Dear Crucial Skills,

My boss has started micromanaging me. She constantly asks me for updates. One morning by 10 o’clock I had already received ten e-mail messages from her and it took me an hour and a half just to reply to her requests for updates! To add to things, she’s related to the vice president so I feel like if I try to bring this up and it goes awry my working days could be numbered. This management style has started to affect my sleeping and eating habits and even my self-esteem.

Any suggestions on how I can gently bring this up to her?

Signed,

Frazzled

Dear Frazzled,

After reading your e-mail, I asked around my office to see if someone had written this about me! Now that I know we’re talking about someone else I’ll be happy to offer advice (wry chuckle).

Micromanaging is almost always a crucial conversation someone is acting out rather than talking out. A leader is feeling nervous or vulnerable and acts it out through incessant hovering and controlling. The result is that the direct report often feels hurt and resentful and acts it out through withdrawal or other displaced hostility. The solution is to talk it out. Unless and until you can have a conversation about trust and autonomy, this game will get worse and worse.

So, here are three pieces of advice I hope will help you and others step up to this kind of crucial conversation. And as an added bonus, I’m taking the third tip from our new book, “Crucial Confrontations: Tools for Talking about Broken Promises, Violated Expectations, and Bad Behavior.”

Tip #1: First, hold the right conversation. Don’t let this get sidetracked into a discussion of how a project is going or other diversions from the real issue. The topics you need to explore thoroughly with your boss are:
- How much confidence do you have in me in my key areas of responsibility?
- What level of communication is both efficient and sufficient between us given your level of trust in me?

If in exploring her confidence in you you discover there are serious concerns, you can then turn the topic to ways you can create evidence for her that more trust is warranted. If you find she has great confidence but just requires much more communication, move on to the next two tips.

Tip #2: Second, make it safe for your boss (and you). When you open the conversation, head off any misunderstanding she may have of your motives by declaring them candidly. If you fail to do this, she’ll hear you as being critical of her, or worse, wanting to have country club freedom and no accountability. Help her know you just want to be as productive as possible, to feel proud of your work, and to gain her confidence by performing up to expectation. For example, you could use the Contrasting skill we teach as follows:

“Could we talk for a few minutes about how we work together? I’ve noticed a couple of things that are keeping me from being as productive as I can. It’s a bit sensitive, and I worry about sounding like I’m not supportive of you, or that I know better than you how things should be done. I don’t feel that way at all. And yet I think it’s worth talking about because it could help me do a better job for you and create a climate where I can feel good about my work. Would that be okay?”

Tip #3: Finally, Make It Motivating. You can help your boss want to deal with this by sharing concrete examples of how her behavior has created problems she would care about. When you hold a “Crucial Confrontation” (confronting gaps between what you expect and what you observe–for example in your boss’s management style) with someone you think won’t care about your concerns, you need to work hard to see how the issue you’re raising is creating problems for him or her. One of the reasons we’re so ineffective during crucial confrontations is that we’re so absorbed in thinking about how the problem affects ‘us’ that we give no thought to how it’s affecting the other person. Those who are most skilled at crucial confrontations are able to influence others to address their concerns by helping them see consequences they already experience that they can change by changing their behavior. For example:

“I know one thing that’s important to you is that I meet your deadlines. That’s important to me, too. The level of reporting you sometimes ask of me makes that somewhat harder. For example, one morning I had ten requests for updates from you by 10 a.m. I know that’s an extreme example, but it illustrates the point that the hour and a half I spent answering those was time taken from getting the job done.”

Or

“You ask me at times how I like my work. And you know, I really do. But there are times I spend a whole evening in a funk because I think you don’t have confidence in me and I’m not sure how to earn it.”

If you help your boss see how her behavior is creating consequences she doesn’t want, she’ll not only feel safe with you, but she’ll also be more motivated to make changes.

Good luck–and please give me frequent updates on this crucial conversation. (Just kidding!)

Joseph

  Dear Crucial Skills,

My problem is the type of meetings my boss runs. There are few dynamics, the same items appear on the minutes, people give a 30 second report on these items, no one appears to look at the minutes from weekend to weekend, and no members of the management team challenge each other.

All members feel that the meetings as they are are a waste of time. Some make excuses for missing them, but as I am responsible for scheduling the meetings and issuing the minutes, that option is not available to me.

I do want to approach my boss about it–how can I do this without hurting his feelings and still achieve my objectives?

Signed,

Wasting Time in Meetings

Dear Wasting Time,

Let’s start with what you know you don’t want to do–just to be sure. Here’s what you don’t want to say (even though it’s steeped in the truth): “I wonder if we could talk about our meetings. I’ve had a chance to be part of them for a while and I think I know (drum roll please) why everyone despises them and does his or her best to get out of them–even if it means having to have a root canal just to get an excuse.”

Obviously, a shot across the bow isn’t a particularly good opening position. Others have tried the less direct approach, clinging to indirect comments and humor. For instance, “Everyone who holds a good meeting please stand up. Not so fast Mr. Jones.”

The challenge is, how do you give feedback to someone who hasn’t asked for it? Twenty-five years ago when I took my first class in organizational behavior from the esteemed Bill Dyer–guru of group process–I learned something that I’ve never forgotten. He explained that when people found out that he was one of the world’s experts on group process, they’d ask: “Hey, you sat in our meeting, how did we do?” He learned through sad experience that they didn’t really want to know. He would tactfully point out an area that could use some improvement and the person asking for feedback would then thank and resent him. “It’s because we hadn’t contracted up front,” he explained. “Never give feedback unless you’ve contracted for it, up front.”

Plus, who likes constructive criticism anyway? I completely agree with Noel Coward: “I love criticism just so long as it’s unqualified praise.”

Which brings us to our challenge. You want to advise someone who hasn’t asked for it, you’re going to be pointing out problems, and the information could easily feel like a cheap shot.

Rule #1 – Start with mutual purpose. If you can find a way to let your boss know that your goal is to make him more effective, who can fight with that? So contract up front by asking if you could talk about ways to improve the meetings, ways to make them more effective. Point out that you think everyone needs to take more responsibility, and that you have an idea or two on how to do that.

Rule #2 – Focus on the meeting, not on your boss. Okay, it’s your boss’s meeting, but not really. Everyone has responsibilities. Everyone needs to do what it takes to make the meetings more effective. For instance, say people take assignments, but they report back with unfulfilled commitments and a weak story and then figure they’re off the hook. That’s simply unacceptable. If someone drones on or holds a side conversation or skips agenda items, it’s everyone’s responsibility to say something. Everyone’s in the meeting. The person at the head of the table isn’t the only one who can say something. Meeting improvements belong to everyone.

This is true in real time as well. When you’re in a meeting and you see something that’s making it less effective, follow these three simple steps: (1) Point out what has you concerned. “Jim, I thought we had decided on the vacation schedule, but I see that you keep wanting to return to it.” (2) Point out what you would like to see happen instead. “I was hoping that we had resolved that issue already.” (3) To avoid being too pushy, check with the group. “Does that make sense or should we return to the schedule?” The goal here is to go public with the problem without pointing fingers or coming off as a know-it-all.

So start by sharing your feelings that the meetings are not as effective as they could be–talk about the meeting in general and an overall area or two that could be improved.

Rule #3 – Offer alternative behaviors. Saying what isn’t working is only half the job. Once you’ve pointed out the problem, offer a potential solution. Be tentative. “Maybe if we had each person report on the assignment, and then if they haven’t completed it we can talk about it as a group. When we run into a problem, we seem comfortable reporting back without having completed the assignment or having notified anyone in advance. Is this how we want to work?”

Rule #4 – Only pick one thing that your boss himself might work on. After you’ve earned the right to talk about your boss by addressing the meeting in general, you can you offer him your opinion on what he might do. When you bring up the issue, do it in a spirit of jointly brainstorming problems and solutions. This helps feedback come across as one of many good ideas instead of a personal affront.

Rule #5 – Approach the discussion with one thought in mind. Your boss is a reasonable, rational, and decent person. An idea here and there could go a long way. You’re going to jointly brainstorm. How could this possibly be threatening?

Good luck, and may all of your meetings be better than a root canal.

Kerry