How to Raise the Bar Without Micro-Managing

Leaders are constantly challenged with the extent of supervision to exercise over junior people. We all recognize that micro-management is bad, but so is having low standards and tolerating poor performance. When we try to follow simplistic advice about rewards and punishments, we tend err on one side or the other. So what do we do in order not to micro-manage, but to have a high-performing team?

The answer is instilling personal discipline. In the essay "Discipline: Creating the Foundations for an Initiative-Based Organization", Christopher Kolenda defines Disciple as: "to understand the difference between right and wrong in terms of performance and behavior, and to do what is right in the absence of supervision." There are numerous benefits when a team of people are disciplined in this way. Leaders have bandwidth freed from micro-managing. The team can handle situations "on the ground" dynamically, with solutions more fitting and effective than those that might be dictated from on high. Good decision-makers are trained up rather than stifled. The organization's effectiveness is multiplied. Everyone is happier.

So how do you get there?

Imagine you lead a team of software engineers. As you consider how things might go without supervision, you recognize code quality as inconsistent. You have a practice for code review in place, but bugs are occurring that should have been caught in code review, and some review requests receive no comments for days, so people move on without it. You recognize that without leadership, this will not change.

You decide to discuss expectations. Should we expect code to be well-documented to make reviews easier? Should we expect frequent comments? Should reviews be done generally within 24 hours? Knowing the answers should be "yes", you have already been taking the first step of any servant leader by doing these yourself. You earn respect and trust for doing so even before others reciprocate. When it comes to asking for them to do the same, they will know it is no less than what you are doing. So in your team meeting you raise the discussion, listen opinions and reactions, and declare expected standards the team members can generally get on board with.

In team meetings (particularly retrospectives), you deliberately share praise when someone has reviewed code quickly or left thorough comments. In a meeting setting you keep negative comments general (making an example of someone is not the point), but you are still honest, expressing that you would like to see this area improve and ask others for their thoughts. Maybe you get little response, but it is on their radar, a small step in the right direction.

One team member in particular gives you frequent trouble. When others request improvements on their work, they argue. They state, "what I wrote works, that's what really matters, all this review stuff is a big waste of time." As the leader who  has convictions about your standards of professionalism, you meet with them and reiterate that these reviews are the standard for behavior. You ask what would help them, knowing that they may have reasons and are not simply a rebel. You listen, trying to persuade even as you stay firm. You ask for their compliance and for them to trust that your intentions are good.

Though it takes time and reminders, code review standards are increasing. Thoroughness of the comments and responsiveness to them are becoming normal.

As the years pass, your team grows, taking on more projects and people. For these team members who have demonstrated the fundamentals, you can now trust them to lead and make decisions. You show them how you did it. You observe their own choices to instill discipline, giving them feedback. But most importantly, you let them lead. Ingrained with the high standards you demonstrated and persuaded them to value, your collective effectiveness multiplies.

If you want to instill  this kind of discipline in your own organization, here is what it takes.

First, assess the current maturity of your team vis-a-vis discipline. Ask yourself:

The answers here will indicate how much change is needed, how long the road to change is, and how quickly you can move through the remaining steps.

Before even trying to communicate or enforce standards with your team, you need a picture of what "right" performance and behavior is. What do your high performers do that others do not? Which of those behaviors should be considered standard for the role? Rather than write long documents and descriptions, focus on a few key behaviors and how they are not universally performed by the team.

You are now trying one of the hardest and most fundamental tasks of leadership: shaping culture.

It can often go wrong. Some leaders set goals for their people that those people have not taken ownership of, which technical people are specially good at accomplishing with minimal effort. This is why improving productivity among engineers merely by measuring metrics like lines of code or pull requests fail; they know how to game it.

Some leaders emphasize punishments and put people in performance improvement plans, often causing unhappiness, adversarial feelings, or attrition. Others emphasize positive rewards but still tolerate underperformance, with little effect.

To enforce standards properly, do it relationally and play the long game. The relational trust others have with you will allow you to bring small changes. Show team members that you care first and you have their interests in mind. Make one change at a time, enforce it, praise good performance, and yes, use punitive measures. Explain the reason improvements are needed, and even better, share the performance gaps with the team and involve them in solving it. When the desired behavior change is established, be consistent about it. Show the team that yes, you meant it, but also that you understand where they are at. Reward progress in the right direction, showing that you value willingness and grace.

The end goal is persuasion, not coercion. Coercion may be required for people lacking any sense of the fundamentals, like a conscript army. But instilling discipline requires persuasion, so that people hold to the higher standard out of their own sense of professionalism.

Why is it not done this way more? Because persuasion takes more time, work and sacrifice. It's a high-cost, high-reward investment.

For team members who demonstrate fundamental competency, you must give real decision-making freedoms. While it might begin with decisions that are easy to revert, it cannot continuously be "fake" decisions where leader approval is required before action is taken. Consequences are necessary for real learning. While those consequences may seem bad, forever shielding people from decision consequences is worse.

When teaching someone a skill it can be hard to know how to escalate the level of freedom. Usually we err by continuing to micro-manage or by throwing people into the fire too quickly. So when teaching someone a skill I find it helpful to deliberately move through the following stages:

On this final stage it is important that someone making a decision in good faith feel supported, even if that decision turns out to be wrong. This should be expected, it is how they will learn. If you are a leader it may help to remember that this is how you learned, too.

Even if you have no formal leadership position or title, you can seed the change for discipline in your team. You can demonstrate it, earn the respect even of more senior people, and raise the bar. As you demonstrate discipline and earn decision-making freedom, you will be a leader.