“I consider myself an enabler more than a manager, but I’m also a bit of a control freak,” says Toronto-based Katie Taylor, 55, the chief executive of luxury hotel brand Four Seasons.
Intuitively and intellectually, Taylor knows that it’s good for her employees to have autonomy and decision-making power over bigger and bigger projects. That’s how they learn, grow and become more confident. But in reality, it’s not always as easy as it sounds. “We’re rewarded in our careers for doing things and taking control,” she says. “Type-A people assumed leadership positions on the playground. Early success gets supported by the overuse of the control-freak gene.”
So while Taylor may want to hand over the reins of a project for the good of the team, she still has to fight her instinct to make suggestions, tinker or take over. “Sit on your hands, if you have to,” she says. “Get yourself to that place.”
While the degree may vary, most professionals are familiar with their inner control freak—that nagging feeling that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. It generally manifests as the micromanager, the overworked boss who has trouble delegating, the team member who takes over everything or the perfectionist worker who becomes trapped in the details.
The inherent danger is that, over time, the demands you’ve placed on yourself will become so great that either your work or your health (or both) will suffer. Meanwhile, you end up frustrating and stifling the creatively of everyone around you, including yourself.
“Controlling people are controlled themselves by the compulsion of having to do it all and do it all perfectly,” says Paul Baard, Ph.D., organizational psychologist and management professor at Fordham University in New York. “You frustrate your own autonomy to make mistakes.”
In his research, Baard has consistently found that when workers have independence and the power to make their own decisions they are motivated, energized and physically healthier. However, if they feel powerless, productivity goes down and illness increases.
For the control freaks among us, Baard says every assignment is self-defining. Each piece of work produced by her or her team must be flawless lest she become vulnerable to criticism or feelings of personal failure.
“Most issues around control stem from someone’s subconscious desire to feel safe,” says Karol Ward, licensed psychotherapist and author of Worried Sick. “What’s at play is a hyper-vigilance, a need to know and be aware of all the possible elements that could go wrong.”
Constant perfection-seeking may fuel success for some—it’s not a bad trait in, say, a surgeon—but cripples it in others. Baard says he’s seen it lead to procrastination, missing deadlines due to endless revisions, and not speaking up in meetings for fear of being wrong.
He recalls one young man who was frustrated that his department was implementing his boss’s marketing plan, despite that he believed his own plan was much better. When Baard asked why they weren’t using his, he confessed he’d never even shown it to anyone because he was afraid it might not be good enough.
Oftentimes, these control-freak tendencies at the office spill over into your personal life, says Alan Cavaiola, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology at Ocean County College in New Jersey and co-author of Impossible to Please. Some of his clients try to micromanage the household, are overly critical of spouses and children or take too much on themselves.
The classic case is the wife who complains that her husband never does the dishes, but when he does do them she tells him he’s doing it wrong and redoes them behind him. Cavaiola also worked with one man who was such a neat-freak that the garage was as clean as the kitchen. He’d put his kids’ toys away just as they were pulling them out, before they had a chance to play with them.
“Usually these people set high standards for themselves, so are similarly demanding of others,” Cavaiola says. “It can put a lot of stress on them and their relationships.”
The best way to tame your inner control freak is by taking small steps to relieve the anxiety and cede control. Cavaiola suggests scheduling more time with friends, taking yoga or exercising more, and trying meditation or deep-breathing. Once you’ve created a sense of calm for yourself, it’s easier to begin delegating.
Amanda Augustine, a job search expert for online job-matching service TheLadders, describes herself as a highly caffeinated, type-A personality who is constantly battling her controlling tendencies. Last year, she was invited to serve on a committee to develop three different career-building workshops. Without thinking, she volunteered to create all three presentations, the talking points, and all accompanying materials. Oh, and why not throw in the task of collating color-coded name tags too?
“I realized half-way through the project that I was in over my head,” says Augustine. “I made myself (and those around me) crazy because I was running out of time and approaching panic mode.”
She needed to get some items off her plate, so she first tried to identify the “glass balls.” If you consider each priority in your life to be a ball that you’re juggling, she explains, recognize which of these balls are made of glass and will shatter if dropped and which are made of rubber and will bounce back.
Augustine immediately unloaded the name-tag responsibility, as it was a low-level priority. Then, she offered the opportunity of running two of the three workshops to other team-members whose skills and experience reflected the topics. Ultimately, she realized that she couldn’t do it all—and didn’t want to—and that having more people actively engaged in the process made for a better end product.
“The people around you can’t rise to the challenge if you don’t give them the chance,” she says. Besides, if you control every aspect of your group’s work, you become irreplaceable. And if you can’t be replaced, you can’t advance in the company. “Groom the people in your department to handle the work, so you can focus on the bigger picture.”
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