Let it go, let it go, let it go

I usually start my posts with an anecdote or a story that somehow inspired the topic. Today, I’m starting a little differently. There isn’t a specific event behind this piece, but rather a set of reflections that keep coming back, in one form or another.

The very first article posted on this newsletter was already about micromanagement and how, over time, I began to notice a few warning signs that made me realize I was controlling more than I should have.

It took me years to understand what micromanagement actually was. In my first experience as a leader, I didn’t even know the meaning of the term, even though it was my default operating mode. I experienced it myself, I applied it to my team members, and only later did I realize the damage I was causing. And how much good comes from truly trusting people, on so many different levels.

I’m not saying anything new here. I’m repeating myself. But I needed this as a preface to what I really want to talk about today:

I’m not a recovered micromanager. I’m a micromanager in recovery. Every day is a fight.

I’m not confessing or trying to clear my conscience. I just want to share a few reflections that helped me realize how the need for control within a team isn’t always obvious at first glance. Sometimes it’s more subtle, harder to spot, but just as damaging.

There’s a kind of micromanagement that everyone recognizes. The manager who wants to know exactly where you are with that task, every single day. The one who assigns you the work and then explains how to do it, step by step. The one who makes you feel that no matter how good you are, the decisions are never really yours.

That kind of micromanagement is obvious. You recognize it because you experience it and you know exactly what’s happening.

Then, there’s another kind. The manager who gives you full autonomy. Who doesn’t check your hours, doesn’t assign tasks in detail, doesn’t ask for updates every morning. They let you work but when they see the outcome, there’s always that comment: “I would’ve done it this way”.

I’m not saying that every opinion expressed becomes micromanagement, of course not. But there’s a clear line between “I would’ve done it this way because… [insert solid reason]” and “I would’ve done it this way because I just like it better”.

For the person saying it, it feels completely different from the micromanagement in the first example. But for the person receiving it, the effect is the same: “My decisions are never quite enough”.

And that’s what I meant earlier when I said I’m not a recovered micromanager. I was talking about this second kind.

I want to share an example of something that happened recently. Something that convinced me to write about this and made me realize it might help someone else, too.

I had asked a member of my team to write a report. I had also shared a template to make it easier to structure. When they sent it back to me, I noticed that some sections were different from the ones I had shared, and the content was organized in another way.

My first instinct was to ask them to fix it: to move sections around, to reorganize the content the way I had originally envisioned and requested. I was already drafting the feedback in my head, trying to find a diplomatic way to say “do it my way” without actually saying “do it my way”.

These are the moments when the micromanager in me tries to take over. I didn’t do any of that, because the work was good. The report contained all the necessary information and achieved its goal. It just wasn’t done the way I would have done it.

A few years ago, this would have caused a massive waste of time for everyone: for me, for the person who would have had to rewrite it, and for the people it was meant for who might have received it later for no valid reason at all.

There’s a distinction that helped me avoid losing my mind. Not every time I step in is micromanagement, sometimes it’s just my job.

If someone breaks a process we agreed on as a team, I step in. If they ignore a best practice we know works, I step in. If context-switching becomes a problem and I see the way of working starting to degrade, I step in. These are the moments in which I’m doing my job as a leader, not micromanagement.

The problem starts when the only reason I want to ask for a change is that I would have done it differently. Not better, just differently.

Recognizing which dynamic a particular case falls into is actually quite simple. You just need to ask yourself one question: is the change I’m about to request based on something objective or something subjective? If the answer is subjective, I know the comment I’m about to make is for me, not for the team. And I’ve learned to let it go in those cases.

The hard part, though, was realizing that I had to ask myself that question. And that took me a long time.

Not everything is micromanagement but not all micromanagement is obvious at first glance. Learn to distinguish between what truly needs fixing and what is simply done differently than you would have done it. And when it’s just different… let it go.

Credits: Illustration 1