You're worried you're micromanaging, and the team has gone quiet on you
This is for you if you've started to wonder whether you're the reason the team has gone quiet. The status updates still land, but the pushback and the half-formed ideas have thinned out, and no one decided that out loud. It just happened, and now you can feel it.
Start with the fear, because the fear is aimed wrong. "Am I micromanaging?" puts the whole thing on your character, where it can't be fixed. The better question is smaller: which one of your defaults has the team quietly organized itself around? And what has it cost you in what they tell you?
Here's what's happening. You have a pace, a way of deciding, a level of detail you like. You barely notice it, because from the inside it just looks like getting the work done.
The team notices, though, and they adapt. Decide fast, and people stop bringing you things that aren't finished. Want every detail, and people stop making calls without you. Over a few months the team shapes itself around your grain, and the honest stuff quietly stops reaching you.
You're the last person who can see it, because to you it is just how you work. You need the outside read your own report already holds.
Open two sections of your own report. Understanding Styles names your working style and the defaults that ride along with it: your pace, how you decide, how much detail you reach for. Uncovering Your Blind Spots names the strengths you tend to turn up too high, each one the shadow of a real strength.
Now do this.
- From Understanding Styles, pick one default and write it as the team would feel it. Not "I value speed," but "I decide fast and expect a quick reply."
- From Uncovering Your Blind Spots, find the blind spot that is the shadow of that same strength. That is the quiet cost your default can carry for someone who works differently. Write it in one line too.
- Take it to the team, and go first. In a 1-1, name the default out loud yourself, then use the questions below to get past the polite answer. It sounds like: "I know I decide fast, and I think it's making some of you sit on things."
- Pick one change you'll make and one thing you'll keep, and say both back to them.
You finish holding three things: one default named in plain words, the cost only the team could name, and one change you said out loud. That last part is what breaks the quiet. You made it safe to tell you by telling on yourself first.
Coaching questions
These aren't a script to read in order. Once you've named your own default out loud, pull the one or two that fit the person in front of you. Follow what they say.
Opening it up, so it's safe to answer
- I know I tend to [your default]. Where does that help you, and where does it get in your way?
- If you could change one thing about how I run things, what would it be?
- What do you find yourself working around instead of raising with me?
Getting past the polite version to the real cost
- What's a half-formed idea you didn't bring me last month?
- When do you wait for me when you'd rather just decide?
- What have you stopped telling me because you know how I'll react?
Turning it into one change
- If I changed one default, which one would give you the most room?
- What would tell you it was actually different, and not just said once?
