{"id":371957,"date":"2026-01-15T20:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T20:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/371957\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T20:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T20:00:07","slug":"the-most-widely-disliked-management-trait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/371957\/","title":{"rendered":"The Most Widely Disliked Management Trait"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was recently speaking with someone who was reflecting on her career<\/a> when she reminded me of a fundamental management<\/a> truth.<\/p>\n

She had worked for many years for a solid insurance organization and had largely enjoyed her work. There was only one time in her career when she hadn’t liked it, and she remembered it well. <\/p>\n

She had normally worked quite independently, but then one manager chose to get much more involved in the details of her daily tasks and became surprisingly controlling. <\/p>\n

The effect was immediate. Frustration with the job increased, and enjoyment of it declined.<\/p>\n

It was a textbook example: Employees almost never respond well to micromanagement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Too Much Involvement <\/p>\n

The main distinction between (reasonable) close management and dysfunctional micromanagement is the need for it. <\/p>\n

There are naturally times when an employee isn’t performing satisfactorily, so a manager needs to pay close attention<\/a> to how daily tasks are being handled. That’s just basic good management.<\/p>\n

It’s also very different from micromanagement, where a manager is excessively involved in small (micro) details of an employee’s work, even when that employee is competent (and often better than competent) in his or her job.<\/p>\n

Micromanagement is extremely common. Over the years, numerous surveys<\/a> have been done on the topic, and they usually place the number of employees who feel they’ve at some point been micromanaged in the 60 to 70 percent range.<\/p>\n

Control in a Relationship<\/p>\n

Why do people dislike micromanagement so much? I believe it comes down to autonomy and control.<\/p>\n

Like it or not, managers and employees are in a relationship. They see each other often, and even in remote-work arrangements, they communicate regularly. Very few people like to be controlled in a relationship, or have the details of their daily lives meddled with; it’s a recipe for frustration and discontent. Not surprisingly, these same dynamics apply inside the workplace and out of it.<\/p>\n

It’s well-documented that micromanagement can lead to a wide variety of negative business outcomes<\/a>. These typically include issues like demoralization, lack of innovation and creativity<\/a>, reduced productivity<\/a>, and ultimately even higher turnover rates. As the old saying goes, “employees leave managers, not companies.”<\/p>\n

The woman whose story I described at the outset was relatively fortunate. Although the micromanagement she experienced was unpleasant, it turned out to be just a passing phase in the broader arc of her career. <\/p>\n

Her micromanager moved elsewhere, her own management changed, as tends to occur (frequently) in large organizations, and she was able to return to what she felt was a more agreeable workplace environment. <\/p>\n

That, at least, is one positive element of working for a micromanager. With all the churn and reorganizing in today’s business world, managers may come and go quickly. While that can be a problem, sometimes it’s welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I was recently speaking with someone who was reflecting on her career when she reminded me of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-371957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}