Are You Helping or ...Micromanaging? (Creative Team Edition)
- Adilla
- May 23
- 3 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Are you constantly asking for updates from your team? Check in with them almost every hour? Do you need to approve of every action that your team is taking? Well, you might be micromanaging your team.
There are advantages to micromanaging, like preventing mistakes or reassuring team members who lack self-confidence and need more structure. However, if you are a creative project manager, you might be stifling your creative teams.
Table of Contents
What Is Micromanaging?
Micromanagement is the excessive involvement of a manager towards their team by either controlling or supervising them too much. If you’re unsure if you are micromanaging or not, here are the traits of micromanagement:
· Needing to be in every meeting their team is in
· Not trusting your team’s abilities
· Constantly make frequent changes
· The quality of work from your team is affected
While micromanagement isn’t exactly black and white, if your team’s work is not improving or they are more frequently burning out, then it’s high time to change your management style.
The Impact of Micromanagement on Creative Work
When creative teams are subjected to micromanagement, their creativity often suffers under strict instructions and constant control. The nature of needing to update or requiring constant approval from their manager limits their abilities to try innovative ideas or, worse, affects their confidence in their work. This leads to them only fulfilling their work according to instructions.
Thus, motivation and engagement among creative members would decrease. When all creative ideas and suggestions are controlled by a manager without considering their perspectives, their passion and drive to create are affected. So, the team becomes disengaged and uninspired to contribute more innovative ideas.
Look Into Supportive Leadership Style
So, how to stop micromanaging? What should micromanagers do? There’s something called supportive leadership. This is a leadership style that not only supports their team when completing their task but also provides them with the necessary tools and resources.
However, support is dependent on the individual’s needs and abilities. The point of supportive leadership is to equip team members with the right skills to work autonomously. This eliminates the need for managers to check up on them constantly.
If you are in the process of breaking free from your micromanagement style, consider using project management tools to track your teams' tasks, progress and workload. It can ease your need to check in on them when you need updates.
Instead, you can go into the features of task tracking in a project management tool to prevent disturbing your team. Our TESSR, a creative project management software, has the right feature for this! The TESSR Woohoo helps you plan and balance your team’s workload.
Conclusion
While micromanagement might work in certain business environments, it might not suit a creative team where freedom to express their ideas and take risks in their innovative approach is essential in keeping their drive and passion running. A supportive leadership style would suit them better in motivating them to do what they do best.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How do I know what leadership style suits me and my team best?
You can look into lists of leadership styles or quizzes that can help you pinpoint what style fits you, your team and your project. Or a regular feedback session would be better to understand more about your leadership style by directly asking your team.
In what situation would micromanagement fit a team?
Micromanagement would fit teams that require extra support and validation to perform their work.
Can supportive leadership be applied to every business environment?
It may not suit a typical corporate company, as supportive leadership functions best in a flexible hierarchy or structure within the workspace. So, if your company has a flat organisational structure, it might not work with a supportive leadership style.
Author Bio
With a background in Arts English, Adilla has been a casual writer for various hobbies, including parodies of animated shows and plots for board games like Dungeons & Dragons. She loves to read anything and everything from fantasy stories to articles on tips and tricks. Currently, Adilla resides in Malaysia and is a creative writer at TESSR. One day, she is eager to publish her book. To know more about her, check out her LinkedIn.
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