ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review, I’m Alison Beard.
Most of us know what it feels like to be micromanaged. Your boss gives you an assignment, but then tells you exactly how to do it, keeps checking up on you and sometimes even takes over the work, it’s maddening. But what if you’re the boss and you really want that assignment done perfectly because it’s your reputation on the line and you know exactly how to do it, but you know you shouldn’t be a micromanager. How do you help out without making your employee feel bad about it? Most people in leadership roles struggle with this. I know I’m the kind of editor who likes to jump right in and fix something rather than letting a colleague figure it out on her own or subtly leading him to a solution.
I also track every word in my articles until publication, which I know annoys the people responsible for moving things along, but none of us want to be that kind of person at work. Our guest today has studied how effective managerial help works in several organizations. And he’s found that it’s possible for bosses to weigh in pretty heavily on projects they’ve delegated, provided they do it in the right way.
Colin Fisher is an associate professor at the University College London, School of Management, and he’s co-author of the HBR article, “How to Help (Without Micromanaging)”. Colin, thanks so much for being on the show.
COLIN FISHER: Thank you, Alison. Thanks for having me.
ALISON BEARD: Almost everything we see about modern management theory points people away from micromanaging. We know we’re not supposed to do it, but why do we?
COLIN FISHER: I think that’s a great question and your intro really captures a lot of why people end up being seen as micromanagers. People who end up being seen as micromanagers are often trying to be helpful, that they see people struggling. They know how to do the task. They think they have a better way or that they contribute something. Micromanagement sort of works both ways. It’s something that’s happening because a boss is well-intentioned and trying to actually help. But it’s also in the perception of what the boss is doing that people don’t know why suddenly somebody often with more authority and power than them is getting involved in their work. And so a lot of avoiding being seen as a micromanager is managing these perceptions.
ALISON BEARD: And it’s also a calibration based on personality, what someone might see as just helping or weighing in, another person might see as completely unnecessary interference. So are there some general rules of thumb for people to think about when they’re figuring out what that line is between helping and doing too much?
COLIN FISHER: I thought what I was going to find is that there were people who had skills or styles or preferences that led them to genuinely be more helpful than other people. And although we certainly do see a lot of differences in the styles and how helpful people are. More of it than I would’ve thought are in the strategies that people are using and their behaviors. The people who are able to really get their hands dirty and help without being seen as micromanagers are being really, really explicit with the fact that they’re trying to be helpful. They’re clarifying that their role is to be a helper. They’re asking a lot of questions to find out what people need. And really the people who are seen as more micromanagers often assumed it was clear why they were there and they assumed that other people would see them as trying to help. But when you’re a boss, there are so many different hats you wear. There’s so many different ways people can see you and your role.
And some of those are as the evaluator, as the person who doles out the rewards and punishments. And so, if you let people’s imaginations run wild, when you come in and start trying to help, then you risk letting them say, “Oh gosh, Alison is trying to help me. She must really think I’m doing bad work.” Rather than, “Oh, Alison is trying to help me. She must really want to have my best interests at heart and is trying to make the work better.”
ALISON BEARD: Right. So let’s talk about that strategy of communicating your intent. How exactly is that done effectively? Like, role-play it for me or give me an example of someone who did it and how they did it in an organization that you studied.
COLIN FISHER: Again, when we started doing this research, I was looking for the sort of really subtle diagnostic clues. Almost like these expert helpers were going to be detectives who were watching people in unique ways or sort of able to detect problems where other people didn’t. It was often as simple as saying, “I am here to help you.” And so, the example we give in the article is an example of a partner in a consulting firm who ended up flying out to work with a team that was working on a project in New York. And this was actually a very big high stakes project for this firm and the project lead, who called this partner. So the project lead, we call Aaron and the partner we call Gary.
And when Aaron called Gary, he actually didn’t know him very well. And he was pretty scared when he was calling to say, “Hey actually, there’s some problems with this big project that I’m leading. What’s your advice.” In clarifying that his role was to be a helper, really Gary said, “I am just here to take some things off your plate. So you can focus on doing the work.” And he explicitly said, “I’m here to be your crutch. I’m not here to change the project. I’m just here to help you.”
ALISON BEARD: And I’m not here to judge you as a more senior partner.
COLIN FISHER: That’s right. I think that message of saying, “I’m here to be a crutch. I’m here to help you. Saying things like, “I’m not here to judge you.” Although I think, often you don’t even need to go that far, but just clarifying that your intention in getting involved is to help and not to evaluate, I think is really the key. And that really it’s just people saying it.
ALISON BEARD:
And you also talk about timing. So why is the timing of help so important and how do you get it right?
COLIN FISHER: The first strategy that we were talking about was timing your help, so it comes when people are ready for it. It turns out that trying to give people a lot of advice before problems emerge is not as successful a strategy as we would like it to be. We all know the famous adage, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That Benjamin Franklin was basically telling us, “Hey, let’s make sure problems don’t emerge and then our job is going to be easier.” But it turns out when you’re trying to help people, if they don’t understand the problem yet, it’s very hard for them to take your advice and help. And so what I’ve found in a series of experiments was that when you try and give groups advice before they start a task, they’re much less likely to actually use it, then after they’ve started the task. Even if it’s just a few seconds, even if you just let people start the task and then say, “Hey, don’t forget, here’s a good way to do the task.” They’re much more likely to understand it.
And so this idea of waiting until people see the problem and then stepping in is a much better strategy than trying to prevent every problem before it emerges, which as we can all intuit is a big sign of micromanagement.
ALISON BEARD: And then you also talk about trying to figure out exactly what people need, so how does a boss go about that?
COLIN FISHER: Figuring out what it is people need is one of the most important parts of being a helpful boss, the most helpful bosses figure out what people need usually by asking and listening really actively to what they’re being told. But different kinds of problems do require different ways of starting to understand the problem. We talk about the strategy of aligning the rhythm of your involvement with people’s needs, and that the way in which you find out the problem is in the different rhythms really varies. So in one case you might go in and you have a lot of time because you’re trying to help in a really hands-on way to solve a really tricky problem. And in that case, you’re going to spend a lot of time asking questions, listening and observing to make sure you really understand this tricky problem from the perspective of those you’re trying to help.
COLIN FISHER: However, if you don’t have quite as much time, right at that moment, asking people to catch you up on every detail of a really hard project or problem actually may take up all the time you have. And so, if you don’t have quite as much time finding out that people are struggling and then looking for ways to help them that don’t require you to know everything about the project or better strategies. A lot of times people would do very simple, almost menial tasks, like ordering people lunch, schedule in conference rooms to allow them to have more time to solve the problem themselves.
ALISON BEARD: And I imagine that this takes some trial and error and working with people for a while to understand their needs. So how does it work when you’re a manager of a team that you’re not used to working with?
COLIN FISHER: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s a really important question and that the familiarity and the trust that you need to be helpful is that people really do need to believe that they can tell you their problems. And this comes back to first being able to frame that your role is to help. So if, you’re trying to help somebody who doesn’t know what to expect from you, you do have to build up this trust or what Amy Edmondson calls psychological safety, so that people are willing to tell you what it is they need help with.
ALISON BEARD: And what do you do if the people on your team need vastly different amounts of help? That necessarily means that you’ll be paying more attention to some, but then how do you avoid those people feeling micromanaged and the others feeling ignored?
COLIN FISHER: Making sure that everybody feels treated fairly in the process of helping is a hugely important area. And there’s a lot of research on the relationships between leaders and their subordinates and the sort of comparing one relationship to another, which shows exactly the problem you’re talking about is important. But the best managers really allow people who need help to feel helped. And don’t impose help on those who feel they don’t need it. And so a lot of this is really this individual relationship, where you’re learning what people feel like they need, how they feel like their projects going and then giving them what they need.
Now of course, it’s also the role of leaders to provide feedback and sometimes evaluation to give people the feedback that maybe they need more help than they’re aware of. But we did not see a lot of that going on when …. Or we didn’t see a lot of that mixed in with the helping process, a lot of this feedback and evaluation with those who were seen as being very, very helpful bosses. So it seems like the helpful bosses are good at making the times when they’re trying to help very clear and focused on help and making the times when they’re trying to provide feedback or evaluation, very clear and very separate from this time that there’s help.
ALISON BEARD:
What was the best managerial interaction that you saw in your research and what was the worst one you observed?
COLIN FISHER: So the best one that I can think of, was the one that … Somebody who is helping a team through … This was in a design firm and they were going through what they call synthesis, which is this really fuzzy, difficult process that usually lasts anywhere from like a day to three days, something, where they have these long intense meetings. What made it such great help actually was not so much what the helper did. It was what the helpees did. We watched a team leader who was just masterful at sort of actually drawing good help out of other people by framing very accurately, what you wanted from them. Saying, “I’ve invited you to come in and help us today because here’s what I really want from you. And I’ve prepared to give you the information you need in an efficient way. So here’s where we’re at, here’s where we’re going. Here’s where we want to go next and here’s where you fit in.” It’s amazing how sort of preparing to receive the help in that way, made the interaction so much more enjoyable for everybody.
The worst interaction we witnessed was what we like to call a takeover, where somebody was asked to help or they were coming in and tending to help. But instead of just supporting their subordinates in doing the work, they actually just did the work for them. And in doing so actually erased the contributions that others had already made. And so in this instance, it was a project lead who was asking for feedback right before a big client presentation. The project leader had vetted this feedback with a lot of other people, she felt really good about it. You knew that the client was on board, and then she showed it to a partner, just kind of hoping to get like last minute little tweaks.
And instead of that, he sat down with her and actually took the computer away and started retyping parts of the presentation. Even though actually after this, the client presentation went really well. She looked at this as one of the most negative interactions of her career, where her contributions were not only not valued, they were just sort of erased by this helping incident.
ALISON BEARD: You did this research in pre COVID times, when everyone could get together, physically. Many knowledge workers are now working exclusively remotely. How has that changed how employees are receiving management and how bosses are managing?
COLIN FISHER: Yeah. Everything we’ve talked about with helping, I think is so much more important when we’re not co-located. We get so much out of in-person social interaction, where we’re able to sort of read the subtle cues and people’s facial expressions and their tone of voice and how they’re orienting their bodies towards us. And how they’re in our space or not in our space.
ALISON BEARD: And you can also just pop by someone’s desk to check in on them and decide whether you need to actually look over their shoulder or not.
COLIN FISHER: Absolutely. And now, we’re all working so separately that it’s like a special occasion when we’re actually interacting and collaborating. And it’s that much more important when you’re somebody’s boss to make it clear when you’re trying to help, because now it’s that much less clear in the sort of half an hour or one hour video interactions, what it is that we’re trying to accomplish.
ALISON BEARD: I do feel like this situation for people who are able to work virtually has brought with it sort of a pretty welcome move toward autonomy. People feel less observed, they feel more in control of their schedules and more in control of their work, which has been one benefit. So is there anything that we could take away from that and bring back to sort of office work or normal work when this is over?
COLIN FISHER: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s a great point. This tension between autonomy and support that is really kind of what we’re trying to reconcile with this research. How do we let people feel like they have the freedom to do their work while still feeling supported? I think one of the big lessons here is to make sure that you’re asking your employees to tell you how you can help them, rather than assuming you know. And so part of that autonomy is saying, “Hey, there’s all these things that now you can do well.” Maybe you’ve had more control over your schedule. You don’t have to get up and go to the office. You don’t feel like people are looking over your shoulder, but there’s also probably times you need help. What do you need help with?
And so making sure that you’re making time for those conversations are going to allow us to sort of harvest the lessons for your particular organization and for your particular relationship to take back when we are working in a co-located way again.
ALISON BEARD: So we’ve very much focused on the manager throughout this episode. I want to do two different levels of the organization. So from the employee’s perspective, if I’m being micromanaged, what can I do about it?
COLIN FISHER: First clarifying what you think your role on the task with your manager is a good idea. So in other words, if your boss is sort of starting to do or oversee parts of the work that you think we’re supposed to be kind of your responsibility, or you were supposed to have autonomy over. To say, “Hey, I just want to check. I was thinking what I’m supposed to do is, this part of the work and this part of the work, is that accurate? And is that consistent with that? And if so, I want to make sure that you’re okay with me kind of taking this and running with it.” And so in other words, to try and have a conversation where you’re going to clarify roles in such a way that you know, if there’s some kind of misalignment with how your boss sees their role and you see their role and vice versa.
But beyond that, I think you do want to … The tendency that I’ve seen is for, when people feel like their boss is micromanaging, they just kind of step back and say, “Oh, well, that’s their style. That’s too bad.” But I do think most of the time people don’t realize that they’re micromanaging, when they are micromanaging and they think they’re being helpful. And so, it takes a lot of skill and bravery to be able to approach somebody and to say, “Hey, is it okay, if I really take this one part and I want to try something a little bit different with it? Is it okay if I get back to you in … ” And then set an actual time horizon where you’ve sort of said, “Here’s the part where I’m going to be alone and not having somebody look over my shoulder.” And then scheduling a time to kind of reconvene and realign your expectations.
COLIN FISHER: I mean, the ones we saw where people really didn’t know in the one of the design firms we studied, they called swoop and poops where people would come in and they’d see that there were a bunch of things that needed changing. And as they said in this firm, they would poop all over the design and just sort of have a bunch of criticisms without suggestions and then leave. And we had talked to a lot of these managers and they really did not know that they were doing this. They thought they were raising problems that people were not aware of. And this is where I think, when you know you’re going to interact with a manager, being very clear with them about what you want from them. And you setting the terms of the conversation can help reduce the number of times that these kind of swoop and poop type interactions are happening.
ALISON BEARD: Okay. And now let’s zoom up the hierarchy to sort of the top level leadership. Is there anything that people can do at the organizational level to make sure that managers are better helpers and prevent them from being micromanagers? Can you institutionalize any of this advice?
COLIN FISHER: I think the main thing that helps institutionalize it is again, being clear that this is something you want managers to do. That managers should view their role as helping those they manage, at least that being a big part of it. And in a lot of cases explicitly evaluating managers on, are they being these kinds of people who are supporting and lifting up others. But the biggest constraint on having a great helping culture is often time, so that they have that time to go find out what the problems are with those they’re managing and to actually help with them in a useful way, rather than simply doing a swoop and poop or taking over work themselves.
ALISON BEARD: Great. Well Colin, thank you so much for being on the show.
COLIN FISHER: Thanks so much, Alison. It was a lot of fun.
ALISON BEARD: That’s Colin Fisher associate professor at University College London, School of Management. He’s the author, along with Teresa Amabile and Juliana Pillemer of the article, How to Help Without Micromanaging. You can find it in the January, February 2021 issue of Harvard Business Review or at hbr.org.
This episode was produced by Mary Dooe. We get technical help from Rob Eckhardt. Adam Buchholz is our audio product manager. Thanks for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. I’m Alison Beard.
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