What is micromanagement and how to avoid it?

Micromanagement
Most employees have occasionally been exposed to bosses who 'micromanage'. The term 'micromanager' means the manager who personally makes every decision, takes a primary role in the completion of every significant task and dictates each small step the employees make. Often the manager's excessive attention and focus on the tasks annoys most employees. The micromanager rarely seriously considers attitudes and ideas of the employees. Unfortunately micromanagement is poorly recognized by managers and often they do not consider themselves as micromanagers. Outstanding examples of micromanagement are evident in the area of task performance and feedback. To be effective, the employees need regular feedback on task performance. However, from the micromanager feedback tends to be often excessively focused on procedural details rather than on quality, overall performance and results.

• Explaining

Every opportunity should be used to develop your employees. Your approach should embrace the concepts of life long learning. When assigning tasks, you should take some extra minutes to explain the context of each task. Your employees will be interested in what you are asking them to do if they understand what is involved and how it relates to the bigger picture. Create the opportunity for your staff member to be interested in what you are asking them to do.

• Delegation

Proper delegation is essential to effective management. It is a primary skill of successful manager. Don't be afraid of delegation. Whenever possible, you should try to delegate responsibilities to your subordinates. You can still take some control, but the benefit of proper delegation is that you assign the thinking required to the employees.

• Trust and feedback

You need to develop and maintain trust of your employees. As your employees develop, let them do what they have learned. You should intend to create trustful environment in your team and avoid annoying and excessive control from your side. At the same time you shouldn't try to justify your own importance.

Avoid micromanaging by using task management software

VIP Task Manager allows to avoid micromanagement based on the mentioned aspects, namely Explaining, Delegation, and Trust and feedback. VIP Task Manager lets create productive working relationships between the manager and the employees. When assigning tasks, the manager can add extra information to the tasks by using the column 'Notes'. In such a way the manager can explain how to perform the tasks, what resource can be involved and other.VIP Task Manager allows to delegate duties and easily make task re-assignments. The Permissions Panel lets you set up resource permissions to tasks and task groups. You can use Roles Panel to make quick task re-assignments. If you need to assign new supervisor, you can use task column 'Watch List'. Supervisor will be able to monitor tasks and get task notifications.VIP Task Manager allows to get employee's feedback and leave recommendations and instructions to the tasks. By using Comments Panel the manager can create robust communication with the employees and find out about issues they face.

Read also a new article about process management - project management client-server software for Windows