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No one wants to work for a micromanager, just as no one wants to be one. Like most things, when people believe that one thing is bad, they presume the opposite must be good. If micromanaging is bad, then leaving people alone must be good, or so this is what some managers believe and many managers practice.
The opposite of micromanagement is macro-management. Where managing every detail of an employee’s work is terrible, managing the significant outcomes that lead to success is useful and necessary. Too little management, too little leadership, and a lack of direction is something much worse than micromanagement.
Too Little Direction on Outcomes
Where a micromanager would provide too much direction, someone who fears their team thinking of them as a micromanager might avoid guiding the outcomes the individuals on their team need to create. Managers don’t exist to manage paperwork and provide reporting. All managers must be leaders, someone responsible for future results.
In sales, managers and leaders who avoid providing guidance around the number and quality of the opportunities the individuals on their team needs to create each week, or month, or quarter is not providing enough direction for many of the individuals on their team to succeed. Instead, they are merely hoping for the best. You see this when sales leaders allow their salespeople to show up to a pipeline meeting with no new opportunities week after week, without admonishing them for failing to build their pipeline.
Macro-management means providing strong direction on the outcomes your team needs to create. It means ensuring the people on your team know what you expect of them, that they are capable and equipped to produce those results and holding them accountable for doing so.
Too Little Activity
There are two reasons an individual may not produce the outcomes for which they are accountable. First, and most likely, they aren’t doing the work they would need to do to generate the result. Most people who fail in sales don’t fail because they can’t sell; they fail because they don’t sell. Call this a lack of sales activity or “anti-hustle.”
Some sales managers and leaders don’t address the problem of too little activity when it comes to prospecting. Instead, they ignore it, providing too little leadership around a significant outcome in sales. What is worse than having to talk to a rep about the fact that they aren’t doing the work to create new deals is allowing them to fail because you don’t want to have an uncomfortable conversation. The failure to have these conversations with senior salespeople means your best reps are not in the game.
Activity management is micromanagement if a salesperson is producing the deals they need to be successful. That same activity management is macro-management when one is not providing the result they need due to too little activity.
Too Low Effectiveness
When an individual’s failure to create new opportunities is not due to any lack of effort on their part, the root cause is almost always a lack of sales effectiveness in their role. The second thing you need for growth is closing more deals.
Sales effectiveness is also something that many managers ignore. When salespeople believe their “style” should trump a modern a sales approach, one the client finds valuable enough that they prefer to work with the salesperson and their company, their managers allow weak sales practices to cause losses and the poor results that follow. Losing isn’t a style.
There are a lot of ways to get to yes and win a deal, but when a person is not winning, the choices they are making in sales are detrimental to their success. Allowing someone you are responsible for to fail is not leadership. Waiting for a person to figure out something they believe they already know isn’t going to help them improve. That improvement is only going to come from a manager willing to manage the macro outcome that is “won deals.”
There is No Benign Neglect
As a manager or leader, there is no such thing as benign neglect. There is only neglect, something that harms others. It is an abdication of leadership hat one should not micromanage, should not have to provide direction, and should not need to require the activity necessary to produce results.
It is easier to fail your sales team than it is for your sales team to fail you. The imposition of a standard not only serves your goals and results, but it also helps the people that make up your team. Leaders see something in people that they don’t yet see in themselves, and in doing so, improve them both personally and professionally.
Providing leadership means providing high standards, something people will have to strive to achieve. A lack of standards means anything is acceptable.
Lack of Growth and a Lack of Accountability
When you find a lack of growth and sales performance, you also find a lack of accountability. The unwillingness to provide consequences and help when people don’t do what they are responsible for doing allows them to continue to fail. Without accountability, that failure belongs to the person providing too little leadership, not the person who is failing to perform.