As a business coach for over 25 years, I have helped thousands of business owners coach their staff and avoid the dreaded “micromanagement” outcome. Here are my top tips to mentoring your staff while allowing them room for personal development.
At the core of micromanagement is a lack of trust. And that doesn’t always mean that it’s of any fault of the employee. It may mean that as a business owner, you doubt your ability to hire and train your employees properly. So you feel the need to watch their every move. Or perhaps you don’t trust in your ability to delegate projects, so you hover trying to give them the proper guidance to finish the project. As a leader, it’s imperative that you practice trusting and believing in the team members that you hire.
2. Let Them Take Ownership of Meetings.
Allow your staff to take ownership of their own meetings. They are responsible for creating the agenda, setting up the calendar invites and writing up the recap to send to your team. This will help ensure that someone is taking the time to plan out meetings (avoiding unnecessary ones) and giving them ownership of the outcome of meetings.
3. Let Them Control Their Own Calendars.
Whenever possible, let your employees have ownership of their calendars. They will have a better idea of their workload and be able to take ownership in meeting deadlines and goals. Treat your employees like responsible adults and they will reward you tenfold.
4. Let Them Set Goals.
At the beginning of each quarter give your staff the ability to create their own department goals. And then sit down together as a team and flush them out into a plan of action. Then let them work towards meeting or exceeding those goals. Your staff will not only be invested in the outcome, but they will feel like a valued part of a growing team.
5. Let Them Train Others.
Instead of creating a policies and procedures manual that your staff will simply ignore, give them the opportunity to create their own procedures and training documents by giving them ownership of their own UBS (universal business systems.)
6. Give Clear Instructions…And Walk Away.
Micromanaging is often a direct result of an improper hand off. The better you are at outlining expectations, deadlines and responsibilities the easier a task is to hand off to a staff member without constant supervision.
Micromanaging is easy. Coaching a team member and allowing them to grow and develop is much harder (albeit far more rewarding for everyone involved.) So take the time to loosen the reigns and give your business room to grow.