Employee survey

Questions template to detect micromanagement

Get feedback from your team to know how you can be the best manager and give them the right autonomy.

What are the effects of micromanagement on employees

You probably have heard about micromanagement – the management style where managers seek more control than necessary. It’s normal to act like a micromanager when you feel like you don’t have enough visibility. But when micromanagement becomes the norm, autonomy tends to suffer. Employees start to think that they are not trusted to complete their tasks efficiently, and in consequence, engagement goes down. Ensuring the team feels that they have control over their work will shift engagement back up and even help with employee retention!

Questions to know if your team feels micromanaged

Use our question template to send a poll to your team and ask them directly how they feel about their level of autonomy. These questions are designed to give you feedback about your management style and know more about the level of autonomy your team expects.

You can use this template when you spot signs of micromanagement or even quarterly as a way to gather feedback!

How to interpret results for this Custom Poll

This template works a little differently than our other Custom Poll templates. Here’s how to interpret the results:

Low score (mostly 1s and 2s): You are not acting like a micromanager. You view your role as helping others succeed and grow. You’ve learned to trust your team members, just as they’ve learned to trust you. Keep it up!
Medium score (mostly 2s and some 3s): You are showing some signs of micromanagement. You’d like to be able to “let go” but feel that there’s too much risk of failure. Go through the explanations in our blog article to learn about other management styles.
High score (mostly all 3s and 4s): It looks like your team feels micromanaged. While you have the best of intentions, your behavior could, unfortunately, be driving low engagement. There is always an opportunity for improvement. Our blog will give you tips on what to do!

Signs of micromanagement

Micromanagement tends to sneak up on you, especially when acting as the supervisor of a big project. Without noticing, managers might engage in this behavior. It’s completely normal! All you have to do is be aware of the signs and gather feedback from your team often to stay on the right track.

Here are some examples of micromanagement:

Getting too involved in a project to the point where you are doing the work for them.
Expecting frequent updates or checking in on the team outside of weekly or daily team meetings.
Asking for progress reports that include irrelevant details.
Wanting to be cc’d on every communication your team has.