Are You Coaching Your Team or Micromanaging Them?
How subtle control habits steal ownership and what it looks like to lead through coaching instead.
Before we begin, ask yourself the following questions:
1. Do you routinely ask for updates on tasks before the deadline?
2. Do you often rework what your team produces even when they technically meet what was required of them?
3. Do you require visibility every step of the way on a project or do you create checkpoints?
4. When one of your team members brings a solution to a problem do you immediately offer your own opinion before exploring theirs?
5. Do you feel discomfort when a team member makes a decision without checking with you first?
6. Does your team hesitate to take initiative?
7. Do you attend meetings where your presence is not actually necessary just so you can stay in the loop?
8. Do you often catch yourself thinking it’ll be faster if I just do it myself?
If you answered positively to three or more of these then you may be a micromanager.
The Hidden Ways We Micromanage
I would assume that most people reading this don’t want to be labeled as a micromanager.
The most damaging micromanagement isn’t the obvious hovering; it’s the subtle habits that look like “being helpful” but actually steal ownership. Replacing those habits with coaching and clear checkpoints builds real ownership and better results.If you noticed, some of the questions stemmed from jumping into the work too soon and signaling, intentional or not, distrust to your team.
Control is comforting. Or it pretends to be.
When you insert yourself into every corner of the process, the team learns to wait. Not intentionally. Not because they lack ideas. They just… pause. They look for the your voice before trusting their own, afraid to be wrong in the wrong direction. The shared Google Doc cursor stops moving when your icon appears in the corner. In Zoom meetings, eyes look to your square on the screen before anyone answers. Slack threads trail off mid-idea, waiting for you to weigh in. And slowly, your team stops taking initiative, looking to you for all the answers.
What Micromanagement Really Costs Your Team
Knowing all the details and heavy oversight may seem like a strong posture for getting the work done well, but in reality, it’s just the easiest one to reach for, the shortcut. You avoid that awkward moment when someone offers a decision you wouldn’t have made. You skip past the messy edges of someone learning in public. Much simpler to just take over. Fix it, clean it up, move on.
But simple doesn’t mean effective, and it surely doesn’t develop anyone.
I catch myself sometimes, tempted to jump in at the end of a project or check in too much without establishing checkpoints first. It’s coded in a helpful posture, but really, if I look deeper, I just want to make sure it’s getting done the way I want it to. This sends a quiet message that the work was never truly theirs. And that’s when confidence begins to thin.
Coaching Instead of Controlling
Coaching sits at the opposite end of this spectrum. Coaching is slower. Coaching creates space for someone to wrestle their way through a decision while you sit with the tension of not rescuing them.
Coaching is less about directing and more about drawing out what they see, what they intend, and why they chose a certain path. It does not remove accountability. It sounds more like: ‘Walk me through how you got here,’ while you listen instead of jumping in. You ask, ‘What are you worried might go wrong?’ and ‘If you had to decide today, what would you choose?’ You’re still there. You’re just letting them drive.
There’s a better approach, though it moves slower. Set up some checkpoints, accept the work as it stands unless something could genuinely harm the organization. Then talk through the choices afterward.
For example, you might agree on three moments: a 15-minute alignment at the start, a midpoint review, and a final read-through. In between, you let them run, even if you’d sequence things differently. With curiosity, ask why they made certain calls. Offer perspective. This will build far more strength than a silent set of last-minute edits ever could.
And guess what? Most of the time, your team wants feedback, both negative and positive, but it’s more about how and when you deliver it. When you have a coaching or mentoring mindset, this will open you up to offer assistance without taking it out of their hands.
How This Changes You as a Leader
Leading this way sharpens you, the leader, as well. It forces you to clarify what matters rather than clutch every detail. Coaching pushes you to articulate your reasoning instead of making choices by instinct alone. Comments with context are always the better way.
Your team will feel it. They will step up. When you empower your team, they will carry weight that used to sit only on you, surprise you with ideas you wouldn’t have reached on your own.
Micromanagement tendencies can often be hidden and they may feel safe, but it empties everyone involved. Empowerment takes more from you in the beginning. But it gives back something much stronger. A team that owns their work. A leader who stays awake to what matters.
Everyone wins when you stop holding everything and let others hold some of it too.