Currently, micromanagement leadership styles are often found in various organizations or work environments. How can we, as the Human Resources professionals, step in to handle the situation? Let’s start with a good understanding first.

Micromanagement is a leadership style characterized by excessive supervision and direction from superiors, as well as mandatory orders.

Micromanaging boss is the type of boss who tends to control and interfere in the details of the work of his employees. Things that should be delegated and entrusted to the staff, he still monitors and interferes with. If this continues, it will put pressure on subordinates and prevent them from developing professionally.

A good boss will set goals while ensuring that his employees understand the desired results by checking the progress made by his employees regularly. If a problem arises, he will provide the necessary solution before it is too late.

As the management, we should be aware that mandates feel like a violation of autonomy in the eyes of the employees, which is one of the most important intrinsic drivers of threat and reward in the brain. Autonomy is a feeling of being in control and having a choice.

Research shows that even a bit of it can go a long way: When employees at one company were given the opportunity to choose how to decorate their workspaces, productivity increased up to 25%.

And when we perceive choices being taken away, we feel stronger reactions of frustration all the way to anger, which can significantly diminish our ability to focus, not to mention collaborate.

Mandates remove some employees’ ability to make a personal choice. If someone has been pro-vaccine from the start, this won’t feel like a loss. But for people who are hesitant about the vaccine, the mandate removes some autonomy and throws a person’s brain into a “threat state.”

Therefore, let’s manage our employees better by giving them more space to be themselves and initiate things based on their experience. During the talent acquisition process, you can also do some initiatives to prevent micro-managing bossses from interfering with your organisational dynamics; you can do it with thorough screenings and interviews.