The easiest way to define a micromanager is "an overly bossy boss."  A micromanager can take the joy out of work and kill motivation of the staff. For employees, the boss acts like the legend on this coffee mug -- someone who is convinced he or she is the keeper of all great ideas. That's why one of the greatest challenges for a manager is figuring out when vigilance about quality and  the time-honored "keeping a hand in things" -- crosses the line into serious and problematic micromanagement. And it's why understanding motivation is so important for bosses who want to have both quality, a connection to the work, and employees who are really engaged. As I'm writing a book about "WHAT GREAT BOSSES KNOW," I am paying special attention to research in the field of motivation, and I'll share it.  Meanwhile, here is a link to one of my past columns on motivation on Poynter.org.  I hope it's helpful to you. Now I have to get back to writing the book!  
The easiest way to define a micromanager is "an overly bossy boss."  A micromanager can take the joy out of work and kill motivation of the staff. For employees, the boss acts like the legend on this coffee mug -- someone who is convinced he or she is the keeper of all great ideas. That's why one of the greatest challenges for a manager is figuring out when vigilance about quality and  the time-honored "keeping a hand in things" -- crosses the line into serious and problematic micromanagement. And it's why understanding motivation is so important for bosses who want to have both quality, a connection to the work, and employees who are really engaged. As I'm writing a book about "WHAT GREAT BOSSES KNOW," I am paying special attention to research in the field of motivation, and I'll share it.  Meanwhile, here is a link to one of my past columns on motivation on Poynter.org.  I hope it's helpful to you. Now I have to get back to writing the book!  
{"id":305,"date":"2011-04-03T16:43:10","date_gmt":"2011-04-03T23:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whatgreatbossesknow.com\/?p=305"},"modified":"2013-02-13T20:52:41","modified_gmt":"2013-02-14T03:52:41","slug":"micromanagers-and-motivation-the-dangerous-mix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/whatgreatbossesknow.com\/?p=305","title":{"rendered":"Micromanagers and Motivation: The Dangerous Mix"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/whatgreatbossesknow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Notbossy.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/whatgreatbossesknow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/whatgreatbossesknow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/whatgreatbossesknow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whatgreatbossesknow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whatgreatbossesknow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=305"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/whatgreatbossesknow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1411,"href":"http:\/\/whatgreatbossesknow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305\/revisions\/1411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whatgreatbossesknow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/whatgreatbossesknow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whatgreatbossesknow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whatgreatbossesknow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}