Micromanager

[Callmeback]

I am quite senior in my organisation. It's the first time I've ever worked for a micromanager or certainly at this level. I'm not sure how much longer I can take this. I've gone from being incredibly highly respected in previous roles to feeling like a shell of myself. I no longer seem to be able to do any task independently without being picked up on 10 incredibly minor things (I'm talking preferences rather than me doing anything 'wrong').

The problem is the micromanager has no time to look at the bigger picture so the org isn't doing well - time that's spent on micromanaging takes away from time helping the org to become sustainable. I also have little time for strategy work because I'm too busy redoing work that was fine to start with.

I'm getting so deflated, completely depressed and even though he knows he's a micromanager he doesn't ever see how it impacts on people and the business.

I'm looking for other jobs but I know it'll take time to find something and I can't burn bridges in the meantime. I've raised this with him and while he recognises this trait, nothing changes. How do I cope until I find something else or how do I change things? This is definitely new territory to me.

It's a really rubbish place to be. I have had two managers in succession like it after years of working independently and it had really affected my confidence. I took a lower level job just to get out and am excelling, but still struggling with confidence, and have a feeling almost like I failed.

Are you able to delegate the redo work they require? That certainly helped me in the short term.

Micromanagers don't seem to be able to change, even if they are fully aware that need to, but can't, let go. For me, the only solution was to leave. I stayed too long in the last role as I really liked my manager as a person and kept trying to keep going and make it work, but I really I should have left long before I did.

Thank you. Yes I like this person too so it's a hard decision to look elsewhere.

Good idea about the delegating the edits when I can. I'll try to do that where possible.

Appreciate hearing about your experience. It's such a weird phenomenon isn't it!

I am just about to leave my third micromanager. Each time I’ve lasted a year until I can no longer do it anymore.

So sorry to hear that. I feel I've been lucky as I've been working a long time and this is my first one. I'm about a year in too. Maybe that's a common cut off point.

The irony is that by micromanaging they have a negative effect on the standard of work and productivity. I find being micromanaged completely demotivates me.

So true. I've gone from being someone who could turn my hand to anything to not bring allowed to write a simple email. It's nuts.