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Micromanagement by email alive and well...

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Anonymous
My TL insists on insinuating himself into everything we do. He sends us reminders to create reminders for a small chore. He tells us how to behave at meetings; the youngest person on the team is 48. He tells us how to conduct interviews with SMEs and what questions to ask; our team has 50 years of collective experience in our field. He often tells us to do what we've already done. Although he doesn't look over our shoulder literally, he does so figuratively via email. In May, I received 100 emails from him, emails that had to be read and assessed. And that doesn't count the increasing numbers of IMs. Here I am, a seasoned professional, and my TL treats me as if I were a child. I would laugh about this if it were not so awful.
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Hans Robbers Senior Director| Salesforce Vlissingen, Netherlands
Sounds awful.

My suggestion, oops I am telling you what to do now ;-), is you have a 1-2-1 with your TL and try to find out why he shows this kind of behaviour. Is he insecure, control freak. whatever. Based on his answers formulate your response and explain what it does to you.

good luck Hans
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CJ Cummings EPMO| BCBSLA Baton Rouge, La, United States
My condolences. Is your TL very young - (not necessarily years)? I have noticed that the more intimidated a person is, the more likely they are to micro-manage. I usually ignore all the extraneous emails and just do the right process. Usually this behaviour goes away as the person gains self-confidence...
However, there are people who get such a thrill out of this behaviour.
Is your company going through some massive realignment that may have precipitated this reaction? Was your TL always this way, or is this a sudden transformation?
Finding the answers may help you to deal with this abuse...
Sending you positive, supportive thoughts.
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Selva Saravana Puvananthiran Delivery Lead Senior Manager| Accenture Solutions Private Limited Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India


This is essentially an attitude(the way he sees things) issue. I have seen these behaviours atleast couple times in my career and both the times, the manager (or team lead) was a programmer before. Being a programmer, he will know the functionality of the system and know how to manage it. i.e. he was in control of the system. When he got promoted to a higher level, he was supposed to stay away from the technical details and rely on his team to get things done. But since he is not in control of the system anymore, he is little afraid whether something would go wrong. Over time, he came out of it. During the transition time, the team members needed a lot of patience.



As others suggested, one-on-one meeting with your team lead would definitely help you smoothen out any issues. But sometimes, you need to be patient for some time to get him mould into his new role.


Good luck.
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Richard How Programme Management Consultant| How Associates Ltd Harthill, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom
the best advice I can give is to have a chat with him, maybe buy him a coffee is you can at your office and explain that the volume of emails he sends asking you to do stuff you would do anyway is not helping the departments productivity. Is he a new boss? if he doesnt know how competant you are the rest of the team are then maybe a 1-2-1 with each of you will help him relax a little and help you all to understand what drives him to behave this way, maybe then a happy medium can be achieved

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