00:08 Hi, I'm Denise Simpson, a master live and leadership coach who helps women step into their authentic and feminine power so they can lead like visionaries, influence with grace, and create a legacy of contribution and service. You'll hear about real leadership clients with real problems navigating their success in life, business and career. If you're ready to become a masterful leader, then this podcast was made for you. So let's get started.00:46 Welcome back leader. Let's talk about micromanaging because you and I have had experiences with some serious micromanagers or, or perhaps you, my friend or a micromanager. So let's talk about what this is, let's talk about what it's not and let's talk about how you can avoid being a micromanager. So my first experience with a micromanager was when I was an employee at Bath and Bodyworks. I talk a lot about this person. This was a person who tormented us. She would yell at us on the sales floor in front of customers. I mean, Bath and Body Works is like the happiest place to work, right? You walk in, it smells delicious. You've got all these sparkly, beautiful bottles, lotions, candles, wall, whatever you call those plug-ins. I have some here in my house, I don't even know what they're called anymore, but here's this gorgeous store, right?01:44 You walk in as a customer and you're witnessing a crazy woman tormenting a part-time employee. And this was like a daily occurrence with this person. And I remembered being so afraid to go to work. I loved interacting with my clients. I loved the sales goals. I loved beating everybody. I remembered when I'd walk in on the floor and my manager would say, This is how much you need to sell per transaction. Go. That was it. That's all I needed to hear. And I was on like a sales rampage and I was usually the person who sold the most. I was the most friendliest, I was the most beloved. I was the most request requested from my clients or customers, I should say. I even met a boyfriend there. I helped him get some gifts for his mother and we stayed together for seven years. So , I was amazing.02:36 I was amazing at my job. And so I remembered the one negative thing about my, my job and my workplace was this person. And I let her torment me. I remembered going home many times, crying in my car thinking that I was just a horrible human. That I didn't know how to sell, that I just shouldn't be in retail. I should, I should just quit and I should refine like a desk job somewhere. I should do something else. I remembered I gave her so much power at that time. I was, I was like 18 at the time, 17, 18 at that time. And it was because of her and her behavior and her words and her actions and her strong intention to put us down. All of that, All of that combined was why I went into leadership. And I went into leadership at Bath and Body Works at the age of 19.03:29 And that was the course. The course was set from that moment on the trajectory was, was was taken. That was it. I wanted to learn everything about leadership. I wanted to be the best leader. I wanted to train leaders later in my career. And now here I am doing that through you, through this podcast right here, right now. All because of this one micromanager that bullied the hell out of us. And so think about for you the micromanager in your experience in your lifetime, was it, was it your first employer? Was it your first leader? Was it your first manager? Right? Did you work at a grocery store? Were you tormented by one of those leaders? Was it a desk job? Was it a clerical job? Was it your work study job at college, right? Or maybe you are answering to a micromanager right now.04:21 And so here you are maybe also a leader, right? Maybe you report to this other leader and you have people under you that you are leading. And maybe just maybe we need to take a closer look at your behaviors and what are you learning unconsciously from this leader or from these leaders that unconsciously we've taken on some interesting behaviors from. And that's something that we talk a lot about inside masters of leadership. That's actually one of the first foundation steps that we take is that we, we go back to, okay, where did I learn these behaviors? Was it good leadership examples or was it really poor ones? And most of the time they're poor leadership examples. Very rare that we have a strong leader that we remember vividly, that we admire, that we have been mentored by. It's very rare, especially for women in leadership, to find good examples of leadership.05:20 And so micromanaging is something I talk a whole lot about with early leaders, those that are, that are early in management, meaning they are either aspiring or they are emerging. They are brand new to a leadership role. And I feel like it's more prevalent at that stage of leadership, the early stage of leadership. Because here we are coming into these leadership rules, right? First time we've ever had authority, first time we've ever had power, first time we've ever had status, first time we've ever had privilege. And a lot of us, us are very uncomfortable with that, right? We haven't been trained, we haven't prepared our minds for it, right? Some of us are thrusted into this and some of us don't even know what we're doing and we get into leadership, but we are displaying some negative toxic behaviors that we saw someone else do to us because we don't have examples, We don't have great examples.06:18 So, well, you know, that dude did it this way. So I I, I guess I'm gonna have to be the same because no one's sending me to leadership training or development. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. So I'm gonna mimic what I saw at my last job. And then you take on those behaviors as your own. And then you wonder 10 years later, how did I become so miserable? Why do my employees hate me? Why am I just now finding awareness around this? Oh, that's because I took on some interesting behaviors that weren't mine to begin with, right? Cuz a lot of us go into leadership without the confidence, right? There's, there's a, there's a spark of it, but there's not enough of it to carry us through making decisions to leading other humans to impacting behavior change, to impacting performance, right? We are brand new to this role of leadership.07:09 So we are winging it. A lot of us are faking it until we make it, so to speak. And we're just taking on behaviors from where, from what we saw from previous employee employers or leaders. And so we do, we lack the confidence. We have a lot of self-doubt. We are leaning on what we've seen before because we don't know how to lead people. Yeah, it's daunting my friend. So if you are aspiring or if you're an emerging leader, then this conversation is so important to be had because this is where I see a lot of micromanaging taking place. Because when you, the leader, when you feel less powerful, you seek more control. That's where micromanaging comes from. The micromanager needs to micromanage everything. They need to watch your every move. They need to make sure that you answer to their every beck and call.08:09 They are hounding you every second of the day. They are crossing boundaries sometimes. Many of them do. They expect you to work more than those 40 hours a week, right? They are texting you, they're emailing you, they're expecting an answer from you in the middle of the night. More than likely. These are people who don't feel powerful. They don't feel like they're in authority. So when you don't feel like you have authority or power as a leader, you go seek ways to control your employees. This is what micromanaging is about. And by the way, there is an article on forbes.com about micromanaging being a form of bullying, bullying, that these are employ, excuse me, leaders who are harassing. It's a form of harassment. It is a form of mental anguish. And some employees are saying, this is actually bullying and I'm being affected by this.09:13 And so there's a lot of talk about that. There's a movement to make micromanaging a bullying tactic. And that's interesting. And so as a leader, as, as someone who is privileged to lead humans with brains, we need to look at how you are behaving my friend. And so when micromanagers are, are high on, on that, that del that that task master, like where they have a, have trouble delegating to their employees when they're high on micromanaging team performance and team morale goes low. And I'm thinking of this as a researcher, right? Two variables as you know, if a micromanager is high on that spectrum, right, really, really strong in micromanaging that the more micromanager they are, the less TL and performance is. That's scary to me because the leader is tasked to encourage to, to inspire, to influence, to impact performance. And how do you do that?10:20 You do that by cultivating a strong trust within your team, right? Making sure that team morale is high and that they actually like each other and that they actually like you. Leader. That's important. This is part of your job. And so if you are a micromanager, I want for you to ask yourself why, right? If you are having problems, delegating the work to your employees, take a close look to see if you are a micromanager or when you feel that you have to do it to get the job done right, And you don't trust your employees to do the job, right? Right? That's a sign of being a micromanager. Okay? So here's another sign of being a micromanager. You become irritable or pissed off that decisions are being made without your input. This one hits close to home for me because I remembered I had faculty that oversaw who were tenured, mastered PhD level professors.11:24 And I remembered they collectively doing meetings without me. They were doing meetings about curriculum and program development. And here I was their leader. They were excluding me. And I remembered feeling, feeling powerless. And I remember getting so pissed off because I found out they were meeting without me. And I thought, Who the hell are you people? I remembered I cut that bullshit right away. And I lost so much respect from them. I remembered, I demanded that they not have a single meeting without me. And I did lose a lot of respect and I felt even more out of control. So here I was exerting more power, abuse of power, more control over their every move. So if you find yourself being irritated or being annoyed or pissed off that your employees are making decisions independently of you, of your input, careful with what that may bring up, it may bring up some micromanaging behaviors.12:31 So that's another sign that you could be a micromanager. Here's a last one that I'll share with you. When you, my friend ask for frequent updates from your staff, I used to have a leader who would, would want me to CC him on everything. He didn't trust me speaking to clients. He didn't trust that I would, would represent him well. I remembered feeling like he needed to watch my every move because he was judging my every move. And my performance evaluations did prove that to be true. I became paranoid. I became very frustrated in my role because he needed to have me update him on everything. And that yes, included the emails, it included phone calls, it included text messages. He needed to be included in on everything. And I just remembered feeling so powerless as an employee. I felt like he didn't trust me.13:31 I felt like I didn't belong there. And that he needed to keep a close eye on me because I didn't belong there. And, and he just, you know, wanted me out and he was gonna push me out by all the micromanaging that he was doing. So if you, my friend, are asking for frequent updates from your employees, be careful. That is a form of micromanaging. So again, when you feel less powerful as a leader, you seek more control. And that's, that's what the brain does. That's a natural process. But why do we want to feel like we have control over our employees when we don't feel respected, when we feel undermined, when we feel powerless? If that's your case, if that's how you're feeling right now, we need to get coaching on that. We need to look at why this is happening. Is it perhaps a learned behavior?14:27 Like I said at the top of the, of our episode together, is it a learned behavior? Did you learn this from a predecessor? Did you learn this from a former leader? Are you answering to a leader who is a micromanager right now? You know, a lot of my clients who are autonomous driven leaders, meaning they are sovereign and they want the same for their, their employees, they are opposed to micromanaging. That just tells me that they have been traumatized. They have experience firsthand what micromanaging feels like and they don't wanna repeat the cycle. They wanna do something intentionally instead. And they want to add more autonomous elements in their leadership because they wanna feel free. They wanna feel creative, they wanna feel innovative, they wanna feel trusted and seen and understood. And so they're gonna do the same for their employees. So my friend, this is how you avoid being a micromanager.15:22 You start looking at your behaviors, start looking at your feelings of powerlessness and when you feel powerless or disrespected or undermined or fill in the blank, do you seek more control controlling your employees tasks and, and maybe you not delegating this much because you wanna keep all that power to yourself, right? I mean, how many of us also know leaders who hoard information? They hoard the information because they know information is power. They keep the power to themselves because they don't trust their employees or they don't believe that they're worthy of that information. That's a form of micromanaging. And so this my friend, is how you avoid becoming a micromanager. Start paying attention to your behaviors and what emotions are driving those behaviors. We need to look at your beliefs, your thoughts, your identity as a leader. Is it a strong foundation? Do you have a strong mindset of, of a powerful, impactful yet autonomous leader?16:26 That's what we need to look at because what your beliefs are about your leadership identity will inspire the thoughts you think and conjure up emotions and then influence your actions. So that's the linear progression we take in your brain. So if you are behaving like a micromanager or know of someone, start paying attention to those behaviors cuz those are the PA behaviors you want to avoid taking on as your own. But if you are the micromanager, my friend, then you and I need to seriously have a conversation about this. And you know, I can help you with this or at my friend. I hope you found today's helpful. I know you did reach out. Should you have any questions, DM me everywhere at Dr. Denise Simpson, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, where else? I think that's all . But let me know what your thoughts are, your questions about micromanaging. I'm here to support you on your leadership journey. All right, my friend. Take very good care of yourself. We'll talk soon. Hey, Leader, do you want weekly leadership tips, coaching and training straight to your email inbox? Yeah, I thought so. Head over to dr denise simpson.com/leadership. Again, that's dr denise simpson.com/leadership. Just submit your name and your email address and we'll get started right away. I look forward to serving you inside your email inbox. See you soon.
