Micromanagers can seriously derail your effort. They'll discuss endless details, question every decision you make, ask for constant status reports, and pivot at the wrong turn instead of letting the team do its job. The caveat? Each one of these behaviours in isolation isn't bad. In fact, asking for details, questioning, getting updates, and adjusting course based on new information are really useful behaviours. Which is why it is so hard to argue against them.
The problem is when they can't let go, and so all of this becomes someone else's full-time job, taking more effort than the delivery work itself. It's death by a thousand cuts.
So what to do when someone in a leadership position behaves like a micromanager?
The first thing to address is the need behind the drive. Micromanagers need to be in the know, they need to feel they have control, they need all the possible details and information about the work to feel they can make the best decisions.
Common advice here is to "scratch the itch": give them what they want, address the need, and while you are at it demonstrate how efficient and skilled you are. But there are serious gaps in this strategy: the first is not understanding human nature; the second is letting your ego fall into the trap of over-performance.
Scratching the micromanager's itch may feel satisfactory at the moment, but the root cause of the itch is not removed. And it cannot be removed because it is part of the person's psyche, and you can't fix that itch from the outside.
What do you think will happen next? They'll come for more. And they'll come to you because they know you are good at scratching the itch. And this is how the ego trap gets activated: now your ability to scratch the itch becomes a performance metric.
But it's the wrong metric to optimise for, because it distracts from truly valuable work. Scratching a micromanager's itch will not make your delivery faster, it won't improve your team's performance, and it won't solve immediate tactical problems. In fact, it may introduce more problems.
A micromanager reacting to the news of an unexpected defect in the product could make it harder to resolve. A bug that could have been squashed on the spot now may never get resolved until and unless we explore all the available options, we estimate the effort of each option, and include a trade-off analysis of each option with detailed risks, pros and cons. Analysis paralysis. Waterfall designs that take more effort than the work itself. A collection of uncertainties that could have been addressed with optimistic hypotheses validated in fast feedback loops.
What to do then? Don't scratch the itch. Give the most unsatisfactory boring response you can give.
Do they ask for a new status report? Tell them "everything is progressing as planned, no incidents to call out" (only if it's true).
Do they ask for more details? "I don't have that detail right now, I'll have to ask the team, I'll share more details when I know more".
Do they ask for more options? "What's the problem with the current approach?"
Do they ask to "go faster"? "We'll go as fast as we can without introducing unnecessary risks".
Each one of these answers is either boring (it doesn't say anything new) or unsatisfactory (it requires them to think again about what to say next). And there's nothing they can argue against.
Not that you should always give such answers; only when you feel the need to carve out time for yourself or you perceive their requests as unnecessarily demanding. And you should watch out when dissatisfaction may lead to an escalation. If you create a cadence, a baseline for when and how new information is delivered, it can lead them to wait for those moments instead of asking all the time.
Your performance metric as a leader should not be how well you can scratch your boss's itch, but how much time you can carve out for yourself and the team to focus on executing the work to the best of your ability. And to come up with these answers requires practice and observation. You'll have to detach from the situation, observe when such behaviours appear and take notes so you can work on your responses.
The worst thing you can do when dealing with a micromanager is letting them eat all of your capacity and time. The less time you have to strategise, the more reactive and chaotic your effort will be.
