It’s an all-too common scenario: A high-potential contributor gets promoted to a management role, and something happens that no one expects. That new manager’s team struggles, performance dips and engagement survey data shows a common theme — the leader is micromanaging.
This is a common scenario. Successful individual contributors are tapped for larger roles, which frequently involve people leadership. The assumption is that the employee who excelled in delivering work will naturally excel in their new management role. So when new leaders start micromanaging, organizations are surprised and react with remedial training. By the time the micromanagement is recognized, team morale has already been damaged, and the new manager has ingrained unhelpful behaviors.
Micromanagement is often misdiagnosed as a personality issue or character flaw. In reality, micromanagement is a predictable response to a training gap that practitioners can address.
Understanding the Confidence Gap
When people are promoted into new roles, they’re expected to demonstrate new skills. While some may already possess them, many new managers do not. Their success up to that point has often been built on executing high-quality individual work.
When managers step into their new role, they are often aware of their skills gaps, and imposter syndrome compounds that awareness. There is not a lot of room for experimentation, as the role comes with a team that expects the new manager to lead them effectively. This can create a significant confidence gap.
The new manager’s scope has increased, visibility has increased and they do not yet know how to be successful. In lieu of effective people management skills, new managers often default to the behaviors that made them successful before. They begin to involve themselves in details or even take on the work their team should be doing. Their focus on execution is an attempt to meaningfully contribute and demonstrate that their promotion was a good decision.
The manager often does not even realize they are micromanaging; they are coping with the fear that comes with potential failure. It is not until team members are affected that managers may even become aware that they have become micromanagers. Micromanagement is often a result of a lack of leadership training, fueling a very real confidence gap.
Why Manager Training Isn’t Working
People learn new skills by moving through what Noel Burch termed the Hierarchy of Competence. Learners go from unconscious incompetence (i.e., they don’t know what they don’t know) to unconscious competence (i.e., the new skill comes naturally). In between those stages, learners must recognize the skills they need and practice them repeatedly.
Most organizations recognize that management requires a new set of skills, but traditional training often underestimates the importance of timing and undervalues sustained support for new skills to become embedded.
Traditional leadership training is offered on a training calendar aligned to the company’s schedule versus real-time promotions. When the training arrives, it may be months after the new manager has been in the role. The confidence gap widens and ineffective behavior patterns start to set in. Even if the training itself is valuable, if it’s not offered at the right time practitioners must work against ineffective behaviors that now must be unlearned.
Organizations also tend to treat manager training as a check-the-box activity instead of sustained support. Training is offered as quick virtual webinars or one-day activities, with little follow up or application. When managers finish the training, they usually aren’t able to recall the practices they learned in the moments they need them.
Building Training in the Forming Window
New leaders set the tone for their leadership in the first 90 days after the transition: the forming window. During the forming window, leaders are most aware of their skill gaps and motivated to learn new behaviors. They are also developing new habits and patterns for how they will operate long term.
While conventional wisdom is that it takes 21 days to form a new habit, James Clear, author of “Atomic Habits,” says it takes closer to two months for new behaviors to become truly ingrained. Offering training during the forming window provides the opportunity for the new manager to gain new skills while having immediate opportunities to put those skills into practice repeatedly. This repetition of behavior over time embeds new behaviors early on.
It’s not enough to offer one-and-done training for managers. The 70-20-10 model suggests most learning comes through job-related experiences. This means manager training must be experiential. New managers need an opportunity to experiment with what they have learned, iterate, and embed that knowledge through real work. Effective leadership training includes a learning element that can be applied after or alongside classroom learning. Peer discussions, group coaching, mentoring and leader check-ins are a few ways to activate long-term learning throughout the forming window.
Sustained and timely experiential training during the forming window addresses the new manager’s confidence gap and builds productive behaviors that combat potential micromanagement.
Can Training Reduce Micromanagement?
Most new managers want to lead their team well, and resort to micromanagement to address their confidence gap. Organizations have an opportunity to recognize the struggle new managers face and intervene earlier with the right support.
While some micromanaging behavior may be unpreventable, practitioners can reduce micromanagement by offering timely, experiential training during the forming window. The right support at the right time can help new managers let go of old ways of working and apply the new skills they need with confidence.
