Yesterday I wrote about the differences between micromanagement and macromanagement from a senior leader’s perspective. Now I’d like to write a note to those who are not in senior leadership and feel like you’re being micromanaged. It’s vital that you never confuse micromanagement with macromanagement!
When I was a youth pastor my senior pastor once came in and told me something very specific he wanted to see happen in the student ministry. He told me that he wanted me to minister not only to students but also to intentionally minister to the volunteers and to the parents. In one statement I felt like he’d tripled my work!
It got worse when he started getting a little too detailed for my comfort. He said that he wanted my primary emphasis to be on the volunteers and the parents rather than the students. This felt counterintuitive to me. After all, my title was ‘youth pastor’. “Shouldn’t my first priority be ministering to the students?” I wondered to myself.
Then this new work assignment got even more granular. He told me he wanted me to start having a parent-gathering at least once every six weeks, and that every month I should have a relational-type-event with all of my volunteers. At the time, I found this extremely annoying! I felt like he was micromanaging me. On the inside I was indignant. I was thinking to myself “Who does he think he is coming in here and telling me how to run my ministry?”
Thankfully, I kept my mouth shut and I did what he asked. What I discovered was that he, in fact, did not micromanage me. Instead, he pointed me in a very intentional direction and told me the vision behind it. The reason he wanted me to invest in parents and volunteers was because doing so would ensure that students would not fall through the cracks. He set a specific direction on a macro level (30,000 feet) and then set me loose to fulfill that vision.
At the end of the day, all of the fine details regarding how I executed this vision were mine to decide. His direction was detailed and clear, but I had tremendous freedom within the boundaries of the vision he had created for me. What I initially found annoying, became something empowering. By letting me focus on the micro-details and decisions on my own, while simultaneously giving me a macro-direction, my senior pastor set me up for huge success. By focusing my attention on adults first and the students second, our youth ministry more than doubled in the next year.
So if you’re a supporting staff member in an organization and you feel frustrated by perceived micromanagement, ask yourself, “Am my really being micromanaged, or am I being given a specific directive and allowed the leeway to fulfill that directive how I see fit?” Never confuse specifics for micromanagement. Good macromanagment requires plenty of specifics so you’ll know when you’re successfully fulfilling the vision.
Oh yeah, if after you read this post you still feel like your leadership is micromanaging you, remember this statement that I read in a post by Brady Boyd: “I will only have as much spiritual authority as I am willing to submit to myself. Independence will destroy me, but there is power in submission.”
Thoughts?