I hadn’t thought before about the fact that under managing could be just as harmful if not more than micromanaging. Finding the sweet spot is my challenge moving forward. These reflections are triggered by an experience this last semester, where I realised in trying not to micro manage I hadn’t set up the team for success. The challenging part of this was learning to step back from pointing the finger at the ‘others’ and to ask how I was complicit in creating this situation as a manager and what I could learn from this to do differently next time.

“How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?” [Jerry Colonna]

Related Work:

Jerry Colonna https://www.reboot.io/team/jerry-colonna/

Deci and Ryan (various) Self Determination Theory – mini theory of ‘Basic psychological needs’ -autonomy, competence, relatedness https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/theory/

Victor Lipman, 2018, Under-Management Is the Flip Side of Micromanagement — and It’s a Problem Too, Harvard Business Review, Nov 2018. https://hbr.org/2018/11/under-management-is-the-flip-side-of-micromanagement-and-its-a-problem-too

• Don’t be a conflict avoider
• View goal-setting as mission critical
• Is this the absolute best work you can do [GF: not sure I agree with this last one]

Transcript

Automated transcript via Temi.com so may be some inaccuracies.

(00:05):

Welcome to changing academic life I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick. And this is a bite-size related work podcast where we pick up on a single idea from literature and experience that may provide some insights or tips that will help us change academic life for the better.

(00:25):

In this short podcast, I'd like to share some of my own reflections on trying to find that sweet spot between micro-managing and under managing. And this has been triggered by a particular experience in this last semester, brought to light, I think because of the circumstances of COVID and being remote. But before getting to there, it's useful for me to start back to when I first started being responsible for research projects and a bunch of researchers, and I inherited a large number of projects and people, and this was in the early two thousands. And I felt really out of my depth and really insecure. And I think, you know, the imposter syndrome would have, would be a definite definition for what was going on then. And I know that at times this led me to slip into micromanager mode, which isn't a very helpful mode to be in because it can really undermine the people that you're working with and good people. And there was a particular incident incidents where without going into details, the researchers should have walked away from a day of running a study, celebrating a great success. Yes, we could reflect on lessons learned and what we could take forward to our next study, but they actually had really done a great job. But they walked away feeling really de-motivated and deflated because of some of my unnecessary interventions that day, and this isn't the sort of leader that I want to be.

(02:08):

And I I'm grateful for people who've put up with me on my own learning journey that hopefully I have a much better sense now that it's not my role. I don't need to control, but I should enable and empower people. And that, especially in academia where we're working with really clever people, how can we trust people that we're working with and provide the enabling and supportive structures and create more of a learning mindset and making mistakes and learning experiences okay. But without feeling like you need to step in as the all-knowing expert. And this is underpinned by Deci and Ryan self-determination theory, and there are many theories part of that about basic psychological needs, which talks about how all of us want to experience autonomy and a sense of competence and a sense of relatedness. And micromanagement, it cuts down on all of those, I'm in micro-managing, I'm not giving people autonomy, I'm taking it away. And often unexpectedly. I'm questioning their competence by the way, the inappropriate way that I might step in. And it breaks our relationship because I'm not showing any trust or respect for them in their own learning journey. So I think that over time I've got much better at not micromanaging. I know that when there are times of stress, I may tend to step back into that again. But I think I have a little bit more self-awareness and recognized and step back.

(03:51):

But the experience of the last semester has raised the question for me about whether I might even be now under managing people or projects. And there's a paper that I'll put a link to by Victor Lee Littman from 2018, that talks about under management may be just as big a problem as micromanagement.

(04:15):

And what happened this semester? Again, I won't go into details, but we got to a situation where I found myself feeling quite cranky with some people, because I felt like why wasn't this stuff getting done? And don't they know that something's needed. And you know, so I, I was really reacting to a situation and there was a, you know, a sense of sort of blaming them for not being good enough or, and wondering whether I should be confronting the situation and say, look, what's going on. But I was reminded by something that a master coach, Jerry Colonna says a lot, which is ‘how have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want'. And that's a really powerful question because it puts a spot spotlight back onto me about what am I responsible for. And the complicit is not, it's still recognizing that others may have been able to act differently, make different choices, but what's my role in all of this in setting this up.

(05:31):

And what I realized was that I had just assumed a whole lot. I always remember my mother saying assume, never assume because it makes an ass out of you and an ass out of me. And that's certainly what I'd been doing. I thought that this was a situation that we'd been through before that people just knew what was needed and expected and by when, and we have any explicit discussion about it. So I actually didn't set people up for success. I wasn't enabling them. And as I think about it as well, there were very particular circumstances this semester, where they actually had quite a big pressures on them related to COVID in the situation where even if they may be, should have known or could have known there were other circumstances that they were trying to deal with us.

(06:27):

Well, so what this points to for me is what can I do next time? You know, how do I look forward? Not in terms of focusing on the problem like what's going on. So for the immediate step, we, we did have a discussion. I had been able to step back from the crankiness and blaming them in my head and could actually have a discussion and own up to the fact that I hadn't been very good at setting expectations on, you know, getting some shared understandings about what was needed when, and then we looked very practically at how we could move forward and get done what was needed. And what I've learned from this for future iterations that might be similar is the important need of finding that sweet spot, where I'm still enabling and respecting people's autonomy and competence and relatedness. But I'm also recognizing my own role as a manager and scaffolding that a little bit more and getting clarity because that's really where I can help empower them.

(07:41):

And it's not that I should step in and say, okay, this is what we need done by when I say, does everyone agree? We're all on the same page, great go forth. I can still do get to clarity and set, shared expectations in a way that empowers them. So I can say, what's your thoughts so far about what we need to do when, or who might be responsible for what, and set it up as a discussion where they can have real input and control over how we set up the plan for the, for the semester or the project or whatever it is, where we might agree, timelines, where we might agree responsibilities. And I can then sort of say, what do you need from me going forward to support you in this? And also making it very clear that there's open communication to come back and ask questions.

(08:33):

It may be appropriate to set up regular check-ins or communications. And I realized I'd got away with a lot of under management, probably over the years, because we'd been co located where I could do a lot of that, just dropping my, you know, dropping into someone's room and just doing a quick, check-in saying, how's it going? Or I had more visibility. Well, just because we're in the same physical space. And these are some of the things that we've lost or I've lost at least in being physically distance from people. So, you know, those more informal check-ins, you know, awareness stuff and, and just being able to sort of have visibility. But I think even when we do have our office spaces back again, and we can be hanging out together, it's a really good practice to think about how do I best scaffold and people and set, and projects and set them up for success. So that's my lesson that I take away from this last semester, trying to find the sweet spot between micro-managing and under managing that can empower people to take their own learning journey, but feeling like they're doing, they're doing it with support and with clarity, and that there's a shared understanding.

(10:00):

You can find the summary notes and related links for this podcast on www dot, changing academic life.com. You can also subscribe to changing academic life on iTunes, and now also on Stitcher. And you can follow change our life on Twitter. And if something connected with you, please consider sharing this podcast with your colleagues so that we can widen the conversation about how we can do academia differently.

Acknowledgements:

Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash