Weekly Business Insights from Top Ten Business Magazines | Week 312 | Leading & Managing Section | 1

Extractive summaries and key takeaways from the articles curated from TOP TEN BUSINESS MAGAZINES to promote informed business decision-making | Since September 2017 | Week 312 | September 1-7, 2023

The Anxious Micromanager

By Julia DiGangi | Harvard Business Review Magazine | September–October 2023 Issue

Extractive Summary of the Article | Listen

Research and lived experience have shown that organizations perform better when leaders empower, encourage, and coach employees instead of delivering orders and meting out discipline. Nonetheless, that style—which author calls “command energy”—remains prevalent, though perhaps less overt or aggressive.  

The problem is that neurologically, such control cannot be sustained. The human brain is wired for independence.  Fighting human nature seems like a losing battle, so why do leaders continue to be so controlling? At root, the tendency to rely on command energy stems from a leader’s own anxiety and lack of confidence. 

To identify instances in which you deploy command energy, look for what the author calls energetic tugs-of-war. For instance, have you ever, in the face of someone’s disagreement with you, repeatedly insisted that you were right while they kept insisting you were wrong?  Unless you are talking about patently objective facts (what day of the week it is, what time the meeting is, and so on), there is no room for “being right” in constructive relationships.  The great news is you can end these cycles of relational pain quite quickly. What’s the fastest way to end a tug-of-war? Drop the rope. Dropping the rope may seem like dropping out of the fight. Giving up. Losing. It’s not, though. Whoever voluntarily drops the rope is the leader.

To stop overrelying on a command-and-control style, leaders should look inward to understand what causes it. The author has found that leaders are often surprised—and ultimately soothed—to learn that command energy typically comes from a lack of trust in themselves. We seek to control only what we do not trust. Do you ask to inspect a plane’s engine before it takes off? No, because you trust that others have followed safety protocols. You might think you command other people because you don’t trust them. In some cases, that will be true. But more often, the truth is that you don’t trust yourself.  Cultivating a new leadership style requires a dramatic shift in thinking: Your job is not to control other people; it’s to control yourself and trust that others will follow. Your job is not to be inspiring; it’s to be inspired and trust that others will feel inspired too.

To strengthen your leadership, start paying closer attention to the state of your own emotional energy as the potential source of difficulty in relationships. Here are four steps to help you look inward.  Think of someone in whom you’ve invested a lot of time trying to command, convince, control, persuade, influence, or motivate. Identify two or three qualities about this person that deeply pain you.  Consider times when you’ve injected similar energies into your own relationships.  After you’ve determined where you’re critical, monitor those settings and stop yourself if you lapse into the kind of energy you find painful to be on the receiving end of.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. Research and lived experience have shown that organizations perform better when leaders empower, encourage, and coach employees instead of delivering orders and meting out discipline. Nonetheless, that style—which author calls “command energy”—remains prevalent, though perhaps less overt or aggressive.
2. The problem is that neurologically, such control cannot be sustained. The human brain is wired for independence.  Fighting human nature seems like a losing battle, so why do leaders continue to be so controlling? At root, the tendency to rely on command energy stems from a leader’s own anxiety and lack of confidence.
3. Cultivating a new leadership style requires a dramatic shift in thinking: Your job is not to control other people; it’s to control yourself and trust that others will follow. Your job is not to be inspiring; it’s to be inspired and trust that others will feel inspired too.

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Topics:  Leadership, Micromanaging