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Micromanagement can silently creep into leadership styles, often without conscious awareness. Could you be micromanaging without knowing it? Here, leadership experts share the subtle signs that you might beand how to shift your approach to foster more trust and autonomy within your team. Shift from Reactive to Intentional Leadership Micromanagement is a term so overused that it has become shorthand for “bad leadership.” It is also one of those leadership red flags that is easy to spot in others but harder to recognize in ourselves. This is because it does not always show up as controlling behavior. During times of growth or pressure, micromanagement can be a coping mechanisma well-intentioned attempt to maintain quality, move quickly, or avoid mistakes. As an organizational psychologist and consultant, I see this dynamic play out most often in teams that are scaling fast. A leader suddenly has more direct reports, new stakeholders, and tighter timelines . . . but no added capacity. With so much in motion, it is easy for a leader to slip from delegation into directing. One minute you are offering feedback on an email; the next, you are rewriting the whole thing. Your weekly check-ins become daily status updates. Conversations shift from “How are you doing?” to “What have you done?” While it is tempting to write off this behavior as controlling leadership, the reality is more nuanced. Leaders under stress are often trying to do the right thing, but without support, structure, or clarity, they default to doing everything. Here are four ways to shift from reactive micromanagement to intentional leadership rooted in trust and autonomy: 1. Start with Self-Awareness. Before diving into tasks or meetings, pause and reflect: How do I want to show up today? What does success look like for me? Research shows even brief self-reflection helps leaders step out of the current of reactivity and into intentional presence. 2. Build Trust with Small Bets. Trust does not mean handing over the highest-stakes project on Day One. Instead, identify one or two low-risk projects where you can step back and give your team full ownership. Let them make decisions about the approach and own the outcome. Celebrate the process, not just the results. 3. Define Checkpoints, Not Check-Ins. Instead of checking in constantly, cocreate milestones that clarify what success looks like at 10%, 70%, and 100%. This approach gives your team autonomy to work in their own way while ensuring they know when to align, adjust, or escalate. 4. Prioritize the Person Over the Output. People do better work when they feel their leader cares about them. Reinforce this in your 1:1s by leading with questions that center the human behind the task: What’s something going well for you right now? Sunday Helmerich, Workplace Consultant & Facilitator, The Courage Collective Replace Constant Oversight with Strategic Checkpoints In one case, I worked with a CEO who insisted on being CC’d on every email or Slack thread, even those only tangentially related to his responsibilities. He didn’t see it as micromanagement, although he was always burned out. No wonder. He framed it as “staying in the loop,” but to the team, it signaled, “I don’t trust you to handle this without my oversight.” The unintended consequence became slower decision-making and a creeping “permission culture” where innovation stalled because everyone awaited a thumbs-up. What did we do? We shifted to trust and autonomy as follows: We moved from “copy me” to “checkpoint me.” We set explicit outcome-based milestones (e.g., a progress demo every Friday) instead of constant message monitoring. Visibility shifted from activity to results, while the team regained breathing room. We installed a decision-rights matrix. This meant clarifying who owns, who consults, and who simply informs. Once the matrix was socialized, leaders could step back confidently, knowing the right voices were looped in at the right moments. We scheduled “office hours,” not pop-ins. A standing slot where the team could surface blockers replaced the leader’s ad-hoc pings. It preserved access without hovering. It was not an easy process. Letting go and creating the new rituals took three months, but the results were worth it. Cristina Imre, CSGO ARBOai & Founder Tech Leadership Lab, ARBOai Resist the Urge to Fill Silence One subtle but pervasive sign of micromanagement is when leaders frequently send “Just checking in” messages on Slack or Teams. It might seem harmless, just a quick nudge to stay informed, but when it happens too often, it creates a culture of anxiety and hyper-availability. I’ve seen this unfold quietly in remote and hybrid teams. A manager pings someone at 10:32 a.m., asking, “Any updates on the deck?” Even though the deadline is the end of the day. It may not be intentional, but what it signals is: “I don’t fully trust you to deliver without reminders.” The impact? Team members feel like they’re under a microscope, leading to a reactive mindset where they prioritize visibility over impact. It chips away at deep work and autonomy. The shift I recommend is structural and psychological. Set clear expectations for communication: when updates are due, how progress will be tracked, and what level of responsiveness is healthy. Then step back. Make room for trust to grow in the silence. As leaders, we must resist the urge to fill every gap with a ping. Sometimes, the most powerful thing you can say to your team is nothing at all, and just let them do what you hired them to do. Anjan Pathak, CTO and Cofounder, Vantage Fit Empower Decision-Making to Build Trust One subtle sign of micromanagement that leaders often miss is when team members consistently hesitate to make decisions without explicit approval, even for matters within their scope. This quiet dependency is rarely about a lack of capability; it’s a signal that the leader has unknowingly created an environment where autonomy feels risky. I’ve seen this happen with high-performing teams led by well-meaning managers who check in “just to help” or request frequent updates “to stay aligned.” Over time, these behaviors, though seemingly supportive, train teams to defer rather than decide. The result is a slowdown in execution, a dip in morale, and a loss of ownership. To shift this dynamic, leaders must audit their behavior. Start by asking, “Am I giving direction or asking for input?” “Do I solve problems too quickly instead of coaching my team through them?” Then, take intentional steps to signal trust. That means delegating with clarity, encouraging independent thinking, and celebrating decisions made without your hand-holding. Trust isn’t built through absence but through empowerment. When leaders resist the urge to overmanage and instead coach for capability, teams step up. Autonomy flourishes no in the absence of leadership but in the presence of confidence in others. Rhett Power, CEO and Cofounder, Accountability Inc. Rethink Unnecessary Alignment Meetings One of the more subtle (but incredibly common) signs of micromanagement is the recurring “alignment meeting” that didn’t need to exist. On the surface, it looks like a leader trying to stay engaged. But to the team? It often signals something else: “I don’t fully trust you to move this forward without my input.” The kicker? Most managers who do this don’t think they’re micromanaging. They believe they’re offering support, but when quick updates that could’ve lived in an email morph into standing 30-minute check-ins, autonomy doesn’t grow. It withers. Over time, this kind of hand-holding can train even high performers to second-guess themselves or, worse, wait for approval before taking initiative. The better play is to shift from control to clarity. That means moving toward a Results-Oriented Work Environment, where expectations are clearly defined up front. When people know what they’re responsible forand by whenthey’re far more likely to raise their hand when something blocks progress, rather than hiding issues until a last-minute scramble. Another trust-builder? Ownership without nitpicking. If you assign someone a deliverable, give them full license to get it done their way (within reason). Resist the urge to rewrite their email copy or “suggest” a different font on the presentation. It may seem small, but those little interventions send the message: “I don’t trust your judgment.” And if you must check in, swap out “Did you finish that yet?” for something like “How’s it going on your end?” One prompts anxiety. The other opens the door for dialogue. Big difference. Micromanagement isn’t always loud. Sometimes it whispers through excessive oversight, unnecessary meetings, or hovering phrasing that erodes trust. The fix? Less managing. More leading. Let people surprise you. They usually do. Jim Stroud, HR Influencer, JimStroud.com Allow Team Members to Own Their Work One subtle sign of micromanagement I’ve observed (and caught myself doing early in my career) is when a leader consistently feels the need to “reword” or “tweak” their team’s work before it’s released. While it might seem harmless or like you’re simply helping to polish things, over time, it sends the message that their work isn’t quite “good enough” without your final touch. This erodes confidence and slows down decision-making. The shift? Begin by asking yourself, “Is this feedback about improving clarity, or about making it sound like me?” If it’s the latter, let it go. Encourage ownership by allowing team members to sign off on their own work. Autonomy isn’t just about delegating tasksit’s about trusting outcomes, even when they don’t exactly match how you would have done them. This builds more confidence than any rephrased headline ever could. Miruna Dragomir, CMO, Planable Communicate Expectations Early to Avoid Panic The problem with micromanagement is how quickly it cascades through an organization, and sometimes that cascade kicks off with simple questions from the “boss” that come a little too late. I learned this the hard way. For 20 years, I was an executive inside a multibillion-dollar company. I sat between the CEO and my 200-person team. One day, I was in a meeting, and my boss asked about a project my team had been working on for several months. I didn’t have all the answers to his questions, so when I left the meeting, I called the director and asked for an update. No big deal. Well, it turned into a big deal. I learned that when you ask a question too close to rollout, it can cause a team to panic. The questions I was asking revealed gaps in the plan and frustrated the team. They felt micromanaged, which was not my intent. I simply needed an update. So, how do you solve this? Both sides need to meet in the middle and agree on a process that allows for more proactive communication. The team wants respect and autonomy, and the leader wants alignment and information. I should have communicated the company’s requirements more effectively and outlined the key areas that needed to be considered, so that the team could incorporate them into the plan. The team should have proactively and consistently communicated the project status and given me a chance to weigh in, not because I knew better, but because I might have had a perspective that could help improve the result. As leaders, we need to stop waiting until the 11th hour to set expectations and ask questions because this can be perceived as micromanagement. As employees, we need to proactively share our progress so that when we get feedback, it’s not difficult to incorporate. The more we communicate, collaborate, and align early on, the less leaders will feel frustrated, the less teams will feel micromanaged, and the higher the likelihood we will build a solution that makes everyone proud. Pam Nemec, CEO, Pam Nemec Consulting Inc. Address Underlying Fears Driving Control A subtle sign of unintentional micromanagement is when leaders repeatedly ask for unnecessary status updates while claiming they’re “just checking in.” This often stems from unacknowledged anxiety or a silent heartache around control that the leader hasn’t recognized within themselves. This pattern reveals a misalignment between what the leader says they value (trust and autonomy) and how they behave (constant monitoring). The heart and mind are operating on different frequencies. To shift this pattern, leaders should first connect with their own heart intelligence, examining what fears or past experiences might be driving their need for control. Are they projecting their own perfectionism? Is there a deeper insecurity about their leadership capabilities? This approach involves establishing clear objectives while deliberately creating space for team creativity. Practice heart-centered check-ins that focus on supporting team members’ growth rather than monitoring their activities. When you find yourself wanting to intervene, pause and ask: “Am I responding to a genuine need, or am I acting from my own unexamined anxiety?” True leadership presence emerges when we lead from trust rather than fear, allowing both the leader and team to align purpose with action. To do so creates cultures of psychological safety, where talent naturally thrives. Hema Vyas, Psychologist Take Responsibility for Poor Outcomes Micromanagement is not always loud or obvious. Sometimes, it hides in leadership behaviors that appear decisive on the surface but quietly erodetrust underneath. One of the most damaging forms is when a leader refuses to take responsibility for poor outcomes and shifts blame onto the team. Many leaders are micromanagers without realizing it. Micromanagement is not just about controlling tasks. It is also about controlling outcomes, perception, and accountability, often to protect the leader’s ego or reputation. I have seen this unfold when a team follows direct instructions, only to be blamed when results fall short. In extreme cases, entire teams are let go to protect the leader’s image. This is not accountability. It is misdirection. This kind of leadership creates a culture of fear. It discourages initiative, silences feedback, and stifles innovation. People become hesitant to lead, question, or take risks, because they know they will be held responsible for outcomes they could not influence. The shift starts when leaders ask different questions. Not “Who is at fault?” but “What did I over-control, under-communicate, or fail to clarify?” True accountability requires reflection, not retribution. So while this may look like a blame game or a leadership failure on the surface, at its core, it is a deeply embedded form of micromanagement. The leader controls without accountability. That is what makes it so damaging, and so hard to detect early. Great leadership is not about being right. It is about being responsible. When leaders take ownership of both direction and outcome, they build a foundation of trust. And when trust exists, people step up. They take initiative. They learn from failure. They grow. Accountability is not about blame. It is about integrity. And it begins at the top. Florence Idowu, Chief Talent Strategist, Bavarde Consulting & Management Trust Your Team to Innovate and Grow We’ve all worked for “that boss”the one who needs to control every decision, approve every move, and rewrite every email. While it might come from a place of good intentions, micromanagement is one of the fastest ways to drain the life from a team. In my experience, this kind of behavior usually stems from insecurity or inexperience. The leader either doesn’t trust their team, or they don’t trust themselves. Regardless of the root cause, the outcome is always the same: creativity gets crushed, motivation disappears, and innovation grinds to a halt. By controlling every detail, they rob their teams of the chance to rise, to learn, to lead. True leadership requires something much harder than control. It demands trust, humility, and patience. Having dealt with my fair share of micromanagers, I vowed to do things differently when I became a leader. I recognized the importance of giving my team the freedom to perform. My role was not to impose my way of doing things but to ensure a creative space where people could thrive. Even if my approach was more efficient due to years of experience, it didn’t mean it was the best or only way to get the job done. As I progressed in my career, I sometimes fell into the trap of steering others toward my preferred method. It took time to realize that I was stifling their ability to innovate by insisting on my way. They were being paid to be creative and resourceful, yet I was unknowingly molding them into replicas of myself. When I allowed my team members to experiment and learn through trial and error, they often came up with solutions far superior to mine. The act of letting go and trusting my team was not only liberating for them but also transformative for me as a leader. Gina Osborn, Leadership Advisor, Podcast Host & Keynote Speaker, Gina L. Osborn & Associates Let Go of Control to Foster Team Development I used to have to approve every single marketing video before it went out. It didn’t matter if it was a 15-second teaser or a full brand story. I’d watch it, rewatch it, and give it the green light before it hit the client’s inbox. I thought my eyes needed to be on everything. I thought that was what a good leader didprotect the brand, avoid mistakes, keep clients happy. Then one day, my mentor called me out. He asked, “Why do you have to approve them all?” I said, “Because if my team misses something and the client gets mad, that’s on me.” He looked at me and said, “Have you ever missed something before?” I paused. “Yeah, I have.” “Okay, so let them. That’s how they learn.” That moment hit me. I realized I was micromanaging. Not in the obvious way, but in a quiet, constant-control way. I thought I was being responsible. But I was actually getting in the way of my team growing. So I let go. Not overnight, but slowly. I started handing off approvals. I trusted my team to catch errors and deliver great work. And you know what? They stepped up. They caught things I might’ve missed. They got faster, more confident, and more invested. We still mess up sometimes. And that’s okay. We fix it. We move on. And we grow from it. Letting go wasn’t easy. But it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done as a leader. Trust builds teams. Control holds them back. Trevor Rappleye, CEO & Storyteller, FranchiseFilming Build Strong Relationships to Prevent Micromanagement I believe there are two potential situations when this kind of micromanagement occurs: 1. A manager (often new or junior) focuses on prescribing and monitoring “how” things are done instead of clearly articulating desired outcomes and then either providing guidance and assistance or simply getting out of the way of the employee. Why does the manager do this? Likely because they’ve been conditioned to do so (often a sign of insufficient leadership development). My advice to the manager in this situation is to be curious and ask lots of questions (and resist the temptation to offer advice). Questions along the lines of: “What is your approach to this problem?” and “What does success look like for you?” or “How best can I support you on this problem/project?” 2. An employee who feels like their manager doesn’t trust them. Even if the manager isn’t micromanaging the employee, it might feel like it. Since humans judge themselves by their intentions while judging others by their actions, I suggest a conversation about personal values and beliefs as a starting point to developing the trust that begins through vulnerability but is also nuanced into four categories: Ability, Believability, Competence, and Dependability. An employee who feels connected to their manager is less likely to feel like they are being mismanaged, much less micromanaged. Assuming the “micromanaging” is more likely a perception, I suggest making the investment in building a strong and trusting relationship as the foundation for all work relationships. Brian Stinson, Culture Engineer, The PEAK Fleet
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As AI evolves, the world of work is getting even better for the most creative, curious, and growth-minded employees. So says Aneesh Raman, LinkedIns chief economic opportunity officer. Raman has intriguing and urgent insights on why the career ladder is disappearingand how AI will help transform it into more of a climbing wall, with a unique path for each of us. Learn which parts of the workforce Raman sees as most affected by AI, and why he remains radically pro-human as the very nature of work dramatically shifts. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Bob Safian, the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. You wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times with a headline about the bottom rung of the career ladder breaking, and it went viral. Did that surprise you? I’ve been in the arena for moments of big change beforewhen I was with CNN, when I was with President Obamaso I have a sense of what it’s like when cultural conversations start to take hold. With this one, I didn’t know what exactly was going to happen. I did an op-ed in The New York Times last year, and that oneit percolated here or there, but it wasn’t like this one. Aneesh Raman [Photo: Courtesy of the subject] And so this one really hit, I think, an underlying tension that we’re all feeling that something big is underway. That it isn’t playing out cleanly, quickly, everywhere all at once. It’s not like the pandemic, where we all just know what’s happening and then our life changes overnight, but that it is coming to us eventually. And evidently, entry-level work is the place where we’re all able to focus first, as a place where something real and big is happening. And that’s what I’ve been encouraged by. Because a lot of what I wrote this op-ed for was to provoke the conversations about AI and work, which is: “What do we do about this, and how do we get to better?” And there’s speculation about where AI hits the workforce hardest. The CEO of Anthropic has pointed to white-collar jobs. You’re talking about entry-level tasks. Are those two different scenarios based on different assumptions, or is it two parts of the same thing? The thing I can say with certainty is that this will affect every worker, in every company, in every sector, in every society. When it impacts every worker in every company, I don’t know. It’ll depend on where you work, what you do, but it’s going to hit everyone. And it’s going to hit everyone in a way that can lead to better for everyone, which I know we’ll talk about. What I don’t think anyone can do right now is in any absolute way predict net employment. We don’t know so much of what’s about to hit, and so much of where it goes depends on what we do as humans right now to shape this new economy as it forms. So we know historically, jobs have been disrupted, and new jobs have been created, every time we’ve gone into a new economy. It’s unclear to me whether we’ll see more jobs changing than new jobs emerging, and it’s going to take a bit for us to figure that out. But what we know is happening right now is that everyone’s job is changing on them, even if they are not changing jobs. And that’s where we should be focused. And the data about roles that you see on LinkedIn’s platform, the overall jobs numbers that come from the government, are fairly solid. How fast is this change happening? Are companies already hiring fewer, newer grads, or do we not quite know yet? Everything’s happening and everything’s not happening, because there’s no, again, universal way. It’s not an either/or situation. So I think a lot of what we’ve got to push beyond is this: Are entry-level jobs going away? Are they going to stay? It’s neither. It’s both. It’s yes. So when I think about entering a new economy and I look back across economic anthropology and economic history, there are generally four phases. The first phase is disruption. This new technology becomes real. And this is, I think, a technology equivalent to general-purpose technologies like the steam engine, like electricity, like the internet. We’re in that zone. So we already know that’s happening. Any number of metrics of people using AI at work, we’ve got data. Nearly 90% of C-suite leaders globally say, “AI adoption is a top priority for 2025.” So this technology is here, and it’s in the day-to-day. Now, the second thing that happens when you enter a new economy is that jobs change. And a lot of what I looked at early on with AI is: “Is AI going to be more like electricity or like the internet?” And the reason I ask that is that electricity changed everything for everyone, but it actually didn’t change much for humans at work. We still largely did physical labor. We just did it in the factory rather than the farm. The internet came, and it fundamentally started to change work for humans. Suddenly, it wasn’t just physical labor but intellectual labor that became valued by our economy. So the first thing I was looking at is, “Okay, disruption’s here. Jobs are going to change. How are they going to change?” A new economy’s on the way that I’m calling the innovation economy. Because our core skills as humans, the things that differentiate our speciesthe ability to imagine, to invent, to communicate complex ideas, to organize around complex ideasthose are going to come to the center of work. And that’s a whole new set of skills that our economy has never fully valued. In fact, we’ve derided those skills often as soft skills or people skills that ar nice to have, not must-haves. So we’re already starting to see in our data that communication is, like, the number one skill across job postings, not coding. All the jobs on the rise, aside from just general AI fluency or deep AI knowledgeif you’re going for that small set of jobs explicitly about building AIare all things like critical thinking, strategic thinking, closing that deal as a salesperson, persuasion, storytelling. So we’re already seeing that jobs are going to shift; they’re going to shift more to unique human capability. And then the fourth phase will come where we’ll see a new economy emerge. And part of what I’m waiting for, and I don’t think we have these signals yet, is new job titles. Mine got made up eight to nine months ago. Moderna’s got a new chief digital and people officer that they’ve created. New roles will emerge that aren’t just AI, because we’re seeing head of AI jobs have gone up, I think, three times in five years. But also new business starts, like a whole new era of innovation that’s going to happen through these tools. So there are some signals I’m waiting for. A different organizational workflow, like org charts become work charts. You have project-based work. There are a bunch of signals we’ll start to see over the next year or two that start to suggest where and how the new economy is taking hold. You looked historically at electricity and the internet, and it sounds like you’re saying it’s more like the internet. But it’s also going to be something completely different that we don’t even really know yet what it is. Well, we know that whatever the role of humans at work is, it’s going to be more human than work has ever been. And what’s really important about that is . . . I always start with, “Well, let’s evaluate the status quo we’ve got before we A, get afraid of changing it, or B, want to imagine what it should become.” Work has never been human-centric, ever. The story of work is the story of technology at work, not humans at work.
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For our 2025 Where the Design Jobs Are report, Fast Company looked at which design tools were being mentioned in job listings across various disciplines, and how that has changed over time. With graphic design, there were a couple of particularly interesting findings. Asks for Blender expertise grew 82% year over year (read about that trend here), while requests for proficiency with Canva went up 72%. When we put Canva on our cover in 2022, some people in the design world viewed it as borderline heresy. The easy-to-use app had become extremely popular because it promised that anyone could be a designera notion that naturally upset some trained designers. But Canva’s templated approach to designing everything from social media posts to T-shirts took off with the masses, and it spilled over to professionals. The working thesis is that Canva, having won over marketing teams first, is now becoming a prerequisite for designers working alongside them. (This makes some sense, especially as the design department has started reporting to marketing in many companies.) The good news is that designers weve spoken to more recently have come to appreciate Canvas updated brand management tools, which essentially allow a designer to codify standards behind logos, typefaces, and colors for others to use. That means that when a marketer creates a slide deck or new social media ad, the standards stay in sync, with less oversight. Canva also requires a fraction of the learning curve of any Adobe product: Many of its tools can be picked up instantly. Interestingly enough, about twice as many graphic design job listings we tracked (9.5%) ask for Figma (the defacto rapid prototyping tool headed to IPO this year) than Canva. But 13 million people use Figma monthly, whereas 240 million people use Canva (including 95% of all Fortune 500 companies). This gap in mindshare demonstrates that Canva, despite its wild install base, simply isnt seen as essential within design as peers like the stalwart Adobe Creative Suite and InDesign, both of which appear in around 40% of graphic design job listings. But Canva has hardly given up on winning over the capital D design market. Last year the company acquired Affinity, which makes software to challenge Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, and its currently working to integrate this technology into Canva. All of this is to say that a lot is shifting right now, and designers simply need to be more flexible about the tools they use than they were a decade ago. Toss a dollop of AI into the mix, and theres never been a more exciting (or chaotic?) time for graphic design platforms. This article is part of Fast Companys continuing coverage of where the design jobs are, including this years comprehensive analysis of more than 170,000 job listings.
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