It has happened to me more times than I’d like to admit. I hand a piece of work to someone, tell them to get on with it, and when it comes back I end up redoing the whole thing. If you’ve led people for any length of time, you know that feeling. It’s tempting to decide that next time it’s simply faster to do it myself.
I understand that reaction, because I still have it. To be honest, I do micromanage at times. What has changed is that I usually catch it now, somewhere between the third check-in and the moment I start rewriting someone’s email. Catching it doesn’t make it comfortable. But it is the difference between a habit I manage and a habit that manages the team.
I’ve also come to think the redo is where leadership actually starts. Quietly fixing the work and moving on is the real failure, because the person learns nothing and I’ve taught them to expect a rescue. The slower route is to sit down and go through what was missing, whether that was the skill, the brief or the standard I never made clear. That is coaching and mentoring, and it is part of the job, even when it is frustrating.
Micromanagement usually grows out of that frustration. It rarely starts as a decision. The deadline is tight, you’ve seen this kind of job go wrong before, so you step in to help. Then you check once, then daily, and before long you’re fixing things before anyone has finished doing them. Meanwhile the people who used to just get on with it start asking permission to send an email.
I’ve been on the other side of this too, and it is a different experience. You stop making decisions, you start guessing what the boss wants, and you learn quickly that being approved matters more than being right. What I’ve noticed is that the boss is often not the source of it. Pressure gets passed down. Someone above is being chased, so they chase the next person, and by the time it reaches your desk it looks like a personality problem when it is really a chain. That doesn’t excuse it, but it helps to understand, both when it’s happening to you and when you catch yourself passing it on.
It also comes from how many of us got the job. You were good at the work, so they made you the boss of the work. The title changes but the habit doesn’t. Every problem you fix yourself is one your team didn’t get to work out.
None of this means handing over a task with a cheerful “I trust you” and disappearing. That’s just as lazy, and it is usually how I ended up redoing the work. What helps is being clear about the outcome, the deadline and what cannot be compromised, agreeing when you’ll check in, and saying what needs to reach you straight away. New people and risky jobs need closer watching, and that’s fine. Then let them do it their way, even if it isn’t yours. Sometimes theirs turns out better, which stings a little.
So when I catch myself hovering, I ask why. Is it a skill gap, an unclear brief, damaged trust, or pressure I’m passing along from above? The answer decides what I do next. But “I would have done it differently” is rarely reason enough to take the work back.
Delegation isn’t a one-off handover. You keep working at it with the person, and it doesn’t always go well the first time. If everything still ends up back on your desk, you haven’t delegated. You’ve just lent the work out for a while.