Freedom in work: When I say this, I am meaning freedom and trust in the position that the employee holds.
When you trust in your employee’s capabilities, you give them the freedom to complete their jobs or tasks with little supervision and no micromanagement.
When you do not have that level of trust, either in your employee’s capabilities or your own, you tend to micromanage.
When people are micromanaged, it has a suffocating feeling which will result in suffocating their abilities and will show in the end result in their work.
If you notice you have these tendencies, take a month off of micromanaging and see where things go…
Give people more freedom and you will be surprised by their capabilities. You will still need to provide deadlines, goals and clear expectations – but then give them the freedom to complete this work. Give a deadline with a few days’ leeway, so that you can work on things together, if need be for the final product.
Micromanaging people can be stressful as you take on their responsibilities as your own. Even parents can micromanage their teens and again, it has the same result – that suffocating feeling which the teen usually rebels against causing more tension and problems than necessary.
Give people the freedom they need to make their own mistakes, errors and learn how to take responsibility for them and learn how to rectify the situation.
People learn way more from failing than they do from succeeding.
It is stressful to micromanage; it is a different stress to give people freedom as well but stifling their work is stressful to them as well, and might present the environment where they will look for work elsewhere.
Give them the opportunity to shine and see what happens.
Questions to Ponder:
What type of management style do you have?
How would you describe it?
How would others describe it?
