Why Is Your Annoying Boss Micromanaging You?
If you’re lucky or in a good career place, you don’t have a micromanagement boss. But if you do, or have ever had one, the reason they do it is really simple: they feel helpless. And knowing this can help you fight back and get a little respite from them.
Science explains that us, like most people, when you feel powerless or helpless, your first instinct is to take control over everything you do , there is some control over, and if you are a boss or manager that can mean your employees. While we know that most people work best when given independence and autonomy, and when managers trust their teams to make the best calls when they need to, well, sometimes good old psychology just takes over.
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, who studied this and published their findings in an article in Personality and Individual Differences , note that in their tests, as expected, when people were exposed to an authoritarian power structure, they clung to them more strongly. the remaining autonomy and power they had as a reaction. Of course, the experiments that the researchers conducted were small (the first study involved about 238 people, and the second – a follow-up survey with 100 people), and this topic definitely requires a broader and more detailed study, but the essence of logic makes sense – like Bottom Line: If you are more confident in your power and authority and feel supported by those around you, you do not feel the need to deprive other people of their own power and autonomy.
As far as what you can do, many of the same rules about managing and prioritizing bad bosses also apply , so they don’t have to ask you anything . Learn to “cope” and they won’t get in your way.
Bosses Micromanage When They Feel Powerless | Science about us