The Official Blog of Benifys HR Solutions

People change, fact of life. And organizations change too, much like a evolving mass of ideas in a constant state of flux. Trouble brews when the lines connecting the goals of an individual to that of an organization diverge and go out of alignment, add to that the job hopping typically associated with Gen-Y folks and an entire generation of baby boomers heading towards retirement – and you have a whole lot of leaving coming around (pun intended). But, as any seasoned HR Pro will agree, not all people have an equal capacity to maintain their maturity when it comes to letting go. Whereas the more wise will leave gracefully, an awful lot will act like a child with an ego hurt; the first question hence comes to mind – “how difficult is it going to be to ask this person to leave and see them through the exit process”. Another factor, and perhaps one that is more important to the employer is “how much will the business be affected negatively if this person leaves?” Let’s equate these factors against each other as a measure to assess an employee’s work style based on the way they behave while parting ways.

Peaceful Impacter – These individuals are usually very understated, and most likely introverts. But that does not mean their work has to be understated too; because of the highly efficient methods they deploy at work (by coming up with creative solutions) and their adaptable nature… it becomes very is hard to find faults with their work. In fact, it’s your turn to be alarmed if this person leaves or is contemplating leaving your organization, because they will do so in a very matter-of-fact manner once they make their mind up.

1. Needs their space.
2. Will work uninstructed in ideal conditions.
3. More likely to come up with breakthrough ideas.
4. Might seem arrogant and indifferent on the surface.
5. They strive to find meaning in their work.

Arrogant Influencer – It is said that in organizational life, one can either have freedom from others or influence over them. Never both things at the same time. Individuals in this quadrant choose to exert influence on others as opposed to enjoying freedom from them, they control people and get work done through them (and that’s the impact they bring). Being arrogant, like micromanagement, is often not a choice, it’s a conditioned thought pattern. Needless to say, the tolerance for such employees differs based on the organizational climate.

1. They need people to listen to them.
2. Will seem inseparable from the organization.
3. Can be, and mostly will be pushy.
4. Yields authority, of that, there is no doubt.
5. More likely to delegate, direct or supervise work.

Drama Queen – They have quaint and frail self-image, like they are living in some kind of a dreamland, of which they are the respective prince or princess. They should have probably taken dramatics as a career since they obviously have a flair for it. Anything work related is not really their forte, they are full of acts (pun intended) as long as you don’t expect them to work or ask them to quit. If and when you do either one of those things – you are in for a live workshop of high emotion drama. Don’t argue much with them – they have an undue sense of entitlement, others just have to live with it.

1. Cannot work 9 to 6 faithfully even if life depended on it.
2. Might be paranoid and have delusions that they are being discussed and scrutinized.
3. Will expect people to take care of their needs without saying them.
4. Needs a thorough reality check, either through introspection or intervention.
5. More likely to spill coffee in a conference and create a scene, or just create a scene with anything.

Useless Bystander – The ones seated bang at the middle of the conference table, and will switch to whichever side of the table as dictated by the status quo. The main motive that fuels their actions is to keep things running the way they are, for better or worse. Why they behave the way they do can have so many endless explanations that it deserves a post of it’s own. They will leave the organization as easily as they came in, the the difference to the overall scheme will not be noticeable. Why does this work? Because at least there is no unrequired theatrics and in their defense – they provide a balancing effect.

1. More likely to not do anything of great significance.
2. Might prove useful in diffusing situations where serious conflict arises.
3. Will stick to sides, whichever side seems better in a given situation.
4. Can have a really long and healthy career despite incompetence because they never fix what’s not broken.
5. Needs to be a little more opinionated – to fight like they are right and listen like they are wrong.

It is said that you start your work life with black and white – mutually exclusive, clear cut choices or instructions that are passed on to you by your manager. There is little that you impact, and little that impacts you, relative to what lies ahead. The stakes are low, the people touched by your work are few, and lapses can be ‘managed’ by a small cover-up operation.

As you move up the ladder, however, ambiguity starts making its presence felt. Increasingly, your canvas is painted by shades of grey, reaching a stage where all that you can see and perceive is grey. Guess what, before you realize it, there is no black left, and no white either.

So what does it mean to you? Some people excel in ambiguous settings, some detest them – most lie in between. As it were, the same action takes on a diametrically opposite hue as the complexity and scale increase. What smaller organisations can get away with easily, raises a few eyebrows in slightly larger organisations, and as the size of the organisation grows, the reaction may be a national uproar. Why would this be so? The simple answer is, in the realm of the ambiguous, the same decision or action will impact a whole lot of stakeholders, will probably have much more far reaching consequences than an environment made up of only a few people.

As you grow in your career, your actions will increasingly have such far reaching consequences. What you do, or what you don’t do, will have to be carefully weighed. You will need to factor in a lot more data and be cognizant of all the feathers that you will ruffle and applecarts you will…. And so on, but you get the gist.

At the same time, complexity, and therefore ambiguity, is growing on other fronts too – your family needs attention, the number of your contacts and friends has exploded, your health is not what it used to be twenty years back, and hey – you need some time to yourself too, right?

The CEO of Coke, Bryan Dyson once in a speech, more commonly know as the ‘30 second speech’, said –

“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them – work, family, health, Friends and spirit and you’re keeping all of these in the air.

You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back.

But the other four balls – Family, Health, Friends and Spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these; they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for it.”

While all of us might not agree with what is written because everyone has different priorities, most of which are rigidly reaffirmed in the way they lead their lives everyday – that’s why some of us are called ‘workaholics’ and the others ‘family oriented’. One thing that we can all agree to is that while juggling all these balls you need to keep a margin for error, and with that crawls in ambiguity.

Are you faced with questions, the answers of which are not very apparent or clear at the moment, but which have a big ‘perceived’ impact on your life nevertheless?

1. What if you took some time off to do that MBA, would it help you move along in your career faster or leave you behind a couple of years?
2. Why does your boss want you to do something he clearly knows you are not good at? Will it do you good or crush your confidence?
3. Should you make a change of careers to pursue something you are really passionate about? Will you be able to bounce back to what you are currently doing if case the change does not work as expected?
4. What if you are not being given the right information, how does it impact your decision making ability as a professional and an individual?

These are just some of the questions a majority of people are facing, or have faced while trying to find a balance between all the contradictory and conflicting forces that dominate our lives.

Why does ambiguity increase as one travels up the corporate ladder?

Jason Seiden, through his firm, SeidenLeadership, turns capable people into savvy managers and leaders. He thinks that the ability to handle ambiguity is a combination of problem solving and initiative that encompasses:

1. The ability to tell the difference between things that should be dealt with literally and other things that require interpretation,
2. The ability to conduct the interpretation, and
3. The initiative to act on your conclusions. (The ability to handle uncertainty is the same, but with less emphasis on the first part.)

Ambiguity increases as you move "up" in an organization because as your span of control increases, the number of potential interpretations for any given action increase.

Does it pay to keep ambiguity in check?

The best person to answer this question is you. Some people thrive in ambiguity, it brings out the best in them. Others, and there are more of these, would prefer that life had at least a semblance of structure to it. The reality is, ambiguity has its own perils – once you are in an ambiguous situation, there is little that you can do to manage the extent of ambiguity – and like the proverbial glass ceiling, sooner or later, the extent of ambiguity has a chance of crossing your ‘I-can-handle-this-too’ Rubicon. Remember, like e-mails and a tidal wave, ambiguity has the potential to develop a life of its own.

As a matter of fact, it does pay to keep ambiguity in check – here are 4 big reasons why:

1. It helps you plan more effectively – the less ambiguous the big picture, the more you are likely to plan effectively. The trick is to anticipate the problems and the pitfalls (yes, the opportunities too), and build in enough safety hatches in your plan to take care of eventualities that you did not (or could not) see.
2. It helps you stay in control – who wouldn’t like to stay on top of things, especially when the stakes are high. The Chief Executives who feign ignorance about the ‘mistakes’ their organisation have made fell prey to not removing ambiguity. One does not need to emphasize that there is potential for ambiguity all over, and the thought that only external ambiguity needs to be managed belongs to the ‘famous-last-words’ legion.
3. It enables you to focus – focus where you will add more value. Building processes, stronger go-to-market strategies, tackling the inorganic and organic growth dilemma, making those ‘build-or-buy’ decisions, ensuring customers are happy, empowering employees – rather than worry where the next landmine has been laid.
4. It makes you live longer – need we say more? However much you enjoy ambiguity, and the adrenalin that pumps through your system when the going gets tough, there is merit in understanding that the human body (ever since man stopped living in jungles and hunting to feed himself) has increasingly grown accustomed to being more comfortable in the ‘known’. Don’t invite ambiguity, you’re just playing with fire.

Do different personality types react differently to ambiguity?

The answer to this can only be given at a very subjective level, but the answer is yes. If you consider two major employee profiling theories – The Jungian Type Inventory and Belbin Team Theory, you will realize that some of the profiles have an inherent tendency to react in a certain manner to ambiguity – this is of course in theory though, but because they have been validated and accepted worldwide, the generalizations can be applied.

If you consider The Jungian Type Inventory and MBTI (The Myers-Briggs Type Inventory) test based on it, it has eight opposing personality traits – for sake of explanation, let’s consider four of them:

1. Judging vs. Perceiving – It’s pretty clear that Perceivers will generally be more comfortable being in a state of ambiguity or handling an ambiguous situation than Judgers. Judgers have a need to keep everything in their life structured – they have difficulty dealing with things if they go out of their set order, on the other hand perceivers like to keep their options open and are more adept at adapting themselves to situations as opposed to mould the situation to themselves.
2. Thinking vs. Feeling – The Thinkers make most of their decisions based on logic, they like to see the world in black and white, and dislike fuzziness. No prizes here for guessing who would be uncomfortable in a state of ambiguity; yes, definitely not the Feelers – who base their decisions based on social considerations and are more people-oriented.

Stating such opinions on the profiles in Belbin® Team Roles* get a little tricky because instead of individual characteristics, we have profiles that point towards ‘types’ of individuals and the ‘role’ they play in teams. But again, because it has been very widely used and applied – it stands the test of numbers. Let’s again consider two profiles out of a total of nine:

1. Team Worker – Can have problem making difficult decisions, especially decisions regarding people; and hence have difficulty when dealing with uncertainty associated with handling people problems.
2. Monitor Evaluator – Are used to seeing both the negative and positive aspects of situations, weighing the pros and cons of various options. It stands to logic that they would be more comfortable and rather thrive in ambiguity, because it gives their minds something to work on.

*Our extrapolation of the Belbin® Team Roles is our interpretation and may not be supported by the propounders of this theory.

You’re in the ambiguous zone, and you don’t like it – what now?

1. Learn something from it – Ambiguity is everywhere, and it has been there from the start, from the time you had to make a choice between science or arts, engineering college or medical college, startup or big organization – acknowledge that and be comfortable with it. Strive to find meaning in ambiguity without letting it overpower you.
2. Find a mentor – Find someone who challenges your thoughts and does not necessarily agree with them, someone who give you tough love advice when it is needed… and don’t be defensive and close yourself. It could be a boss, a friend, a colleague, even your mother – anyone who’s not afraid to make you aware of your shortcomings and provide guidance.
3. Give up control where necessary – This is more important when you are leading/managing a team, to lead means to be in a perpetual zone of conflicts and doubts, instead of trying to control the situation or people – find out how it is impacting you and other around you, direct your efforts in getting a grip on the situation instead of trying to mould it your way.
4. Focus on what’s really important – When you have a multitude of things needing your attention and time in finding the optimal work life balance, prioritize them and devote more time on the ones that directly impact your growth and success. And yes, there are some that have more impact than the others… remember the Pareto’s Principle (also know as the law of vital few and trivial many)? It says that only 20% of all the activities you do bring about 80% of your success.

And lastly, keep an eye on your stress levels, stress can decrease your ability to cope with ambiguous situations – read this article on what stress is, it’s symptoms and causes, or if you want to dig a little deeper, find out what you should do when you are stressed and what precautions should you take to avoid it altogether.

In our first article on this two part series, we tried to explain what stress is, it’s most prominent symptoms and also it’s most likely causes. Being aware is important, but converting that awareness into actionable steps in order to solve a problem is a different task altogether – one that needs not only knowledge and awareness but the ability to follow through.

Carrying on from where we left – in this last piece on Stress Management, we will provide you with practical techniques that you can actually implement and validate instead of just reading.


Stressed? We recommend you…

Learn to say ‘no’ – Perhaps the most important step you can take to cope or completely evade stress is to start saying ‘no’ where it is required; nobody wants to be the ‘bad guy’, agreed! But you have to guard your time against what some like to call – time thieves. Time thieves will use all possible techniques like calling you, e-mailing requests and queries, and standing in your office. Just say no.

Avoid the ‘quick fixes’, instead of rationalizing them – There are healthy ways to manage stress, and then there are unhealthy quick fixes like smoking, drinking, doing drugs, either wiling time away or filling in every minute of the day to avoid facing problems. Stop right there! Don’t self talk yourself into believing that ‘it’s all good’, and ‘everyone does it’.

Don’t play along if you don’t want to – You have the choice; make conscious decisions instead of aimlessly drifting through meetings and conversations. Let’s say you like cheese too much, and hate it when someone says – ‘cheese doesn’t taste good’, let it be known you will not be a part of this! Topics to avoid – politics, religion, vested interests, personal bias, favorites. If certain topics, situations or people make you flinch – rest your case and move on instead of emotionally engaging yourself with things that don’t matter.

Take a ‘real’ break – We are not talking about the ‘going to the beach and curl up with a book’ kind of break, although it does sound good – we all know that’s not always possible. Next time when you really feel stressed, don’t let it overwhelm you, stop to think and ask yourself – How does it make you feel? Can I pin point the root cause of it? Am I over reacting to this situation?


If you are beyond the point of taking precautions, here’s what you do

Practice the ‘relaxation response’ – The term was coined by Herbert Bensen. Research has shown that practicing the ‘relaxation response’ helps to reduce the activity of the autonomous nervous system (read: lesser stress). Here’s how it’s done:

1. Sit comfortably with your eyes closed.
2. Pay attention to your breathing, and repeat a word or phrase or prayer silently to yourself as you exhale.
3. When you notice your mind wandering (It will) just notice it and passively bring your attention back to your breathing.
4. Practice for approximately 20 minutes every day (or at least 3-4 times per week). Don’t set an alarm, but sit with a clock in view if necessary.

Try mental imagery – This is a very widely used and proven technique of stress reduction, if you do a search you find no less than 824,000 results! Like with all health techniques every resource will tell you their own way to do this; regardless of which you choose to follow, what you can be absolutely sure about it that mental imagery works best when done with breathing techniques like the ‘relaxation response’.

At the most basic level, relaxation imagery is to imagine a scene, place or event that you remember as safe, peaceful, restful, beautiful and happy. The more detailed the better, i.e., feel the air, picture the view et al.

Use music and self-hypnosis – seen some of your colleagues put on their headphones and chug away at work? Yes, while it is not entirely true for all such people, but many of them are using the most easily available (and doable) stress buster. Music has proven therapeutic value. Go indulge in that iPod, or the MP3 player you’ve been eyeing for long, or just put on the handsfree of your mobile phone and immerse your thoughts in the music in the background. Remember, don’t put on the music too loud, it might hurt your hearing power in the long run, and don’t get totally immersed in it – don’t forget there is work to be done. At home, listen to music for as long as you can, or want to.

Find a hobby – many people use an avocation as a stress buster. This, obviously, cannot be carried out anywhere, but the general distraction in life is enough to provide a vent to your system. Find a sport, and nice partners to play with – do tennis, football, cricket, basketball, whatever. When at work, steal a few moments to think about the last long drive (or the hole winning chip and putt) in your last round of golf, or how you recovered a point in tennis from a seemingly lost position. Feel good about yourself, and look forward to the next round of your favourite sport. Alternately, pick up an activity, especially if you don’t have company in your neighborhood, or you lack local facilities, or you happen to live in a bad weather area of the world – grow bonsai, paint, read, do miniature models – anything to get your mind off the things that give you stress. Try it, we know from personal experience that it works.

And finally, resort to what your mom used to tell you – count till 10 after every stressful event. Better still, try calling up mom at such moments. If that’s not on, try calling anyone who loves you (not anyone that you love – they may not be the same people – there is a difference, be aware J)


Even in the downturn India is relaxed? Think again…

*Image Credit – Google Trends (this is raw data; authenticity and analysis has not been validated or checked, respectively)

A little deeper look at the search trends on the term ‘stress’ reveals that the most search requests come from India! Yes we have a bigger sample population, but despite that this is alarming! What is your take?

Don’t let stress come to this!

Further Reading

1. How “Stress” Works – Betty Burrows, PhD (http://health.howstuffworks.com/how-stress-works.htm)
2. Stress is a Bigger Problem than 1970s Strikes – By Stuart Woollard (http://blogs.bnet.co.uk/sterling-performance/2009/07/20/stress-is-a-bigger-problem-than-1970s-strikes/)
3. Articles on Stress Management by About.com (http://stress.about.com/)

Don’t gossip or move in too fast

Gossip is not a discussion, it is personal, it is in most cases offending and it is definitely not your business. Sure it might help you to get into the ‘scene’ faster, but just think about it. Is that the kind of image you wish to project in the early stages in the organizations? Why not let your work speak for you instead? Also, avoid painting the cubicle with your favorite color, or bringing in your ‘stuff’ on the very first day; you might want to take it easy considering YOU are moving into THEIR turf.


Don’t stay in your Shell

Conflicting with the point above you say? Not really. It’s true that some of us are more comfortable opening up to people than the others, but you must make a conscious effort to hear and be heard, for it is very easy to be tagged ‘not a team player’. If nothing comes to mind, ask people what they do – this solves two purposes (a) People see you as someone who is inquisitive and wants to learn, and (b) You get brownie points because everybody loves talking about themselves and their work!


Don’t talk about your previous employer

You could talk about what work you did while your time there instead. Nobody appreciates when you badmouth your previous employer, for the obvious reason that you could do the same thing to your current employer if and when you decide to jump the boat. Interestingly, singing praises about your ex-employer does not help much either, why? “Why don’t you go back and work with them if you like them so much”, that’s why!


Don’t over promise and under deliver

This is where expectation management comes in, don’t try to volunteer for everything (read: don’t get coffee at meetings) or try to be inhumanly efficient, it will backfire and you will be expected to keep that pace from then on to eternity. Instead focus your energies on being more aware as to what is happening around you – understand team dynamics, characteristics of team members, organizational culture. Take your time, under promise and over deliver.


Other things we thought we should mention, listed in no particular order:

• Don’t ask for leave
• Don’t break rules
• Don’t come in with a hangover
• Don’t butter up excessively
• Don’t argue or criticize

In the business world, the term “micromanagement” has assumed massive proportions, with almost everyone of us having witnessed this phenomenon at work. Whether you have experienced it first-hand, or observed it from close quarters, or heard it discussed around the office vending tea machine, you can never claim to be oblivious to the existence of this menace.

And then again, there is a possibility that you’re a typical Type A micromanager yourself! Although most people like being managed, one can hardly say the same about micromanagement. So what is it that compels people to act like frenzied control freaks? How do you deal with ‘them’? Are you one of ‘them’? Let’s tackle the last one first. You have to know whether you’re a micromanager before you can do something about it. Here’s how you do a dipstick check.

How to tell if you are a micromanager

1. You feel compelled to keep telling people the ‘right’ way to do it, since they can obviously never do the work as well as you can.
2. You get personally offended and aggravated if you find a worker inefficient in their work.
3. Even if the work is done to satisfaction, you still want to fiddle with it before you let it pass your hands.
4. You need constant updates about the progress of work that is assigned to sub-ordinates, and here, constant can mean as little as 6 minutes.
5. You resist delegating work and immerse yourself in tasks that other people are supposed to carry out.
6. You keep nit-picking about small details and discourage people from making independent decisions.

Micromanaging is mostly associated with either Type A personalities or Theory X Leaders, but the need to micromanage could arise from good intentions as well. For example, if you ask a micromanager why they do it, they’ll tell you that they have a heightened sense of responsibility and ownership. This is true, people who micromanage are seen to have a greater sense of ownership, and fear of things going wrong, or working to the detriment of their organisation. What this means at the ground level, however is two important things – one, the fact that they will not allow their subordinates to grow because they want to do everything themselves, and have all decisions, big or small, pass through them, and two, the fact that they make life literally unbearable for the folks below who actually know their job and are good at it.

Also, most of the times, they will not let ownership build amongst their team because the team feels that whatever they do, will finally pass through their boss anyway, this leads to complacency. The fact that micromanagers often end up being bottlenecks is another negative fallout. However efficient one may be, it is physically impossible to handle every little nitty-gritty of business by oneself – there will be times where the overall efficiency is compromised because something (which might otherwise be perfectly done in the first place) is waiting for the attention of the micromanager.

So, if you are a micromanager, the chances are that sooner or later you will realize that the employees are spending an increasing amount of time thinking how to deal with their supervisor rather than actually working. If you wait long enough, most of the good self respecting people would have left and you would be left with a team of mediocre employees who just know one thing, follow orders, no questions asked. Good luck with that!

So what’s wrong with micromanagement?
Sure you’ve read articles that say “micromanage and get things done”, and in all likelihood, at some point of time you have caught yourself thinking – “what’s wrong with these guys, it’s so simple, what’s taking them so long”, or “let me do this myself, it’ll be faster that way”. Well, there are two problems with this – first, by constantly barging into people, you take away their power to make any decisions on their own, this is how you are effectively disempowering them. A disempowered employee is an ineffective one – one who requires a lot of time and energy from his supervisor.

The other thing that micromanagement has going against it is that it is subject to the law of diminishing returns. In simple terms, what this means is that the first time you micromanage is the time you get the most return from it. This is because people will usually comply with you the first time even if they find something odd about your behavior, but over a period of time they develop a learned response to it, which usually is to not pay much attention or worse, respond aggressively.

Need we remind people that micromanaging is just not a healthy attitude; it shows the supervisor’s general mistrust with his peers and sub-ordinates.

How to stop your micromanaging tendencies

1. Acknowledge – Acknowledge that there is a problem. If you find that your team no longer offers suggestions or tells you outright that you have a controlling nature, that’s as big a sign you are going to get. Not acknowledging a problem is like a man who goes drunk into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and declares “but I don’t have a drinking problem”. Fat chance of HIM getting off alcohol!
2. Manage Expectations – Decide and mutually agree on expectations from both parties, i.e., what you expect from your sub-ordinates and also what they expect from you as their manager. It may be a revelation to you that they may want you to “give them a little freedom of work” or “control your constant need to be updated”. Talk about the task at hand as much as you want to in the first go, let them know your requirements before they actually start working and then control the urge to continuously check on them. If people know that you’re counting on them, they’ll surprise you with good results.
3. Encourage Participation – “How do you plan to approach this?” “How are you planning to get buy- in on this?” “What are you going to do to get Marketing involved?” “Do you have any ideas for solving this problem?”, are just some things you can ask to increase the level of interaction and cohesiveness in a team. Let the employees know that their thoughts and opinions are valued, don’t ever snub someone just because you don’t agree with what they have to say.
4. Don’t over criticize – You have to make sure that you are not the only one criticizing your team all the time – people will form a negative opinion about you. At least half of the criticism should come from the team itself – create a culture of self evaluation, where people talk about their improvement areas, real or perceived. Other than self critique being more accurate, it takes the heat off you so you don’t always have to be the bad guy. Remember the 70/30 rule, 70% praise and 30% criticism, and 0% criticism in front of other team members.

Are you being micromanaged? Oh dear!
Okay, let’s move on to a situation where you are the one being micromanaged. We know how painful it can be to have someone breathing down your neck all the time. I remember a time when one of my pathologically micromanaging manager asked about the status of something before he sent out a mail telling me what has to be done in the first place! Needless to say, he wasn’t my manager for long. It is not only nagging, it comes in the way of your professional growth and development. The fact that you don’t feel like coming to work every single day because you know that it’s going to be the same story all over again is stating the obvious, but there are deeper ramifications of this phenomenon. You’re constantly under stress, you are unconsciously wishing that your manager is on leave that (every) day, you want to break free, you want to move jobs, you may end up making wrong career choices under duress – worse, you want to physically assault the manager to make him see sense. He won’t, of course, but there are certain things that you CAN try. Here’s what to do to tackle the problem.

1. Simplest things – Arrive 10 minutes early before your boss and leave 10 minutes late, take a shorter lunch break if possible. Produce quality work. Check with him and update him about work before he has a chance to check on you, preferably once in the morning, afternoon and once before you leave. You might ask why do you have to do all this when the problem is with the supervisor’s attitude, but hey… who’s feeling the heat? Escalating the problem might also seem a simple step if you really think the pressure is to much to take, but think of all the possible repercussions first, do you have sufficient facts to back your case?
2. Dissociate – This is probably the most effective thing if you can do it, understand that micromanagers are generally type A people with high expectation, more often than not they don’t do it because they like to trouble you, but rather because they are compelled to. They have problems with delegating out tasks without retaining control, because they feel like their job will be axed for any failure. They may fear losing their job or worse taking the Company down if they are an owner. All you have to really do is to avoid taking it personally. Don’t act indifferent, just unperturbed, curt and professional. Think that you’re trying to help someone who needs help.
3. Stay aware and informed – Ask them all the details required to perform a particular job or task upfront before starting on it. Predict things that make them micromanage you and counter them before they get a chance. In order to do this you need to maintain a weekly journal highlighting the reason they tend to bother you with the most, and based on that information, build their confidence by giving them a dose of the updates they are usually looking for themselves. This way they will see in you an employee who know exactly what he is doing and he will begin to then, leave you to your work.
4. Help your boss – It’s a habit, don’t retaliate too hard and too fast. Help your boss change one micromanagement habit at a time. If you wish to communicate your unease, do not do so without highlighting your own strengths and accomplishments, it is very easy for a micromanager to jump from one task to another without realizing how much efforts you have put in, therefore make sure you both agree that you have done well. Anticipate potential problems and find solutions before they become a problem for him. Ask your boss what is missing or what would they like to see happen on the work front.
5. Break the task down into smaller tasks – a combined activity that the micromanager and the micromanaged can do is to device a communication plan for themselves wherein the task is divided into smaller sub tasks and the timelines for each sub-task are decided and shared on their calendars so the micromanager would think twice before barging in onto the employee and also, the employee can set his own pace at the beginning of the task.

Like with everything else in life, there are some incurable micromanagers stalking the corporate corridors, and nothing will make them come out of this compulsion. Let us know your stories, and the times you have had to struggle with a micromanager, how did or would you manage the micromanager? And above all, for people at both ends of the micromanagement stick – GOOD LUCK!