“I can do it better myself.” How many times have you thought that during the course of your day?
It can seem like the safest course of action to manage your staff is to keep yourself (the person you trust the most) in charge of everything.
Chances are, if you are thinking that and acting on that thought, you are micromanaging your department. Steve Jobs said it best, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
Micromanagers excessively control their employees’ work, ultimately hurting productivity, retention and morale. Here’s how it can be fixed:
It Starts with Hiring
When recruiting managers and line staff to join your team, you no doubt go through a very time-consuming process to find the ideal candidate to fill a spot. After all, that is what the interviewing process is for, right? You put the candidate in scenarios to determine how they would handle different situations. While new hires no doubt need training, their interview answers are what led you to believe you had the right manager for the job when you hired him or her.
Waiting for Your Approval?
One of the easiest ways to realize you are micromanaging your staff is when they are constantly “waiting on you” for something to happen. There are simply too many tasks throughout the day for you to be able to personally put your stamp of approval on all of them. If you have trained your staff properly, they will be more than able to handle these tasks. This is not to say you can’t spot-check things, but there is simply no need to personally approve every detail of every aspect of the day.
Correcting the Problem
Letting go is very tough for some people to do, especially since your job depends on your team’s performance. But, if you trained them properly, they will be able to do the job if you just let them. There is an old proverb that sums this up best…
“If you give a man a fish, he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to fish, you do him a good turn.”
Teach them, train them, mentor them, then set them free. Allow them to make decisions on their own and you will soon be amazed at not only how much better your department is performing but also how much better you feel about your own job at the end of the day.
Does your hotel or organization need better managers to help take the operation to the next level? Joseph David International is an executive recruiting service that doesn’t just find a manager but rather finds the RIGHT manager for your property and needs. For more information about our executive-level manager recruiting services, click here.