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In the realm of creative leadership, navigating the fine line between guidance and over-control is crucial. Micromanagement not only stifles innovation but also carries significant psychological effects that can dampen team morale and creativity. Those in creative leadership must understand the negative effects of micromanaging if their teams are to thrive.
Let’s be real — no one likes to feel like they’re being micromanaged at work. Creativity is delicate. Designers, writers, and developers will often come up with a far better solution if given the right challenge to solve or goal to achieve, versus telling them “Do it this exact way.” This guide aims to explore the nuances of micromanagement — from recognizing the telltale signs to understanding the negative psychological effects of micromanagement on employees — and how tools like Punchlist can be pivotal in fostering a healthy, productive creative environment.
There are few aspects of business more ethereal than creative work. Finance teams run numbers with authority (you can’t disagree with math). Lawyers craft winning arguments based on historical precedent. Operations managers draw from experience to establish proven policies that make a company run more efficiently.
Creative teams? Rather than adhering to established processes, they’re solving problems with novel solutions by conjuring up messages and designs that have never existed before.
Copywriters sometimes describe their work as toiling “in the word mines,” but the pursuit of creative excellence has less to do with manual labor than it does with the supernatural connection celebrated in ancient Greece. According to mythology, the daughters of Zeus, known as Muses, were the essence of art and would whisper inspirations into the ears of deserving creators.
Yes, creativity is a mysterious and beautiful thing. And it can easily be smothered by a micromanager. In this article, you’ll learn how to manage creativity without micromanaging.
Micromanaging takes many forms, and they’re all oppressive. Rather than giving creativity room to breathe, they constrict it with superfluous rules, snooping, and mistrust.
Here are some examples of how micromanagement often rears its ugly head among creative management:
Do any of these signs of micromanagement sound familiar? We all have certain micromanaging tendencies within us — the problems only arise when too many of those tendencies pile up. In some ways, this dynamic is akin to the “Saltine Cracker Challenge,” where you need to:
Sounds easy, right? Most of us have eaten saltine crackers one or two at a time with no issues. But six of those salty crackers will dry out your mouth, making it nearly impossible to swallow them all. Likewise, too many micromanaging tendencies can dry up the creative well and bring your team’s progress to a screeching halt.
The antidote to micromanagement is unburdening yourself and empowering your team. Show that you trust their abilities and let them work out of range from your shadow.
Of course, any time that you’re taking a step further away from a project, it’s imperative that you set clear collaboration guidelines. This doesn’t mean that you deliver step-by-step directives to your team. They’re not order-takers, after all. Creatives will always produce better results when given the right problem to solve or goal to achieve, without an instruction manual from you.
Remember, creativity requires freedom. That’s when ideas can get up and walk around the room. Some will eventually leave for good, while others linger, evolving into something exceptional.
You can foster this fertile environment by setting clear expectations and realistic timelines. The more concrete details your team knows upfront, the more great ideas they can discover after the project commences.
Effective leaders are always good communicators. While this skill set covers everything from download to delivery, many of the biggest issues occur during the feedback phase. Communicating with clarity is difficult when various team members have their own responsibilities, priorities, and visions.
A platform like Punchlist can improve the workflow, making it easy to get real-time feedback from the right stakeholders. You can comment directly on top of what you’re referring to, removing ambiguity. More importantly, it enables you to engage in the type of dialogue that brings consensus and collaboration, not frustrated eye rolls.
Creative management requires an accuracy of communication not seen in other fields. You should strive to communicate so clearly that it’s nearly impossible to be misunderstood. As Punchlist’s Zack Kinslow explains:
“Sometimes it’s all in the ask. How you ask for feedback — whether it’s from a client, teammate, or stakeholder — can make all the difference on the quality of feedback you receive. Creating that ask is something that deserves your time and attention, as it impacts the relationship with the person delivering feedback, the review cycle timeline, and the overall quality of the work.
By framing your feedback request in a strategic manner, you can move past the ‘I like it’ or ‘I don’t like it’ phase, and get into a more productive conversation around granular pieces of the creative.”
There’s a symbiosis that occurs with creative feedback. So much weight is often given to making it easier for individuals to deliver the feedback, but that aspect is no more important than the receiving of it. That’s why Punchlist gives equal weight to the giving and getting of feedback.
Punchlist features include video feedback, which allows you to be more deliberate in tone, articulate nuances, soften the blow of your words, and include motivational messages to fire up your creative team.
We all want to elevate the collaboration within our teams while creating a feeling of independence that generates the best results. As a creative leader, you may often find yourself wondering how to hold employees accountable without micromanaging.
Here are 7 actionable tips that can empower you to become a “macro-manager” who leads with trust and respect.
While micromanagers are fixated on what’s going on at any given moment, the macro view locks in on the next major milestone. Show that you respect your team by allowing them to navigate the project without you breathing down their necks.
How: Zoom out, and think about the longer-term objective. Perhaps the team is going about it a different way than you would, but it’s still on track to ladder up to the bigger goal. Let them do their thing. The result may surprise you.
Everyone needs to be on the same page from the onset, so treat details like currency. When your people know where they’re going, they’ll be more productive and efficient along the way.
How: Establish team OKRs (Objective → Key Result) at the onset of a major project. While the team should proactively track against the bigger objective, and you can support when they are feeling off-track, you don’t necessarily need to stress about the minutiae of how it’s getting done. Keep your eyes on the “North Star” metric.
Don’t worry, your leadership talents still have a place as a macro-manager. But instead of outlining every detail of processes, you should be setting your people up for success by communicating the objectives and helping them find exceptional solutions to the problems at hand.
How: Think about the 6 levels of delegation and your teammates’ position in that spectrum of trust. Chances are, they are level 5 (“Explore and decide within these parameters”) or level 6 (“Just get it done, I trust you”). You don’t need to lay out every little step in the process.
The word “delegate” doesn’t necessarily infer a strategic skills match. For example, it would technically be delegating if you were to ask a stranger on the street to do your taxes — but this might not be the best way to go. By matching responsibilities with the right people and giving your team the chance to shine, you’ll transcend delegating and become someone who empowers.
How: Identify your team’s strengths by having everyone take a quiz like Gallup’s CliftonStrengths Assessment or the DiSC Profile Assessment to see how each personality type best collaborates. Then as the manager, make efforts to enable people to play in their strength zones.
Giving your creatives room to do their jobs doesn’t mean you don’t care about their performance. It’s important for everyone to have access to the same management platform, so they can know who is working on what, and when it will be finished. By providing visibility and transparency, you’ll actually create more trust and eliminate a lot of the back-and-forth and redundant “work about work” that creative projects used to require.
How: Collaboration tools like Punchlist help ensure there’s no confusion over who is responsible for what. You can assign comments as tasks, @mention team members to bring something to their attention, and update the status of an item to reflect what needs to be done next.
Leaders who think they have everything figured out are the least likely to understand anything. Why? Because they stick with their preconceived ideas, rather than drawing upon the diverse insights and perspectives of their team. By embracing the macro view, you’ll usually get smarter results.
How: Open up the floor to contributing ideas from anywhere. Use digital whiteboarding tools like MURAL and run a facilitated brainstorming session. Or invite your teammates to your Punchlist project to share their feedback and help make the work better. Remember, freedom with a framework!
It’s still essential for you to be present for your team. You might not be directing every incremental step of the creation process, but remain available for questions and problem-solving. For example, you could show your support by leaving encouraging messages within the feedback cycle.
How: Think of remote ways of “leaving your office door open,” and how you can build a culture of approachability. Give prompts during 1-on-1s that encourage your teammates to open up. Set AMA office hours where people can ask you anything. Or maybe it’s as simple as updating your Slack status to “I’m here to help.”
As you avoid the scourge of micromanaging, you’ll see personal growth throughout your team. Your people will be more confident and capable. And your long-term results will become more impactful.
What’s more? By stepping outside of the micromanagement zone and into true leadership, you’ll also free up your own time to work on strategy at a higher pay grade.
The wonderful corollary to leading without micromanaging is that morale improves throughout the team. Happy creatives will always produce better work. And when you’re all on the same page and working with each other, rather than for each other, there’s almost nothing you can’t handle.
