Hands-On Leadership: Developing People Without Micromanaging

What’s the difference between developing people and micromanaging them?

In this episode of Leadership Traits Decoded, Cynthia Kyriazis and Andrea Martin explore the leadership trait Hands-On Approach and the important distinction between involvement, development, and control.

While many people associate a hands-on leader with someone highly involved in the details, the conversation reveals that this trait is actually about a leader’s desire to actively participate in decision-making, mentor others, and support employee development. 

Unlike detail orientation, which focuses on analyzing information and identifying errors, a hands-on approach centers on engagement with people and processes. 

The discussion also addresses one of the most common workplace frustrations: micromanagement. 

Cynthia shares insights from years of organizational culture data, where "please stop micromanaging" frequently emerged as a top employee concern. 

Together, Cynthia and Andrea examine how leaders can remain involved in employee development without creating feelings of mistrust or excessive oversight. 

Ultimately, the effectiveness of a hands-on approach comes down to communication. 

When leaders clearly explain their intentions, employees are more likely to view involvement as support rather than control. The goal isn't to be less engaged - it's to ensure engagement is helping people grow instead of holding them back. 

You'll Learn:

• The difference between a hands-on approach and detail orientation
• Why hands-on leadership is often a positive trait in development-focused roles
• How excessive involvement can create perceptions of micromanagement
• The relationship between trust, delegation, and employee motivation
• Why communication determines whether involvement feels supportive or controlling. 

The best hands-on leaders stay involved in developing people while creating enough trust and space for them to succeed on their own.

Ready to explore your leadership traits? Connect with us on LinkedIn or visit www.plllab.com to see how we transform leadership intelligence into return-driven action.

Transcript

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Welcome And Episode Focus

Cynthia Kyriazis 0:00

Welcome to Leadership Traits Decoded. I'm Cynthia Kyriazis, Chief Experience Officer at the Culture Think Tank.

Drea Martin 0:07

And I'm Drea Martin, Chief Operating Officer of the Crucible. We are collaborative partners at Performance Leadership Learning Lab, where we transform leadership intelligence into return-driven action.

Cynthia Kyriazis 0:20

Today we're unpacking the leadership traits essential for building, investing in, and scaling successful companies. Our insights come directly from data-driven metrics within our platforms solution. So let's dive in. All right. How are you doing, Cynthia? I'm doing good. How about yourself, Miss Andrea? Yeah, doing well

Defining Hands-On Leadership

Cynthia Kyriazis 0:41

here. I was looking over our notes the other day, and I thought, okay, we're we're closing in on, we're on the road to completion of speaking about all 40 of our traits. And today I thought maybe we would talk about something that I've heard a lot about over the years, which is a hands-on approach, the trait of hands-on approach with employees. I'd like you to define it, but would you also, in the definition, also explain the difference or similarities between the statement hands-on approach and somebody who's extremely detail-oriented? Because I think those two can flow back and forth and maybe or maybe

Hands-On Versus Detail-Oriented

Cynthia Kyriazis 1:18

not mean the same thing. I'm not sure. So take us down the path of the hands-on approach, what it is, and the upside of it, if you would.

Drea Martin 1:28

Fantastic. Okay, so a hands-on approach, and the way we define this, is the desire to be directly involved in decisions about the way things should be done and in the development of others. And it's interesting that you asked about the difference of detail orientation, because this is a question I actually even got yesterday from a client. And at kind of at first glance, these two traits might read like they're similar, because if you have a hands-on approach, you might pay attention to details or have that orientation. But hands-on approach is a little bit more focused on how involved do you want to be, especially when it comes to that development piece? How involved do you want to be in managing and overseeing other people and in decisions around how things go? So while detail orientation is more, are you oriented towards detail analysis? What kind of capability do you have to focus on discerning minute errors and kind of differences and paying attention to those details? So really important in more analytically driven roles. Hands-on approach is quite different because it has more to do with how involved in decisions do you want to be? And to what extent is mentorship, for example, and kind of developing others something that you want to have on your plate or not.

Cynthia Kyriazis 2:38

Okay. So if I heard that correctly, or if I heard even a resemblance of what you said was that hands-on involves how involved the individual feels in the development of projects, people, so on and so forth. Exactly. Detail-oriented is an orientation towards the detail of the process or of the system. So to get it through through the system. Okay. What's the upside of hands-on?

Where Hands-On Works Best

Drea Martin 3:06

Yeah. So having a greater hands-on approach is particularly useful in roles where there is a lot of process development, there's a lot of decisions that have to be made about kind of involvement in those areas, and then also teams that need developed. So if you want to manage people versus be in a role where people are either pretty self-guided or you aren't kind of in a more managerial role overseeing people, developing people, working closely with improving others, not just working closely with them and their work product. This is a very great skill for some individuals to have. There's of course roles where it's less necessary, but within certain environments where you are the manager, you are in charge of developing others, the more hands-on approach this person has means the more keen they are towards taking on those responsibilities.

Cynthia Kyriazis 3:56

And

When It Turns Into Micromanaging

Cynthia Kyriazis 3:57

so then my question is before we move on to being oriented or uh not hands-on, but yeah, not having hands-on approach. Not having hands-on. Yeah, the detail aspect of it is if you are hands-on and you take the definition you just gave us, when or how does hands-on become something that the individuals that are being developed feel is encumbering them and developing? Because that's what I think somebody says, or I've heard employees say, yeah, they want their hands on everything. They want to do everything. They want to make every decision. They want to know about how this process goes because they feel from their perspective that they have something to add. But I can see from the employees' standpoint how that could be totally demotivating over the long run.

Drea Martin 4:43

Right. Yes. Um, and that's a great point. And this notion of kind of being micromanaged is definitely something that comes up a lot in just kind of cultural situations. That's a tough one because the way that we've framed hands-on approach is as a positive. In order to determine if someone has a hands-on approach that's maybe too much or not geared in the way that it needs to be to the organization, I'd look at other traits. For example, arrogance, emotional intelligence. So maybe their own ability to tell what's mine to take care of and what's kind of mine to trust other people to be responsible for. The ability to delegate, I'd say, falls in kind of a different bucket here of there have to be some other kind of emotional and interpersonal skills in order to determine that. Meanwhile, the way we try to capture this is more how driven towards being involved in that process is someone versus not being driven towards that. Hands-on approach is intended as a positive, not as a too high means micromanaging, but it is one where the higher the score is, of course, I would take a look at other traits within the reports and say, all right, what could indicate to me that this is a positive and something to pressure test to when you interact with the person and see kind of is this a net positive for the individual or is it something that hinders maybe their ability to get things done?

Cynthia Kyriazis 6:02

Okay. So in our assessments over the over time, I've watched them since 2020. And there were at least two years there in a row where please stop micromanaging came out as the number one request from all of the participants in all of our assessments over those that two-year period. When I go to talk about how what this looks like and how it feels, it has to do with both hands-on and frequency of hands-on, if you will, the level of detail. And I'm not really sure what causes that. It seems to me that some managers can look and say, okay, I'm going to look at this a little more strategically. I'm going to share information that I have from what I've been through, see if this grabs them, see if there's any questions and so on and so forth, which is quite different than when I see somebody who wants to know the date of every single movement, of every single project, and why it went up and why it went down, it was this enormous amount of need to know and not let go. Interesting. But it's in my life, it's kind of categorized under micromanaging. You know, they're complaining about the inability to delegate effectively. That's what the employees are saying. You can delegate to me, but if it comes to the point where you are doing this thing to me all the time and you don't, I feel like you don't trust me. I feel like you don't know the process as well as you do, that kind of thing, it becomes completely demotivating.

Using Traits And Communication To Balance

Drea Martin 7:28

Definitely. And I think you named a risk there of someone who has too high of a hands-on approach, would be the risk of someone thinking that there is a lack of trust related to that. Yeah. So an understanding around that of like hands-on approach is a net positive. But for example, if I was an executive seeing my own profile and seeing, oh, I have a very high hands-on approach, noting that as a piece where when I then manage other people, that would be something to be wary of, of making sure and kind of having that top of mind, this question of to what extent is this because I want to understand and I want them to develop and I want their improvement, versus am I too involved with this because I think there's any sense of I could do this better, which is a little bit that arrogance piece coming through. Or the person doesn't understand that even though I'm trying to be involved in their development, it is not a lack of trust that's causing that. So nuances and communication that are definitely needed.

Cynthia Kyriazis 8:25

It always goes down to the nuances and especially the communications, right? Because that's where things start to go a little hot, a little haywire. So we could just leave our listeners with just remember, you know, if you feel you have a hands-on approach, communicate that. Communicate what you are trying to do, communicate what you wish to do for the development of that person. Since, as you said, we look at hands-on approach as a positive trait as opposed to a negative one. It's probably helpful that the person receiving the information understands where you're coming from a little bit, which is true of many situations.

Drea Martin 8:55

Definitely. Not just this one. Yes. Yeah, you know the intentions, everything goes a little bit better and more smoothly.

Cynthia Kyriazis 9:03

So you could probably, the our listeners could probably hear that if they listen to any one of our podcasts because communication is it's all about that, isn't it?

unknown 9:12

Yes.

Cynthia Kyriazis 9:13

Well, thank you for your specialty and your broadening our view of those two things detail orientation and hands-on approach. So thank you for that. Thanks for listening to this episode of Leadership Traits Decoded. You'll be able to find all our episodes on the Performance Leadership Learning Lab website at www.pl.com. Or you can listen on your favorite streaming platform.

Drea Martin 9:41

We'll be back soon to explore the next essential trait. Until then, feel free to connect with us on LinkedIn if you have any questions or ideas.