Great Leadership isn’t about control. It's about Empowering people.

By Brigette Hyacinth

The Author of "The Future of Leadership: Rise of Automation, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence"

Trust is the foundation of any successful relationship, whether professionally or personally and when it’s broken, it is extremely hard to repair. I once had a supervisor if I was over one minute on my lunch time, she would send an email to remind me of my lunch hours, even though most of the time I never took my full lunch hour. I couldn't even send an email without her approving it first. She was so inflexible that it was overbearing. I couldn't trust her. When employees feel they can’t trust their boss, they feel unsafe, like no one has their back, and then spend more energy on survival than performing at their job.

The corporate world is littered with such micromanagers. Sadly many organizations prefer these managers because they seem to be on top of, and in control of everything. In the short term, they may produce results but in the long run they leave a trail of destruction in their path.

“It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to to. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” ― Steve Jobs

5 Damaging Effects of Micromanagement

1.Decreased Productivity - When a manager is constantly looking over their employees’ shoulders, it can lead to a lot of second-guessing and paranoia, and ultimately leads to dependent employees. Additionally, such managers spends a lot of time giving input and tweaking employee workflows, which can drastically slow down employee response time.

2. Reduced Innovation - When employees feel like their ideas are invalid or live in constant fear of criticism, it’s eventually going to take a toll on creativity. In cultures where risk-taking is punished, employees will not dare to take the initiative. Why think outside the box when your manager is only going to shoot down your ideas and tell you to do it their way?

3. Lower Morale - Employees want the feeling of autonomy. If employees cannot make decisions at all without their managers input, they will feel suffocated. Employees that are constantly made to feel they can’t do anything right may try harder for a while, but will eventually stop trying at all. The effects of this will be evident in falling employee engagement levels.

4. High Staff Turnover - Most people don’t take well to being micromanaged. When talented employees are micromanaged, they often do one thing; quit. No one likes to come to work every day and feel they are walking into a penitentiary with their every movement being monitored. "Please Micromanage Me" Said No Employee ever. I have never seen a happy staff under micromanagement.

5. Loss of Trust - Micromanagement will eventually lead to a massive breakdown of trust. It demotivates and demoralizes employees. Your staff will no longer see you as a manager, but a oppressor whose only job is to make their working experience miserable.

“Please Micromanage Me” Said No Employee, EVER.

Micromanagement is a complete waste of everybody’s time. It sucks the life out of employees, fosters anxiety and creates a high stress work environment. If you hired someone, it means you believe they are capable of doing the job, then trust them to get it done. A high level of trust between managers and employees defines the best workplaces and drives overall company performance. When you empower employees, you promote vested interest in the company. How can you empower others? Understand their strengths, support and utilize these strengths. An empowered workforce is more engaged. Engaged employees drive higher customer satisfaction and boost the bottom line. A Gallup study concluded that companies with higher-than-average employee engagement also had 27% higher profits, 50% higher sales and 50% higher customer loyalty.

Empowered employees are more confident, more willing to go the extra mile for employers, and more willing do whatever it takes to care for customers. In this volatile global marketplace, happy loyal employees are your biggest competitive advantage. If you want performance at scale: Select the right people, provide them with the proper training, tools and support, and then give them room to get the job done!

Why We Should Not Be Working 8 Hours A Day

by Kenneth Ponnu
Talent Research Consultant at TalentSquare Sdn Bhd


It seems to be the general consensus that most adults today work in the range of eight hours per day. Of course, some may work in excess of this and some less than this. But, knowing exactly how long somebody works seems to have little correlation with exactly how productive that person is.

           

   There are some ‘super-humans’ who are able to get all their work done in 4 hours a day, while others quote high levels of productivity, despite working 16 hours a day. Based on this, it seems hard to draw the line and get a good picture of what the optimal daily working time is.

               So, let’s start out by examining the origins of the normal eight hour workday and how it came about. Well, like most things in our modern world today, its birth lies in the tidings of the Industrial Revolution. So, let’s turn the clock back several hundred years to the 18th century.

It’s the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and for factories wishing to succeed, 24/7 operations was the key. Workers were pushed to the edge and ten to sixteen-hour days were the norm. This was clearly not sustainable, so one brave man named Robert Owen started a campaign to have people not work more than eight hours a day. His slogan, “Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.”

Despite Robert’s brave efforts, it was not until much later that Henry Ford actually implemented the eight-hour workday in 1914 and to the shock of many other industries, Ford’s productivity increased and profit margins doubled within two years. So there you have it folks, the origin of the eight-hour workday is not a scientifically thought out process, but rather the century-old norm of running factories efficiently.

However, in today’s world of the knowledge economy, how many hours we work is barely important at all, but rather the results of this work. So, the focus should be on managing your energy, rather than managing your time per se. To break this down, firstly, we humans have four types of energy; physical energy, emotional energy, mental energy, and last but not least spiritual energy.

Secondly, we humans are distinctly different from machines, in that machines move linearly, and we humans move cyclically. So to get a truly efficient workday that respects our human nature, we need to focus on our ultradian cycles. What this means basically, is that our human minds can only focus on any given task for a maximum of two hours.

After that, a 30-minute break is required to get the renewal in order to achieve high performance for the next task. So, instead of thinking what can I get done in an eight-hour workday, start thinking about what you can get done in a two-hour session.

The next issue to tackle, is how well we can focus. Well, research has shown that our brain uses a two-step process in focus; namely sensitivity enhancement and efficient selection. The first is a process where you take in all the information that is presented, then gradually narrow down to what needs your attention.

The second is the actual zooming in on a task. This is where the actual work on a task happens. So, the take-away from all this, is to stop multi-tasking and to eliminate distractors even when only one task is present.

Besides this, some other handy tips that you can follow are to manually increase the relevance of a task. This is useful for those who find it hard to focus. The key is to set a personal deadline for a task coupled with a reward.

Next one up is to plan your rest periods, so that you can actually rest. As the saying goes, “The fittest person is not the one who runs the fastest, but the one who has optimized their rest time.” Often times, we are so busy planning our day that we forget ‘how’ to rest. Some handy things to do when you rest include reading, napping, meditating, or getting a snack.

The third tip is to practice zero notifications when working. So turn your phone to silent and switch off those notifications on your computer.