BUSINESS
Confessions from a Recovering Micromanager. By Gry Tømte
A day in the Life of a Perfectionist: It’s Tuesday, 9:00 AM: I’ve already rearranged the reception area twice, briefed my team about the importance of perfect towel folds (for the fifth time this week), and am now contemplating if I should just redo the whole towel inventory myself. Then remake the beds. After all, it’s never quite right - so if you want something done right, do it yourself, right? Ehm…. Welcome to a day in the life of a recovering micromanager.
The Micromanagement Trap. If I’ll be honest, once upon a time I thought “fixing everything” (aka micromanaging) was my superpower. I can spot a mistake in an email from a mile away and correct a slightly off- centre piece of wall art with my eyes closed. It’s a real masterful talent a lot of us business owners have. But here’s the twist: My team was about as inspired as a doorknob. Why? Because I was stifling their creativity, their growth, their problem-solving skills…. and probably their will to live tbh…. It hit me one day, right in the middle of instructing someone in on the ‘correct’ way to clean a brush. I was definitely not leading; I was suffocating. And that was a hard truth to wake up to. I now know, leadership starts with leading yourself. And that’s really hard to do when you feel like everything in your business hinges on you, and you can see ALL of it. I remember my psychologist asking me during a session: “do you feel more in control or less in control when you try to control everything?” Which I thought was an odd question…. But then, as I thought about it and thinking about how I was feeling and the reason I was there I realised. Oh shit! My need to control actually made me feel OUT of control. Like, psycho level out of control….
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Beauty Biz Year 16 Issue 6
So, I had to learn to step back, breathe (yes, breathing is good), and let others shine. And watch them make decisions I KNEW were wrong. But let them do it anyway, make the mistakes and help them reflect and learn from them. So, is it really that easy? Pouf - overnight you can just stop micromanaging. Well, my exchange on slack this week with my manager over a booking done incorrectly tells me not so much… It’s very much a journey. And like all journeys it has detours and swings and roundabouts.
Turning the Page: From Perfection to Progress Let’s face it. This wasn’t just about fixing a management style; it was about completely changing my mindset. From perfect lines of towels to lines of open communication. From correcting to connecting. From managing every detail - to showing my team the vision and letting them use their talents to achieve it. The journey was less about becoming less of a micromanager and more about becoming more of a leader, a collaborator, and a listener. Instead of telling my team how to do things, I started getting really good at asking open ended questions. Asking for their ideas before I gave mine - IF I gave mine. I had to make it a habit. So, I made a 3-month commitment that every time someone asked a question that didn’t require an urgent response, I’d ask 3 questions (any combination or all 3). 1. What do YOU think the right approach is? 2. What have you tried so far? 3. What else…. And guess what? They had ideas that were
revolutionary, They started problem solving. And each time they overcame a challenge on their own, it was clear that the accomplishment felt much sweeter because they did it on their own. And as a result, I was a lot less needed. Which led to less overwhelm. Which led to me feeling less inclined to micromanage. Win - win!
The Bumpy Road: Challenges and Setbacks Changing isn’t easy. Stressful days still sometimes sees me jumping back into my old ways. When stress or overwhelm sets in, everything just seems more urgent and more important. That one email that upset a client feels like a disaster. The Instagram post with a dirty towel in the background feels like it will ruin our entire feed and see us lose followers. And this mindset is exactly what happened to me last week. I’d come back from a delicious yoga retreat all zen but itching to get back to work - because, you know, the entrepreneurial mind never sleeps. And if there’s days and days of nothing to do but meditate, I feel like things are just a bit off kilter. So as soon as I came home and checked the diary, emails, and slack, I picked up on a number of things that all of a sudden “needed urgent fixing”. It wasn’t until my clinic manager Amanda told me “Don’t worry. Everything is under control Gry Ummm. “Gry”. She only calls me by my name when I’ve overstepped a boundary or stressing her out
