The other day, I realized I was micromanaging my youngest child in the kitchen. I kept hovering, grabbing the next ingredient, giving helpful tips, even though he was perfectly capable of figuring it out himself. And I had no idea that I was doing this. You see, I'm really good in the kitchen, and so I like to be helpful. But my oldest son was present as well, and he gave me this sideways glance that made me realize I was maybe doing something wrong. And that's when it hit me. I was micromanaging. Now, micromanaging is really about taking away user control and freedom.

User control and freedom is one of the ten primary usability design principles that I talk about in my work. And it's just as frustrating in the kitchen as it is in the real world. So today, we are going to unpack user control and freedom and put that lens on what you might be doing as a leader, as a coworker to micromanage your co workers or the staff who report to you. Now, user control and freedom, that design principle acknowledges that people often make mistakes, and. And in the software world, the products will anticipate those mistakes, and that gets baked into the software as a design feature. So, for example, if you go to close a Microsoft Word document without saving it, Microsoft has anticipated that error, and it's going to prompt you to save the file before closing. That is, in essence, really about mitigating for the mistakes that you are potentially making. It is giving you user control and freedom when you bump up against something that could potentially be a mistake.

Now, another one of my favorite examples of user control and freedom and pointing out that you're making a mistake, but then letting you fix it is the red squiggly line under a word when you have made a spelling error. Now, again, going back to my oldest son's sideways glance that he gave at me when I was hovering and offering suggestions and so on, he was basically giving me a red squiggly line under my behavior. And I recognized that as like, oh, something's off here. I'm making a mistake. Now, he didn't call me out on it. It was just this, like, total side eye. And I realized in that moment that, you know, again, it was that red squiggly line. I realized, like, something's off here.

What is it? And then I was like, oh, my goodness, it's me. I'm micromanaging in the kitchen. Now, let's turn to take a look at how this happens at work, shall we? Now, at work, my management philosophy is that I hire well I absolutely, I'm awesome at hiring. In fact, I've talked about that on the podcast before. And in fact, if you haven't heard me talk about that on the podcast, I will just say this. As a college professor, I got really skilled at putting people in groups early in the semester so that they could do amazing group projects together. Or at least I was evening out the high performers from the low performers and creating good mixes in, in the groups I was creating for them to do their group projects. So I got really good at assessing people very quickly in order to make that happen and happen as effectively as possible.

Now, so that's just a bit of an aside, but I hire well. I am really good at hiring people. And my management philosophy has always been I hire well and I am going to then give my staff the tools and resources that they need to do their best work, and then I'm going to get out of the way so that they can do said best work. Now that works phenomenally and it has served me incredibly well. And in fact, many of the people that were new employees of mine back in the day, I mean like literally in some cases we're talking 20 years ago, have now gone on to manage teams of their own. And I know to a person that they use that same philosophy in hiring staff, training them well and then getting out of their way and letting them do amazing work. Okay, but you have to have limits and guard rails and you have to know when to check on that work. One time I didn't.

One, probably lots of times I didn't, but one really big time I didn't. And stick around to the end and you can hear my blooper because I'll talk about that at the end. But first I want to talk about my three main work ways that you can exercise user control and freedom, or really allow your staff or your co workers to exercise that user control and freedom so that you are not micromanaging. Okay, so I've got three big ideas for you here. The first one is set guardrails don't put up roadblocks. So define what the boundaries are and give the expectations and then give freedom. Inside of those boundaries and expectations. Leaders should be able to define really clear outcomes for their staff.

And that goes if you're leading from the side as well. Like if it's a project and you're a project manager or a project lead or just even a committee chair on something, you should be able to define really clear and specific outcomes and what the boundaries are, what the criteria are. That helps us know if we've met those outcomes or not. And then give the teams, the committee members, your coworkers, freedom to choose how to get there. And sometimes you really do have to get out of the way because their path might not be the same path that you would have taken or the same path that you would have advised. But guess what? You are an impediment to their learning if you're jumping in and telling them exactly how to do everything. So ask yourself the question and really take this question seriously. Am I painting the outline of the project or the deliverable in really clear and specific language so that the person knows what to do? And then am I getting out of their way to let them do it? And I want you to be really honest with yourself on that.

Get out of their way so that they can deliver. And again, it might not look like what you thought it was going to look like in terms of how they get from point A to point B. Step 2 Be clear on what the margin of error is. Be clear on what the margin of error is. And this kind of allows for some undo and redo. Like again, Control Z and Control Y. If you know the keyboard shortcuts for redo and undo when you're doing just about anything on a computer, Control Y and Control Z allow you to redo and undo great shortcuts. But be clear on what that margin of error is for your staff or for your co workers.

When is it okay for somebody to make a mistake and when do you need to step in? Now, when people do make their own mistakes and correct them, they have a much better chance of learning something than if you over instruct them or micromanage them on how to do every little step of a task or project or a deliverable. So when are you going to step back and let a mistake happen, knowing full well that they are going to learn from that mistake and when are you going to jump in? Now, sometimes you're going to take that step back, let the mistake happen even when you see it coming, because you know that this is a fairly low stakes situation. The person is going to learn from it and it might set you back a few dollars or a few minutes or maybe even a day or two in terms of project work. And that's okay. It's actually worth it for that person to learn the lesson by making the mistake themselves versus having you over instruct. Because having you over instruct not only is that micromanaging behavior, it's also irritating to the other person. It's not going to build trust or loyalty or any of the things that you want in your staff and your team. Now on the other hand, sometimes you will need to step in, but you need to be really clear on what that margin of error is and ask yourself when are the stakes high enough that I do need to step in? Now that might be tied to a dollar amount.

It might be like I will give people the discretion to make a hundred dollar decisions, but not thousand dollar decisions or not $10,000 decisions or I'll let it go when somebody's making a hundred dollar mistake, but I won't let it go when somebody's making a $10,000 mistake. Now you'll also have to get clear on between a hundred dollar mistake and a $10,000 mistake. Where is the line where you're going to step in and give some additional instruction or prevent that mistake from happening again? You need to have those clear boundaries on where that margin of error is. Um, again, it could be a dollar amount, it could be a deadline, it could be a certain client or stakeholder on a project. It might be like these get this treatment. And these other ones. Get this treatment. These we have to be much more careful and intentional about not upsetting them or not making mistakes.

These the client is more forgiving or whatever it is. And so when there are those discrepancies between different types of projects or different types of clients, that is incredibly important for you to be crystal clear on with your staff or your co workers because you might have that insider knowledge that says this customer really does need the white glove treatment. And so we need to really make sure that everything is completely buttoned up and all of our T's are crossed and all of our I's are dotted and we just can't make a mistake because we can't afford to lose them. Whereas you might have another client or customer where there is more wiggle room. So again, when there are those discrepancies between clients or projects, whatever, make sure your staff knows that. Because that way if the margin of error changes from one project to another, it's not that you're inconsistent, it's that you're being responsive to client needs. So I do want you to take that into account as you think about being clear on what the margin of error is, knowing that it might not be absolutely consistent across all projects. Now you might also have a different threshold of margin of error for somebody who has worked for you for a longer period of time because you expect fewer mistakes from them compared to somebody who is relatively new.

Now, what the research tells us on newer employees, whether they be more junior in tenure in your organization or reporting to you or in the role rule is that they do need more feedback, both the positive feedback as well as the critical feedback. But you also need to balance that between knowing when to let them make mistakes and knowing when they just need constructive guidance because they're new. And that is a little bit of a nuanced area. There aren't necessarily hard and fast rules for that. But I think as you realize that an employee is coming up to speed and has gotten more projects or more reps under their belt, that's when you know it's time to take a step back and allow some more space. So the question to ask yourself is, have I allowed space for meaning how? So the question to ask yourself is, have I allowed space for mistakes and learning or am I hovering to prevent every single little misstep? Kind of like I was in the kitchen.

All right, your third, all right, your third big idea here is to trust but verify. So use check ins and various milestones along the way, not constant oversight and constant checking in. Now I have talked about checking in versus checking up. Checking in with somebody is like how are you checking up on somebody? Is how's the project work coming along? So when you are doing some of each, that helps modulate the person to feel like centered and like you care about them versus you're checking up to make sure they're getting their work done. Now again, you want to use those check ins and checkups and certain specific project milestones or deliverable milestones so that people know when they're on track on their own, not you having to tell them. And that's going to help them know that you trust in their work. Trust is a very telling indicator that you have a healthy team. And trust plus periodic verification beats constant oversight every single time. When somebody is constantly checking up on you, checking, you know, to make sure that you did your work, that takes a significant amount of time from the person who is being checked up on all the time because they have to respond to the teams messages, the slack messages, the emails, whatever modality you're using to check up on the person. So not only is it a display of distrust, but it is also an impediment to them getting their work done because it takes that extra time for them to follow up with you and let you know how they're doing on everything.

Okay, so your third idea here has a question that goes along with it for you to ask yourself, and that is, am I checking in at the right level and the right flow frequency, or am I checking up too often? Okay, so let me just quickly recap those three high level points here and then I will give you my blooper because I promised. Okay, number one, set guardrails, don't create roadblocks. Number two, be crystal clear on what the margin of error is. And number three, trust but verify. Have those identify clearly identified milestones where you're going to check in and make sure everything's running smoothly. Okay, now I told you I was going to share a blooper, and here is the blooper. There was this, I'm sure there were many times, but there was this one time in particular where it was a really egregious error and I took full responsibility for it once I found out about it. So this is a case of not having clear guardrails.

So again, my management philosophy, hire really well and then give my people the resources and tools to do the projects that, that they were hired to do and then get out of the way. All right, so this goes back to my corporate days, and one of my staff members was an emerging leader and she wanted some additional responsibility. And specifically she was looking to grow the, you know, grow some strength in the area of managing others. And she was an individual contributor who reported to me. And we had, we always had a summer intern. And so one summer I said, hey, why don't you be, you know, take the lead on managing the summer intern and, you know, basically putting her in like a lead worker capacity where she didn't have direct delegated authority over him, but she was guiding his work and mentoring him and, you know, doing a lot to not only alleviate the extra pressure of the summer intern for me, but giving her some responsibility in managing the work of others as well. So I had delegated his work to her. Well, she got really busy and she had too much to do, and so she took an entire project and delegated it to him.

Now, he was a college intern. He was smart. I hire well, he absolutely was smart and intuitive and had good intellect, but he just didn't have, he hadn't put in the reps. He didn't have the depth of experience that the rest of the people on our team did. And this entire project got delegated to him. Again, unbeknownst to me. My fault on that one. Absolutely take ownership for that.

So anyway, the project is done or close to done. And the team is doing the final presentation to the client. And so I always go to the final presentation, even if I've delegated the project to somebody else. So I go to this project not realizing that everything had been delegated down to the intern. Now the summer intern is there giving the presentation to the client, and it is a total train, off the tracks kind of situation. And I'm sitting there horrified, wondering why he's giving the presentation. The person that was supposed to be giving the presentation, who I had, you know, given her some management responsibility over him, I did not realize that she had delegated the whole dang project to him. And I sat there in horror wondering why she wasn't giving the presentation.

Clearly he knew everything about the project, but the project was so off the rails. So immediately after the pro this project presentation, the client, who is a vice president of the corporation, pulls me aside and she was just like, what was that? And I said, trust me, we're going to make this right for you. We are going to make this right for you. And I didn't admit wrongdoing. I didn't. I mean, I didn't really know what was going on. I just knew that this was way, way off the rails. So I made a commitment to that VP in that moment.

We are going to fix this and make this right for you. And then I went back and had a meeting with my team, and I was like, what just happened there? And the person that I had delegated the work of, the summer intern, she took responsibility. But I said, you know, at the end of the day, this is really my responsibility because I didn't realize that you were so overworked that you were going to delegate an entire project to him. So that's what happens when you don't micromanage to an extreme. Because that's really what I did is instead of micromanaging, I went to the far opposite extreme and I delegated too much. And I didn't keep an eye on trust but verify. I didn't keep an eye on what the margin of error was. I mean, they went way past this margin of error.

I didn't do enough to set guardrails. I certainly wasn't creating roadblocks, but I did not do enough to set guardrails. So again, I want you to ask yourself these three questions. Keep these three big points in mind so that you don't micromanage. But also, I offer my blooper here as a cautionary tale of what happens when you take that too far. So you want to find that middle ground where you're providing enough instruction, you're providing enough coaching and mentoring and management yourself, but you are not micromanaging. All right? So this week, I want you to ask yourself, where might I be? Hovering. Too much, a little too involved.

So I want you to pick just one spot where you can step back, where you can give your team more autonomy and more control and more freedom and see how they rise to the occasion. You will be surprised at what you what they can do when you give them that extra freedom.

Now, if you're not sure and you're thinking to yourself, well, Janel, I don't have one of those areas, then I want you to watch for the squiggly red line. Remember I said my oldest son was giving me that squiggly red line, like a word was misspelled by just giving me the side eye. So watch for the side eye or a raised eyebrow or a heavy sigh or any sort of sign or indication that suggests that you might be overstepping. And then take that step back. All right, my friends, be well. Give that user control and freedom wherever you find you can this week, and I wish you the very best.