If you are like most people, you get up and go to work Monday through Friday. You do this not because you “just feel like working,” but because normal people can not survive in this world without some sort of income. It’s not that you dislike your job (although you might), but you’d rather be doing something else besides staying at your place of employment forty or more hours out of the week. Who wouldn’t rather be shopping, sleeping, fishing, reading, relaxing, etc.? But, you need that paycheck that forces you to trudge on into the office each day to do the job you were hired to do.

In order to get your job, you more than likely sat through an interview or some sort of selection process through which your employer picked the best candidate for the position. During this process the employer based their selection on your capabilities and how they fit in line with the job description. You were hired because you were the best choice out of the rest of the applicants. Congratulations!!! However, your excitement dies rapidly the day your boss and/or administration starts to micromanage you.

Micromanagement is a number one moral destroyer in the workplace. Micromanagement means that your supervisor or superior basically stands over top of you and scrutinizes every little detail of what you are doing. The practice of micromanagement is an inappropriate point of control and can be very demeaning to the employee. If you were hired to do a job because you were the “best pick,” then your employer should show enough faith in their decision to let you do your job.

A perfect example of micromanagement is an employee that is tasked to complete a specific project. During this project the employee makes decisions that are fully within their range of authority. However, the micromanaging supervisor becomes irritated with all decisions the employee makes. The supervisor starts telling the employee how to complete every little detail of the project down to a simple telephone call. All the while, the employee could be getting the project done instead of listening to instructions that are totally unnecessary. The theory behind this is, if the supervisor is so interested in the project and thinks that noone can make a decision better than he or she can, then why was the employee tasked with the project in the first place.
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“Call Jim and get those specs for me,” the boss says to the subordinate.

“Sure thing,” the subordinate says and picks up the phone to make the call. Jim gets on the phone and the entire time the subordinate is trying to speak to him, the boss is in the background telling the subordinate what he/she wants Jim to be told.

This is when the subordinate has to bite their tongue from saying, “If you wanted to have the conversation then why didn’t you make the phone call yourself you @#%$%!?”
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Everyone usually encounters a micromanager at some point in their lifetime, whether it be in a professional or social environment. Micromanagement can generally be tolerated in small doses, but after an extended period of enduring such behavior, can be extremely frustrating. It is not a good feeling to come to work every day to be picked on by a superior. Not many people enjoy working every day as it is. When your boss starts overanalyzing every single step you take, it makes you feel like you’re walking around on eggshells! So, if you are employer doing this to your subordinates, STOP! If you are an employee experiencing the lashing of a micromanager, start looking for another job. Half the time the micromanager doesn’t even realize what they are doing and may never grasp the fact that they are in the wrong.

(FYI – Thankfully my boss isn’t a micromanager!!!)

For more opinions, writings on life, Pugs, and recipes, please visit my page at www.xomba.com/user/claudettenstan.