Here’s how to quantify your boss’s micromanagement

Either from their own obsession with control, their lack of trust, or their unquenched thirst for perfection, managers often excessively micromanage their direct reports.

You finish a report, but before you can even save the file, your supervisor is already hovering behind your shoulder asking why line three moved two centimetres to the left.

Read: Micromanaging: Working with an overbearing boss

You make a routine phone call to a supplier but moments later your manager wants a full account of every single word exchanged in the conversation such that you feel that they should have just done the call themselves.

You suggest a better way to handle a customer complaint and instead of being trusted to proceed, you instead receive instructions so long and detailed that you wonder why your boss even hired you in the first place since your judgement and discretion is of no importance to them.

Then you start to notice your confidence shrinking. Your energy drains away. Work that should move quickly begins to crawl because every tiny action requires approval, revision, or excessive explanation.

While some level of oversight of workers is understandable, but in far too many offices, schools, NGOs, banks, and family firms, people do not suffer mainly from laziness or lack of skill around them but instead they suffer from leaders who cannot stop gripping every detail and micromanaging seemingly everything.

A major recent study by Catherine Deen, Christian Kiewitz, Jun Kim, Simon Restubog, Ying Chih, and Robert Tang brings welcome clarity to a tangible problem that workers around the world have complained about for decades but research scholars have strangely neglected to investigate with adequate depth and breadth. The study defines micromanagement properly and then measures it rigorously.

The findings show that micromanagement does not merely mean a strict boss or a demanding supervisor but rather it revolves around three core behaviours which are controlling, close monitoring, and obsessive focus on details. All these become micromanaging especially when such behaviour feels excessive, sustained, or unnecessary.

How can you really quantify whether your supervisor micromanages too much?

The research used advanced statistical methods to narrow down nine different statements that psychologically capture the full range of micromanaging behaviour.

So, take out a piece of paper or open a note taking app on your phone and go ahead and read each of the following nine statements. After each sentence, stop and think briefly whether your supervisor does the behaviour mentioned.

If your supervisor never does it, score a 1 for that statement. If your supervisor very rarely does it, score a 2; rarely does it, give them a score of 3 for that statement; if they occasionally do the behaviour, score them a 4; if they frequently do so, then assign a 5 to the statement, and finally if they always do the behaviour mentioned in the sentence, then assign a score of 6.

Ready, set, begin with your assessment of your supervisor:

Interferes with my work even when there is no need for it. Limits my ability to make decisions about my work. Controls my work too much. Closely monitors my work progress.

Follows up on my work too much. Watches my every move. Focuses on small details of my work process. Scrutinises small details of my work output. Seeks information about even the smallest details of my work.

Now, total up all the nine scores to get your overall score. If you rated your supervisor less than 20, then congratulations! You have a fantastic boss who shows great trust in you and your abilities.

Read: How managers, staff can reset connection at the workplace

If you scored your manager between 21 and 35, then you have an average boss. You can work with them while expecting some moderate levels of oversight. But if your supervisor scores between 36 and 45, then expect a lot of micromanagement and slowly begin the process of finding alternative work arrangements. If you scored your manager over 45, then you need to find a new job position immediately.

If you want to know the area of micromanagement that your boss makes you suffer through the most, then combine your individual statement totals for the first three sentences, which represents controlling behaviour, then the total for the second group of three sentences, which comprises close monitoring, and the last group of three sentences which involves having a detail focus.

Whichever your boss scores the highest in, then that is their dominant form of micromanagement. Many employees have the hardest time dealing with controlling behaviour over the other behaviours.

So, now that you know how to identify and quantify micromanagement in your chain of command at work, take the time to rate your manager(s) and see whether a job change is right for you.

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