Is this normal management, or am I being micromanaged to an unhealthy level?

[TimeTraveller2718]

I’m looking for some honest opinions because my confidence has completely taken a hit and I’m struggling to work out whether this is “normal” or a red flag.

I’ve been in my role for around 4 months, and from very early on I’ve been dealing with a very intense manager who blows very hot and cold. Some days she’s overly nice to me and other days she’s distant and abrupt and makes it really hard to know where I stand.

She wants complete control over my work, every single piece I produce has to be checked, rewritten or changed by her. Even when the work is correct, it often gets altered or reworded, sometimes without any clear reason or added value. I’m asked to plan and create things, but they’re frequently overridden or replaced entirely, which leaves me questioning why I’m being asked to do them in the first place!

There’s a lot of unexpected monitoring. I’ll get unplanned calls during the day to check what I’m doing, and she even logs in on her days off to delegate tasks. I feel like I have no autonomy and very little trust, and it’s got to the point where I feel anxious even completing work because I know it will be heavily changed anyway. I am her only report and she is causing me to become extremely anxious about work. I have been in tears most days.

This has really knocked my confidence and made me feel incompetent, even though I didn’t feel this way before starting the role. There’s no way I can talk to her about this because I tried and she said ‘this is just how she manages’ and she is a ‘perfectionist’ and things need to be right for the company’s reputation.

I think I need to leave ASAP and this is making me utterly miserable. Has anyone dealt with someone like this ?

I left a job like this last year. I was only there for a few months. But if anything I wish I had left sooner. It does erode your confidence and these people won’t change. I just wanted to comment that 1) no you are not imagining it and 2) it’s not like this everywhere!

In my new role I get on with my job, discuss bigger things but am generally trusted to follow my own instincts. I think it’s different if you are 20 and need a lot of guidance. But if you are 30s/40s/50s and experienced then frankly life is too short for this nonsense.

Sounds like a manager I had. After four years I left with a payout from the company. It made me ill too, I went to the doctors with stomach problems. After I left, the stomach problems magically disappeared. I started keeping records of every interaction and emailing them to myself.

She's still there, and this was over ten years ago. The only thing I can say is that the company was taken over by a much bigger one, so I suspect she is kept in check more now.

The happy ending is that I now work in a supportive team with a good boss.

She sounds like a total control freak and a poor manager. If she thinks they way you are doing g things isn't good enough or the right way then she needs to be much clearer in her expectations. I suspect though that this is more about her need to control and you are right, she might as well just do it herself. No advice other than what has been given. Address it with her line manager or HR.

If you are contemplating leaving, why don't you go higher up, talk to her boss, make a formal complaint? The worst that can happen is that you'll have to leave, but you're considering it anyway.

My manager is like this. It's partially because she's been in the small company for almost all her working life & never done any management training, or had mentoring. Mostly she's just controlling and trying to assure her own place by keeping us all in our place.

She works remote 100% and is trying to ensure her place is secure. Her skills are so poor that when she was in office last year for a day, she didn't even acknowledge me, or speak to me.

It's just poor management skills. Thankfully with her being fully remote I largely ignore her.

As someone up thread suggested, could you reframe it in your mind?
She’s not a good manager but she’s not changing your work because it’s crap. She’s changing it because she wants to have her own stamp on it, because she’s such an inexperienced manager she can’t imagine letting your words stand. She thinks her job is to do your job, but it’s not: her job is to ensure you do your job.
I had this (have had it to a greater or lesser extent throughout my career because of the industry I’m in) but one memorable time a micromanager changed my (imo perfect) words to his crap words as part of his “review process” and because I was daring to take a day’s holiday I didn’t catch it.
Later on I was on an internal writing course and they used that document as an example of both good and bad writing
It didn’t particularly stop him.

I agree you should go above her but perhaps put it in writing to her first. You don’t have anything to lose really.

I'm so sorry and absolute solidarity. You are being micromanaged and it's only going to stop when one of you leaves. Some people thrive with that management style but some people find it has a real negative impact on them. Should the role have a high degree of autonomy? I'm in a similar situation except I've been my job for a decade with a high degree of autonomy and have spent the last six months suddenly being micromanaged - not only that but my manager had been going in and doing things on my caseload and then unilaterally taking decisions on my work without discussing it with me. Leaving me having to chase my tail and fill gaps they have created. One of us is going to leave and it will probably be me. I think it will be the same for you. It absolutely erodes your confidence. I feel like micromanaging is akin to gaslighting in terms of the effect it can have on your mind.

I'd just like to throw out a different perspective - how much clarity is there over your role and what you should be doing or is it a reactive task by task sort of role? If the latter, it may be more of a company structure issue and helpful to reconfirm your JD and remit, then ask if you could have a bit more autonomy to work on things within it. Perhaps your manager is not totally clear on this, so almost feels she has to "find" things to be giving you.

The rewriting one is tricky. Are you in a copywriting / content sort of role? If so, a level of rewriting is actually to be expected but you should definitely ask her to always give feedback why she has made changes - just say you want to learn and improve, and it's impossible to do that without feedback. If she cannot give this, maybe it will make her think twice about why she's editing.

I think you should leave because as others have said it is very difficult to get a micro manager to change. In my experience managing up only really works when the manager is receptive to feedback. As a new manager I actively sought feed back from my team and learnt from this but most micro managers don't do this. Either they have a lack of confidence and if offered feedback become very defensive or are control freaks who will never change.

Keep notes of examples.
Look seriously for another job.
Make your resignation with regret letter, 100% about her and her appalling micromanaging of you.
Unfortunately it is unlikely she will change, you are unlucky.
I had similar but when I put in my resignation the immediately offered another position which I took and was very happy with.
I gave examples and actually had physical evidence of her red marking my work.
Batshit stuff.

I had a manager like that. I had to stay because I was main breadwinner and at the time jobs were few and far between. It destroyed my confidence for a long time.

Towards the end of my probation period I told her that I could leave by the end of the week as it didnt matter how early I started, how late I finished or how hard I worked, I wasnt going to be able to meet her requirements. She was shocked and begged me to stay. She wanted to keep me as a whipping boy.

I did stay. Over time I realised that her problem was that she was actually no good at her own job and that she was being bullied by her boss. One day she walked out. I started doing her job alongside mine. Funnily enough I didnt get her salary. The company was toxic but I stayed far too long because my confidence was so shot.

Eventually I left to go to a far better employer with a much bigger salary and better benefits. It was a very happy day when I handed in my notice.

I would start to look for something else. I left a job because of micromanagement. In the end I couldn't stand it and left with nothing to go to. It was such a massive relief to leave I didn't care if I starved.

You must look for something else. Your post brought back miserable memories for me of a manager who was very young and inexperienced, had never done the role she was managing and as a consequence was a micromanager. Made me feel utterly shit and useless, despite being fully aware of the reason for the behaviour.

The difference was that her great strength was being really open to feedback and communication generally. When I and another colleague raised concerns we had individual discussions with her about what we needed from her and, from her side, helpful info about the constraints she was operating within. We had established a really good relationship by the time she left … due to micro management higher up the chain!

In your case, you’ve spoken to her and she’s come back with dismissive bollocks about this being her way. She isn’t open to changing and her way is leaving you anxious and upset. Leave when you can and try to get any support available internally in the meantime.

How many staff does she manage as I’d find this too exhausting as a manager.
I manage staff and check in on them and provide guidance but I largely leave them to get on with their work as I haven’t the time to manage at this level and it’s counter productive anyway.
can you go to her Manager ?

Is she a new manager? She sounds very inexperienced.

I was thinking this.

I remember a project I was on years ago with a project manager who had quite a lot of technical experience but I don't think he had much experience or confidence managing a project. I was meant to be technical team leader reporting directly to him and responsible for supervising and reviewing the work of six more junior team members. It was a role I had previous experience in and was quite comfortable with. However, I felt he was constantly encroaching on my territory and he insisted on personally reviewing all the work himself, even though he didn't actually understand the subject as well as I did.

This was enormously frustrating because, not only did I feel he was undermining me by basically doing my job (which I was more than capable of), but he spent so much time doing this that he didn't seem to get to grips with what I personally felt was more his responsibility. There were a lot of issues outstanding, a tricky customer and senior management who needed to be aware of what was going on and he seemed too scared to put his head above the parapet and actually deal with all that so he just buried himself in what he knew best and tried to do my job instead.

I would first try internal methods of solving the issue. If you've spoken to her and she is blind to it can you raise it with her manager? Many people are promoted with zero management training either before or after and it really isn't something that should be left to chance. She might need some management training or coaching.

But yes, ultimately if all the things you've done to try and change your situation don't work then you need to leave. I tried my boss, their boss AND HR. Their boss and the HR person made the right noises but didn't do enough/anything to improve it so I left. 18 months into a new job with a brilliant boss and I'm full of confidence and getting great feedback myself.

Sorry - pressed the wrong button. YANBU.

Life is too short to put up with that behaviour

I had one of these. She wasn't too bad in person but when we moved to WFH during Covid she ramped up to insane levels of control.

She was given a promotion to team leader (myself and one colleague were under her) and some of the things we were subjected to included: random calls to make sure we were "online and active" up to 15/20 times a day, her asking if my children were about (again many times a day and yes they were as school was closed but DP was furloughed and kept them occupied so I could work, which she knew) but she would still ask on numerous occasions if I could contravene the rules at the time and send them to family or claim to be an essential worker to have them in school. She would comment on every single email I sent (internal / to clients) as I cc everything to a shared team email address. She was either telling me what I should have added / omitted or who I should or should not have cc'd in. It was just general nit picking and low level criticism dressed up as feedback but about every aspect of my job. She asked us to advise when we were taking our lunch and would respond each and everytime with "make sure you only take your hour"..... this was twice a day everyday as my colleague and I would stagger lunch. She would urm and ah about holiday dates (submitted to a portal but she'd insist we email too before she approved).

It was awful and very soul destroying.

However my colleague and I found a very easy way to deal with her.

I started sending her all my emails before I sent them, asking for her to review / amend and approve them for sending. I also started to Teams message her when I was popping away from my desk "just going to loo, back in a few minutes" "going for lunch" "back from lunch" etc. I used to send longwinded emails when asking for holidays with long, convoluted explanations of why I wanted to book XYZ time off.

It worked to a degree and she backed off to a more manageable level before leaving in 2021.

Thankfully I was PT and WFH.

Wow, I can’t believe how many people can relate to working with such nutters. They really are everywhere… reading through these makes me feel very validated that I am not losing the plot, I sent myself crazy some days thinking ‘am I the problem?!’ Or ‘maybe I’m just not doing a good enough job’ but it’s not me, it’s her. I don’t think she will change and I am hatching my exit plan

OP - this sounds so familiar that I’m wondering if we work for the same person. I have resigned due to all the behaviour you describe (plus some other behaviour bad enough to raise a complaint about). I would do the following:
-keep a record of every single incident
-have a word with your union rep or another manager you trust to see if there are any other options available to you (manager may have a track record of being difficult, it may be possible to move sideways etc)
-remember that this is your manager’s issue and doesn’t reflect on your ability to do your job
-get your CV together and see what else is out there

Sadly they are unlikely to change, so once you’re happy you’ve explored possible ways to stay in the company (if you want to) you need to get out for your own sanity.

Unfortunately, it IS pretty typical. But then most Managers really don't know how to manage. It's partly lack of training and partly lack of confidence. My best suggestion is to try and boost her confidence, and hope this helps her to take a step back. Good Luck!

We totally get it. I was utterly miserable in one job, constantly trying to second-guess and work "perfectly" for my boss, thinking it was my fault. Then one day she had a rant at me when there was someone else in the office, and when she left, my colleague turned to me and said "You can't do anything right for her, can you?". It was such a relief, I went straight to HR and resigned. Excellent decision.

I left my last job after 5 months because of micromanagement - though I did get another job first, as I couldn't afford to just walk out (I'd been out of work for 16 months after redundancy.) When I gave my exit interview I was honest - I was gaining a significantly higher salary, a much shorter commute, fewer hours and no on-call, but I wouldn't have even started looking if it weren't for the micromanagement. I think if he gets training, he'll end up okay, but I don't know if he will get it, and I wasn't the one to learn on.

Have been in new job just over a year and have already been promoted. I previously completed an apprenticeship in management, and I get training with this role, so it's definitely been a good move.