Vanessa Van Edwards says micromanagers are driven by fear: of looking bad, missing deadlines, lacking knowledge, or disappointing clients. Identify which fear drives your manager, then address it directly. Share knowledge, reassure them about deadlines, or start meetings by stating your shared goal.
Micromanagers are secretly terrified. They're terrified of looking bad, missing a deadline, not knowing something, being out of the loop. And so oftentimes they're anxious, hovering or they're constant checking in is because they're trying to quell their own fear. So what I want you to try to think about here is what are they afraid of? Are they afraid of not knowing something? Are they a knowledge based person? That means sharing more knowledge with them is going to help them be less afraid. It's going to make them check in less. Are they scared that a deadline is going to be missed or something's going to fail? In that case, to prevent their micromanaging, you want to start off calming their fear. If you know that they're terrified of disappointing a client, you can start off a meeting before they even get into your tasks with our shared goal is to make sure the client is super happy. That way you're saying to them, I know your fear and I'm making sure that I am on the same page. We're going to make sure that doesn't happen. So if you have a micromanager who's afraid starting off with calming their fear before you even start about tasks and delegation, that's the way they're going to be less anxious around you.
