Today I want to share with you what did I learn from being an employee. I dedicate this post to my past employers and every business owner on the planet. I hope you will learn something.

1. Micromanagement is like cancer – procedures, control, limits…

• interference in working methods/schedules,
• reports for everything,
• meetings with people who’s topic don’t include.

The cost of micromanagement is team demotivation, no proactive approach, minimal productivity of the team, no trust to business or people and stress. Long story short, everything you don’t want!

People are waiting for a boss to come and say what to do. An employee who does not have the ability to make decisions without the interference of the manager becomes frustrated, and after a while stops trying and adopts a passive attitude. Sit quietly and wait for things to escalate so he (if he’s patient enough to wait so long) can say he was right and finally someone will listen to him. Or if he respects himself – will resign from the job straight away.

Anyway… constant manager control and reviewing the progress of work by the supervisor makes the employee cease to be productive. This is one of the reasons why teams instead of trying to deliver their tasks are waiting for what the manager tells them – he becomes the main person responsible for product effects, not the employee or team. People feel useless, they don’t engage in the project, they don’t take responsibility either. That all ends with delays in the work, passivity and not taking the initiative. And there’s absolutely no place for business innovation. Whereas, 97% of CEOs want innovation. Will say no more. I hope you get my point.

Open working culture, share your ideas freely… That won’t happen. Period.

2. There’s no trust for employees as specialists in a given field. Most employees want to have autonomy in their work within the limits of their position and corresponding competences. The built awareness of the lack of decision making means that the employee begins to do only what the manager will expect from him, losing his initiative.

You ask for expert opinion, you get it and you do things your way because… you’re the boss.

Shit.

I even don’t want to comment that.

3. Although we experience technological progress, people still don’t know how to communicate in and/or with the team.

In every job description we can find “good communication skills” in reality this is bullshit!

Employer transparency? Of course not.
“They can’t know about everything”
“They can’t know the real numbers”
“They….”
You as an employer thinking that people are stupid… and they think that you are.

You want to talk about leadership, caring, trusting, protection, charisma… You know that rules and words almost never match reality, right?

4. Manipulation is popular at any position – an employer is telling every employee what they want to hear, which causes communication problems, disappointment when you learn what he says to others (often exact same things). People are not stupid.

5. Conflict resolution by saying that everyone is right, let’s come back to work – just doesn’t work. Dear CEO, people trust you, people want you to play fair. They want you to support them. They may not be right but pretending that there’s no problem will not help.

6. One person in the team can put the whole company down. Everyone in the firm knows who the person is but only THE ONE pretend to not see that. The worst what can happen in this situation? Giving THIS person the power and finding another excuses to explain him over and over again.

7. Busy-ness valued more than tangible results. Paradoxe, we claim to be concerned only about results, in reality, we look around if there’s someone who is not in front of the computer. How do you measure your employees’ effectiveness?

8. Loss of trust is probably the worst that can happen. Trust is one of the basic elements of a well-functioning team. It is thanks to trust that people often have the courage to leave the comfort zone and open themselves to new challenges in the project. However, when they lose, they no longer feel the need to cooperate with the manager and eventually make the decision to say goodbye to the employer.

9. Self-development is a good fairytale to say in a job offer, the reality is different. There’s plenty of ambitious people who look for a job where they can truly raise up. If you can’t provide them with this opportunity, do not pretend that you can.

10. Leaving ideas in the drawer. There are so many companies that have incredible ideas that they don’t know about yet. Those ideas stay in the drawer or brains of your employees – all day, every day. Why does it happen? The reasons why your employees come to you with those ideas can be many. The key is to do absolutely everything to get them out.

What did you learn from being an employee? Or if you are an employer what is your #1 takeaway from this article?