INSTANT MBA: Don't Micromanage Your Employees
"Most of us are trained to believe that practice makes perfect; but the best advice I've ever received preaches the exact opposite: Don’t be a perfectionist. Today I embrace this, but when I first heard this 7 years ago, I refused to accept it."
Pozin says perfectionists tend to micromanage and it's important to give your employees room to think for themselves. If you try to control everything they do, employees will end up feeling patronized by you and will begin to resent you. If you get too hung up on the details and constantly point out what they are doing wrong, your coworkers will assume you dislike their entire body of work and will start preforming poorly. Instead of pushing them to become better employees, you are simply creating a hostile work environment. Don't be such a perfectionist, foccus instead on the big picture.
"My old ways of micromanaging forced employees to not feel autonomous and prevented them from thinking creatively on how to solve problems on their own. Employees would feel stress instead of feeling empowered to make their own decisions. They constantly felt demotivated and incompetent. There would be feelings of resentment and an overall hostile work environment. Not being a perfectionist is a lesson that I look at as not just a piece of advice, but a worldview and a core value."
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