so that you can focus on creating new business opportunities. It’s impossible for you to do this if you’re always focusing on micro-managing what everyone else is doing.

How to Overcome Your Micromanaging Madness

Micromanagement is business suicide. It’s the dangling rope that micromanagers willingly tie around their business’ neck to stifle growth. Moving forward in business requires cutting that rope. Here’re some strategies that you can use to break free:

• Be highly selective in your hiring process. Some companies create a 3-tiered interview process where each stage is more difficult than the next. This means that the candidate chosen would have demonstrated the required competency to succeed in the position. Trust that your hiring process has chosen the right person and give that person the chance to shine.

• Be open to change. Listen to suggestions from your team and support the implementation of the best suggestions. It’s not your way or the highway.
• Follow-up on the metrics that really matter in your organization. Avoid micro-management doesn’t mean that you take a completely hands-off approach towards your business. You must keep abreast with what’s going on so that you can tackle problems before they become disasters. For instance, you may want to track the number of orders that are delivered late daily to determine if there’s an issue with your delivery process.
• Develop emotional intelligence. Get to know your team and invest in each person’s growth. Be sensitive to their emotions and life circumstances and do your best to address their concerns. This doesn’t mean that all complaints should come to you. All it means is that you need to be more human-like in your approach towards your employees.
• Only have meetings when absolutely necessary. Work with your team to create project milestones so that you only need to be updated on the progress when a particular milestone has been completed.