This text draws on an article published in the Harvard Business Review.
Reduced flexibility of the team
Micromanagement keeps employees in constant fear. With the manager watching their every step, they are afraid of making mistakes and prefer sticking to time-proven routines. But this means team members do not try new procedures and lack any motivation to develop further. And this in turn reduces both the flexibility and adaptability of the whole team.
High employee turnover
While there are those who actually have no ambitions to make their own decisions and are happy to be told by someone else what to do, most people, in order to be happy, need room for their own initiative. Thus micromanagement often leads to frustration and eventually to high employee turnover.
Unused strengths of employees
In practice, micromanagement means everything is run by the team leader, who has a clear idea about how things should be done. But a truly efficient manager should know that in certain specific cases individual employees are often better in some ways than the manager. Then it is worth supporting employees in their specific skills and strengths as the whole team will benefit. Micromanagement stifles creativity as talented employees are unable to utilise their strengths.
Lack of vision
For the team to pull together and employees to be genuinely motivated to give their best performance, they must first be sold a particular positive vision. This is the task of the manager. But a manager who is too involved in every minor detail within the team usually has no time for strategic planning and visions. Such a team can only forever follow the manager's orders without any vision of how things might improve.
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