Bosses Micromanage When They Feel Powerless

New York Magazine:

The next time your boss gets too deep into your business, consider this: They may feel powerless, as a new study in Personality and Individual Differences indicates, prompting them to exert control over what you’d rather just take care of yourself.

Led by Michael P. Haselhuhn at the University of California, Riverside, the research team ran two experiments. In the first, done with 238 subjects at a large European business school, participants were asked how much they agreed with statements like “In my relationships with others, I can get them to listen to what I say,” which indicates how powerful people feel personally. Then, they were given a thought experiment to measure their comfort with delegating, in the form of agreeing or disagreeing with a management philosophy that said that employees are not to be trusted. As predicted, the less powerful people felt, the more they mistrusted workers.

Read the whole story: New York Magazine