Use Case: How to React When You’re Accused of Micromanagement
Jul 24
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Use Case: How to React When You’re Accused of Micromanagement
As managers or anyone leading a team, we often find ourselves in situations where our team disagrees with the approach we’ve chosen to solve a problem. And sometimes, that disagreement turns into something more: a misinterpretation of our motives.
In my case, it looked like micromanagement, which, obviously, was never my goal.
Use Case 1: Negative Scenario
When a new Business Analyst joined my team, I was wearing two hats: Project Manager and Business Analyst. Naturally, I kept a close eye on his work, focused on finding errors and guiding improvements. And, as expected, I found mistakes. After all, he was new to the product, new to the team and still finding his feet.
From my point of view, I was ensuring quality. From his point of view, I was micromanaging. That perception, whether accurate or not, had real consequences. It created tension in our communication and built resistance in our collaboration. Even though both of us had good intentions, we started pushing against each other rather than pulling together.
What Was Done to Resolve The Issue
Honestly? Not much.
At that point in my career, I lacked the tools and experience to properly address this kind of conflict. I did tell him that micromanagement was never my intention, but I didn’t take any meaningful steps beyond that.
Lessons Learned
1. Communication is everything. However, it must be structured and intentional. It’s not enough to say “That’s not what I meant.” You need to clearly explain why you acted the way you did, what outcome you were aiming for and how the two of you can move forward together.
2. Define roles clearly. Looking back, I should have created a structure like this:
Who creates the requirements?
Who reviews them and when?
Who gives the final approval?
That simple framework could have created clarity instead of confusion.
3. Build an atmosphere of transparency and shared accountability. Mistakes are okay. People need the space to make them. What matters is how you respond. If you both take responsibility and have a process in place to learn from those mistakes, trust can grow, even if the start was rough.
Use Case 2: Positive Scenario
On another project I worked on, there was no existing foundation of trust. So when I joined the team, my main goal was to build processes that would help people feel trusted. My purpose was to achieve that by creating transparency around what everyone was doing and why.
In this case, I worked closely with the QA team. During regression testing, I asked them to update their progress in realtime. But I faced resistance. Because of negative experiences with past leadership, the team felt under attack. They interpreted my request as micromanagement — even though my true intention was simply to monitor whether the release was on track and to take action if it wasn’t.
From my perspective, I was trying to build clarity and avoid delays. From their perspective, I was watching over their shoulders, waiting to criticize and blame.
This affected several areas of work:
Communication as lack of clarity and open dialogue created an unsafe environment.
Process transparency as we couldn’t accurately track progress.
Trust as team felt untrusted and feared being punished for not working fast enough.
What Was Done to Resolve the Issue
After carefully analyzing the situation, I realized the problem wasn’t just about the process change. It was about the lack of explanation and the scars from previous experiences. The team simply didn’t understand why the new request was being made.
It came down to communication. Here’s what I did:
Analyzed the source of resistance, including the team’s past negative experiences.
Held individual discussions with the most resistant team members, to explain the purpose behind real-time updates and what issue we were trying to solve.
Facilitated a group discussion to align everyone around the reason for the change and to answer any concerns openly.
Lessons Learned
Active listening should always be the first step in a conflict. It allows you to uncover what’s really behind the resistance and gives you a starting point for creating a path forward.
And again: communication is the most essential and accessible tool any leader can use. By communicating clearly, you help the team feel safe and trusted. In this case, I made sure the team understood the real goals:
build a transparent process
identify blockers early so the release can stay on track
create a safe environment where people aren’t blamed for needing more time
When people feel trusted – not judged – they’re far more motivated to do their best work.
Conclusions
Leadership is a constant learning curve. These experiences taught me that the smallest changes in communication and clarity can transform the way teams function. The use cases above are just a glimpse into the everyday challenges we face and the lessons that shape how we grow. I’ll be sharing more soon, with practical tips and real stories from real life. Stay with me as there’s more to come.
