What happens when a “control-obsessive” manager falls ill? I witnessed this firsthand during my career. Business partners experience slow response times, and the department’s work output declines sharply. Since employees have been trained to do nothing without the manager’s guidance and approval, work only gets done with long delays as a physically, and, perhaps, mentally impaired manager responds to their team’s queries.
Control-obsessive seems to be a common management personality type.
Signs a Manager Has Difficulty Releasing Control
How has the manager structured the department? Does everyone report to them as a boss, so that they are all the manager’s own direct reports? Or has the manager allowed other mid- and senior-level employees to have their own junior employees?
When a Learning and Development (L&D) professional is working on an improvement and growth plan with a manager, noting the work group structure the manager has crafted can provide insights. The L&D professional could start the conversation this way: “I noticed everyone in the department is your employee, rather than having some of the more experienced members of the department learning how to manage employees, and, in the process, relieving you of some of your management duties.”
The manager might respond, “It’s better this way, so I can decide where all employees should be spending their time day to day. If they are all my direct reports, I can control the assignments they are working on at all times.”
The L&D professional could counter with: “Is it possible you don’t know as well as some of the experienced employees working under you where they need help, so that giving some of them their own direct reports might provide better support? You can always stipulate that any free time the employee(s) they manage end up with should be directed toward the team beyond their own projects.”
Is No Amount of Work Too Much for Them?
A strong work ethic is a good thing, except when it is the result of a manager who works constantly because they don’t trust anyone else to do a task as well as they can do it themselves.
For example, I knew of a manager who would not relinquish control of social media marketing for her business unit. She was not a marketer by trade but felt that no one knew her business unit like she and her team did, so she felt that she needed to be the gatekeeper on all marketing.
Similarly, she questioned the expertise of the graphic artists she worked with. She was not a graphic artist herself but appeared to feel she knew more about layout and design than they did.
“I’ve done every job related to a publication,” she once said, appearing to suggest she knew better than anyone else how to do every job related to a publication.
They Need to Review EVERYTHING Themselves
Let’s say you have a department that sends out many e-blasts and e-newsletters. Members of your team are tasked with putting together, reviewing and approving these pieces. The manager then steps in and insists they have eyes on everything. This not only slows down the process, it creates an environment where employees are frequently second guessed. This can lead to a loss of self-confidence and self-sufficiency.
When a manager doesn’t allow employees to operate independently, their productivity becomes shackled to the manager. They start not trusting themselves to do the work on their own. In other words, they internalize the manager’s belief that the only one in the department who knows all the answers is the manager.
Give Control-Obsessive Managers an Exercise
“Judy, I know how hands-on you are, and I admire your work ethic and sense of responsibility, but something has to give. I want you to start experimenting with giving your employees more independent control. For instance, how about dividing the time of one of the junior employees between two of your more experienced employees, allowing these two experienced employees to give the junior employee assignments on their own. If it works out, you could consider making this junior employee the direct report of one of the experienced employees. You also could see what happens when you DON’T review every piece of content that gets sent to customers. You may be surprised by how competent your staff is.”
When managers train employees to become self-sufficient rather than dependent, you end up with higher-quality team members and the avoidance of a productivity crisis if the all-controlling manager finds themselves unexpectedly incapacitated.
Does your organization emphasize the importance of delegation, and show managers how to do it successfully?