The 5 Critical impacts of Micromanagement Leaders with Authoritative Styles

– Ways to identify and combat the effects

There is a plethora of research and expert guidelines published as to what makes a leader successful. The topic is by no means a finite formula. Leadership is a complex set of interactions with continuous learning to achieve success. There are common traits that underline all good leaders primarily grounded in their value systems that engage their followers and achieve results. As business becomes more complex it is worthwhile to focus on ways to uncover “counter leadership” scenarios that ultimately impact the success of your organization by squandering valuable resources.

One dangerous “counter leadership” scenario is the micro manager in a leadership role that bullies the staff to conform. Characteristics of a Micro-Managing Authoritative leader: they are always right, they are the only ones who know the answer, they undermine and suppress ideas that do not fit their view, they destroy the reputation of those who oppose them.

Impact #1 - Brain Drain – Your Best and Your Brightest will Move On (Physically or Mentally)

The obvious measure is turnover and transfer. Although no one is indispensable, the contributions that may have been delivered by exiting staff are a real loss. Although your organization may still sport low turnover numbers; the most devasting brain drain is when your brightest become complacent and stop delivering the innovative ideas and results you require. They give up and succumb to the answer the leader prefers. Leaders of leaders should implement measures to identify brain drain. One technique to identify this is measuring the leader’s openness to diverse approaches. Beware of the secret sauce with no variation as it is a repeat of what worked before with no room for evolving approaches and fresh solutions. Executives should actively create safe forums for the staff to constructively shape the “Top-down” directive.

Impact #2 – Potentially Incorrect Priorities - Resources pay attention only to what the leader is measuring at the time

It is clear that “what gets measured, gets done.” By that very definition, a micro leader is focused on their own agenda. Since defining business solutions is not a one-person show, they cannot possibly have all the answers. Consequently, the staff may drop other priorities to meet the leader’s priority. The impact of priority shift has rippling effects as other stakeholders outside the leader’s domain may be negatively impacted by the priority shift. More importantly investments and momentum in other areas may be lost and need to be restarted and reworked. This broader impact often remains unmeasured. One way to track this impact is to measure service response time for members of the group and resource efficiencies. Are there high occurrence deadline resets? Is there a demand for additional resources to accomplish basic duties? How many projects go on a low burner and take an unusually long duration to complete? How many projects are abandoned?

Impact #3 Recasting the Message - Communication is spun to support the leaders’ message.

Verbal and written communications are shaped to align with the leader’s directives. Presentations and email communications are closely reviewed and edited accordingly. Messages that dilute or challenge the leader’s approach are often filtered to conform. Upward and horizontal communications often omit legitimate facts and alternate views. Identifying missing information is challenging. An approach to opening communication channels is to expand options for cross functional teams beyond a single leadership domain to collectively define the deliverables. Independent senior technical resources can also be assigned to a team to objectively review and craft the messages. Beware of messages that are boiler plate as the devil is always in the details. Asking the “why” and the “how’ questions may uncover risk assumptions not openly shared.

Impact #4 Missed Opportunities - Staff creativity may be stifled if their ideas do not fit the leader paradigm

Often there are limited opportunities to introduce novel approaches that may be perceived to conflict with the leadership proposed approach. The creativity of “thinking out of the box” may not always receive favorable support. Leadership tendency is to rely on precedents and minimize risk with a directive to apply what was successful in the leadership’s experience paradigm. This enhances the leader’s perceived value. Although following the success of prior approaches is prudent, true innovation is fostered by leaders who can listen and openly consider the way to merge experience with creativity for the best outcome. Innovation is cultural. It flourishes in an environment of openness and support. It cannot be compartmentalized and orchestrated. Promoting evolution in methods used to address business goals can enrich the outcome.

Impact #5 Reduced Productivity - Managing people reactions and the resiliency time to recover from negative environment

A culture perceived as authoritarian often breeds a negative environment. People spend cycles discussing the difficulties of objectively having input to the outcomes. Offline conversations consume productivity cycles and decrease motivation. Staff increasingly accept that the only way to survive is to support or maintain a neutral posture for the leader’s proposed approach. Often these impacts are in the underlying culture and kept from executives. Leaders tightly filter these impacts to executives who may be perceived by the staff as unaware of the behavior impact. Staff are waiting for executive leaders to intervene and hold leadership accountable. Actions speak louder than words and they respond to leadership commitment to “walk the talk.” The positive impact of executive actions can quickly spark productivity and greatly increase the value of all staff in achieving the organization’s goals. A successful organization is driven by the ability to leverage the entirety of their human capital.