3 Signs You’re Micromanaging a Large Workforce

As a business owner, it’s natural that you’re passionate about your business’ growth and general performance. That passion may translate into a desire to be directly involved with all aspects of a business’ operations whenever possible.

This is an understandable impulse. However, at a certain point, trying to be involved in every aspect of your business can actually result in negative consequences. For instance, if your business has grown quickly and you thus have a much larger workforce than you did in the recent past, you might still attempt to directly manage every employee and handle tasks that you could delegate to others. This prevents you from focusing on tasks that genuinely require your attention.

Many entrepreneurs understand this. That said, knowing that it’s important to avoid being a micromanager isn’t necessarily the same as knowing when you’re becoming one.

Actively monitor your own behavior and approach to work with an emphasis on keeping an eye out for the following warning signs. If you notice them, it’s highly likely you need to consciously strive to delegate tasks more often and generally learn to manage a large workforce more effectively.

You Spend Too Much Time Reading and Responding to Emails

Research indicates the average American worker spends about 209 minutes of each day checking and responding to emails. Granted, when you own a business, you should expect to spend a little more time on emails than most typical employees.

However, if you’re spending vastly more time than 209 minutes each day handling email-related tasks, you probably are asking to be cc’d on emails that you don’t actually have to read. This is often a sign of a manager or business owner who can’t let their teams operate as independently as they should.

You Try to Make Corrections When You Don’t Need To

You need to strike a delicate balance as a business owner. On the one hand, your business’ success relies on its ability to consistently provide your customers with quality service. To some extent, it is your responsibility to ensure your teams are delivering strong work.

That said, when you have confirmation that your teams are willing, able, and prepared to serve your customers well on a regular basis, you need to let them do so without necessarily checking their work all the time.

For example, some business owners feel the urge to always check a deliverable before submitting it to a client, regardless of whether it’s a short document or a major project. This may be necessary if a team genuinely isn’t performing as expected. However, if you’re checking deliverables constantly, but you can’t honestly say you need to make corrections or improvements very often when doing so, your teams can probably be trusted to provide impressive service on their own. You don’t need to waste time checking their work.

You’re Preoccupied with Status Updates

Tracking the progress of teams and individual employees working on important projects is definitely wise. You should have a general sense of how close projects are to completion.

Still, you might find that you’re constantly wondering how far along a team assigned to a project may be in their work. You might also attempt to ease your concerns by asking for frequent updates.

Honestly assess whether the degree to which you wish to receive updates feels reasonable or healthy. If this is a common source of worry, you should try to grow more comfortable with fewer updates.

Just be aware that learning to overcome these traits doesn’t happen overnight. You shouldn’t judge yourself harshly if you don’t change your ways immediately. You simply need to be aware a problem exists to begin with before you can start making any improvements.