Micromanaging and competence

If I’m driving with Frank and I say he should check his mirror more often, that sounds like obvious micromanagement. But what if I told you that Frank is my nephew and has only been driving for a week?

The context is important. Now I’m not micromanaging, I’m giving instruction to build competence. If I’m still telling him to check his mirrors 2 years later when he’s an otherwise competent driver, that’s micromanaging.

Competence is context dependent. I might trust Frank to drive me to the airport. But that doesn’t mean I’d trust him to fly the plane when we got there.

You can also provide detailed instruction without micromanaging if you have more information than the other person, as long as you also explain why you’re doing it. It’s It would be obnoxious to tell a friend who regularly drives a certain route that they should take the freeway instead of surface streets. But it’s informational to tell them they should take the freeway because this morning you saw a lot of new construction closing the surface streets.

Providing feedback can be seen as micromanagement unless you provide context. Without context, this sort of feedback is criticism. It’s criticism to tell Frank he drives too fast and changes lanes too often. But it’s feedback if you tell him that because he drives this way, all his friends are afraid to ride with him. If you didn’t provide this feedback, he might never know why his friends always seem to be busy when he offers to drive somewhere.

When building competence, providing new information, or giving feedback, you cannot be hands off.