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On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses how ministry micromanagement shows up in overcontrol, after-the-fact criticism, and fatigue-fueled negativity that quietly demoralize your team. He then points to the security we have in Christ and gives practical ways to release control, trust your people, and recover big-picture leadership.
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Welcome to the Lead On Podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, continuing our conversation about practical issues related to ministry leadership. Today, I want to talk about a problem that has plagued me over the years and I have a hunch is a problem for some of you. I want to talk about being a ministry micromanager. A ministry micromanager.
Jeff Iorg:Do you struggle with that? Well, let me give you some examples of what I mean and then I think that you may agree this podcast applies to a lot of us. I certainly have my hand in the air. I am, from time to time, a Ministry Micro manager and it is to my detriment when I am. First of all, the most obvious kind of ministry micromanager is a person who is overly engaged with the details of day to day responsibilities such that they are neglecting the larger responsibilities they have of oversight of the whole organization or oversight of the whole department.
Jeff Iorg:The first kind of micromanager and the one that usually comes to mind first is a person who is just simply too immersed in the details, giving too much attention to things that really either aren't their concern or ought to be left to others. That's one example of what I mean when I say ministry micromanager. And there have been some times in my life when, that's been a problem. But quite honestly, that's not my biggest problem. I jokingly say I've never met a detail I couldn't overlook or ignore, and so it's easy for me to delegate tasks to others and to let them take care of a lot of the detail work that goes on with the ministries that I'm responsible to oversee.
Jeff Iorg:So while I am occasionally too invested in the details on the front end of something, that's not really been my problem. My micromanaging emerges in some other ways that are equally difficult to to handle. So let me give you some examples of those and see if they resonate with you. Another way that I micromanaged that has proved detrimental is that I'm sometimes after the fact overly critical. When I say after the fact, I mean when the project is over or when the work has been done or when I come to the end of something, I tend to sweep into the moment and micromanage it by being overly critical at the wrong time.
Jeff Iorg:So for example, I would ask my wife to host a dinner for the seminary. Maybe we would have over a group of doctoral students or something like that, and she would agree to do it, put the whole thing together, and then I come breezing into the room two minutes before the event starts and start rearranging the the food on the buffet table or adjusting the flowers on the display or the decor or switching the napkins in some way on the table. And you're thinking to yourself, did you really do those things? And again, I have my hand in the air. Yes.
Jeff Iorg:I have really done all those things. I didn't realize that this was micromanaging and that it was causing problems for my wife until one day she said with some exasperation, why did you move those flowers? And I said, well, I just wanted to to kind of balance it out. And she said, no, I had them where I wanted them. Yikes.
Jeff Iorg:I realized that my wife had poured a lot of energy into doing what she thought I wanted, which was to host a dinner at our home for doctoral students that would include the food, the decor, the flowers, the arrangements, everything that had to do with her making this a special event. And then I walk in the room and immediately start adjusting it or changing it. That's what I mean by after the fact critique or after the fact action that feels like micromanagement to the person who's poured themselves into making this thing work. Now,
Jeff Iorg:another example of this for me is picking at the details negatively
Jeff Iorg:about something that has been
Jeff Iorg:done or a project that's been done. What
Jeff Iorg:I mean by this is that you get handed a project and and everything about it is really good except you see the one thing that's not quite done like you wanted it or the one thing that's not quite up to the standard or the one thing that looks a little out of step to you. And you immediately point out that one thing as if it's kind of the the most important thing and the people should have known that and how could they have missed that. And it's easy to do this because oftentimes as leaders, we ignore the 50 things that were got that were done correctly and hone in on
Jeff Iorg:the one thing that wasn't done right. After the fact, critique. Picking at the details of something that you assigned to be done.
Jeff Iorg:Now, that that does not mean that there's not an appropriate way to say, hey, next time, let's try it this way or next time, I want this done a different way. That doesn't mean that there's not an opportunity for making some kind of corrective along the way. What I'm talking about here is having a pattern of coming in after the fact and either micromanaging by after the fact commentary or by changing things in the room or changing things in the project or coming in and after a project or coming in as a part of a project and being overly critical of some specific details that you're picking out, if you will, sort of cherry picking the things that need to be done differently. Wow. This feels really close to home right now.
Jeff Iorg:I have been a Ministry Micro manager. I focus on too many of the details in the doing of a project, or I come in with an after the fact critique, meaning that I come in and start rearranging things at the end of a project, or when I'm evaluating a project or when I'm talking about my work the work that's been done on my behalf, I pick at the negative details rather than seeing the good or the celebrating of the positive that may have been accomplished. Now we can do this with our spouses. We can do this with our children. We can do this with our organization that we lead, with the staff that are entrusted to us.
Jeff Iorg:It's possible to be this kind of micromanager in all these contexts. There's another theme though that has informed my micromanagement, and that is fatigue. I'm not sure why this is, but when I'm tired, I tend to drift into these things more so than when I'm rested and ready and refreshed in ministry. So when I'm tired, I find myself boring down into details that really aren't my business. When I'm tired, I find myself coming in and making fast value judgments on something and rearranging it as I go.
Jeff Iorg:Or when I'm tired, I find myself coming into a situation and picking at details or seeing only the negative in the situation and pointing those things out to the people around me. I'm not offering this as an excuse by any means. I'm simply saying that I've gotten in touch with this about myself as a pattern, and I recognize that when I'm tired, I tend to make bad decisions on these issues, and I need to be careful about how I manage myself in those situations. And this is particularly significant when you're going into something that you know is going to produce significant fatigue for you. So for example, when I'm headed into a heavy travel season or I'm headed into a major meeting like the Southern Baptist Convention or I'm working on some significant project that's really draining me and leaving me fatigued, I know now about myself that it's in those moments that I will tend toward being a micromanager and I need to be on guard lest I do that inappropriately because of the fatigue that I'm experiencing.
Jeff Iorg:Well, micromanaging. Why is it so devastating to your organization and to the people you lead? Why does it create difficulty for your organization, for your wife, for your children, for the people who are feeling micromanaged? Well, the first negative impact is really a negative impact in an organization. That is the loss of vision or the loss of oversight and long term vision and understanding by the leader.
Jeff Iorg:When you're immersed too much in detail that really doesn't concern you, when you're spending your time focusing on things that are really at the minute level of getting something done, you're not focusing on the big picture, you're not focusing on the vision, you're not focusing on where the organization needs to be going, and you're not focusing on how all the details need to
Jeff Iorg:play together to produce the ultimate outcome.
Jeff Iorg:And so when you find yourself micromanaging, it hurts your organization because they've lost your vision. They've lost your oversight. They've lost your coordinating capacity. They've lost you seeing out over the horizon to the big picture of what needs to be accomplished and helping to assimilate all the detail to get that done. So the first negative about micromanaging is loss of vision, loss of oversight, loss of that perspective that only the leader can have by seeing the whole and keeping his or her focus on the whole as opposed to down in the weeds of the details of some particular aspect of a project.
Jeff Iorg:A second negative impact of micromanaging is it demoralizes the people who are being managed. It can be demoralizing, as I've already mentioned in this podcast, to your wife. It can be demoralizing to your children. It can be demoralizing to the people that you work with. I've already talked about how I demoralized Anne without really intending to.
Jeff Iorg:I was in some ways thinking, well, I'll just be helpful. I'll just rearrange these flowers or I'll just be helpful. I'll pick at this project and show her what could have been done differently. And what I found myself doing in that process was demoralizing her. And I realized how serious this had become when one day she said to me, when I asked her to host something on behalf of the seminary or do something that we were working on like that together, She said, I'm glad to do it, but before I start, I want you to clearly tell me what you want done because I don't want you to come in at the end and second guess the decisions I've made.
Jeff Iorg:And I realized in that moment,
Jeff Iorg:I've got a problem here. And the problem is not my wife, the problem is me.
Jeff Iorg:And I've got to understand that I can't come in after the fact and micromanage these situations. If I'm going to ask her to do something, I either need to communicate my expectations if they really matter to me upfront, or I need to recognize that at the end of the day, most of these details I'm redoing at the end don't really matter.
Jeff Iorg:I'm gonna talk
Jeff Iorg:in a moment about why I was doing that and why other people do micromanaging things like this, but it was helpful to me to come to grips with the fact that what I was actually doing was demoralizing the person that I was depending on the most to help make these events successful, and I needed to take a giant step back from that.
Jeff Iorg:You know, you can also do this with your children. Your children want to please
Jeff Iorg:you. They they want to know that they're loved and valued and and respected and and that they can gain from you a sense of well-being because they've pleased you. Children want this from with their parents. And if you're finding yourself continually micromanaging aspects of their lives so that they are never quite coming up to the standard, never quite pleasing you in every way, always some deficiency, you will find you are demoralizing them in relationship with you as well.
Jeff Iorg:This is also true with staff. You can
Jeff Iorg:demoralize staff by continually micromanaging them, which communicates to them that you don't have confidence in their capacity. By micromanaging them, you're communicating that you don't trust them to get the work done that's assigned. By micromanaging them, you rob them of the creativity and the opportunity they have to express their gifts and, in a sense, impress you or please you with what they can accomplish by their own ingenuity that they bring to the task at hand. When you micromanage, it it causes staff to lose confidence in you because they know you're not focusing on the big picture and doing the job that only you can do, which is see the whole and make sure that all
Jeff Iorg:the parts are coordinated to reach the whole. It demoralizes people around you when you micromanage them.
Jeff Iorg:And so loss of vision, demoralized staff, here's another one. Another dramatic impact of micromanaging can be relational problems, relationship problems that emerge from this kind of lifestyle. You know, when you're completely caught up in this kind of detail and you're focused entirely on it and it's sucking the life out of you and it's sucking all the time that you have out of life and ministry and it's keeping you stressed and feeling overburdened and overworked, well, it has relational damage. You are micromanaging at work, which means you're working all those extra hours to make sure every little detail is done in the way that you want it done, and you find yourself not spending time with your wife, not spending time with your children, just not being able to invest in the relationships that matter to you because of this micromanagement work style that you've developed. And then one other big negative that can come
Jeff Iorg:out of that is actually health problems that can result. Overwork and stress
Jeff Iorg:can produce anxiety, depression, and actually physical sickness that comes on you from being consumed with a micromanager work style. So negative impact of being a micromanager, loss of vision for the whole and how to coordinate that and keep it all moving together, demoralized staff and damaged relationships with the people you're depending on to help get the work done, and then, of course, relational problems and health problems that can emerge over a pattern of micromanagement that goes on for a long time. Well, we've talked about some examples of what this looks like and some negative impacts that it makes. But now, let's talk about the reasons that leaders micromanage and what we can do about them. The first reason, certainly the reason that has motivated me and been a problem for me over the years is insecurity.
Jeff Iorg:Leaders who are insecure will micromanage. They will be possessive, almost compulsive about getting things done because they can't afford to look bad in the eyes of anyone around them and even in their own eyes. They wanna look good and therefore they feel like they need
Jeff Iorg:to take care of every detail so
Jeff Iorg:that everything about them will come up to whatever kind of standard they have so that they will feel confident in the moment of their leadership. Insecurity. Now, do you do about that? Well, we talked about this on the podcast before.
Jeff Iorg:The solution to insecurity is to develop a deep understanding and to practice the doctrine of the security of the believer in Jesus Christ. One of
Jeff Iorg:the great insights of my spiritual journey was the day that someone said to me, the security of the believer is not an after you die doctrine, it's a right now doctrine. And the man then said, you are as secure in Jesus Christ in this particular moment as you will ever be at any time in the future. That was a breakthrough moment for me. I grew up in a culture where there was a lot of discussion about once saved, always saved, and about the security of the believer,
Jeff Iorg:and about being sure of your salvation. I thought that security of
Jeff Iorg:the believer was a when you die doctrine, but I learned that security of
Jeff Iorg:the believer is a right now while you live doctrine. Once you come
Jeff Iorg:to know Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, you are secure in him, and you
Jeff Iorg:are as secure in him in this moment as you will ever be in eternity. Man, that is a good feeling.
Jeff Iorg:And when you come to experience that and then start living that out, basing your choices in your work style, in your family life, in your relationships, when you start living out that truth, I am now right this moment, secure in Jesus Christ. So therefore, while my work matters to me and I want it to reflect on the gratitude I have for Jesus in my life and how much I want to serve him, I'm no longer doing anything to try to gain his favor or earn his pleasure because I am totally secure in him every moment of my life from this moment forward. Man, that
Jeff Iorg:is a good feeling. Insecurity drives some micromanagement.
Jeff Iorg:It makes us take on responsibility that's really not ours and focus on things that we really shouldn't be spending time on and causes us to do things to try to make ourselves look good or make things look the way we want them to so that it'll reflect more positively on us, when really we're doing all these things to try to satisfy an insecurity that we feel that shouldn't be there once we've come to understand the security we have in Jesus Christ. A second reason for micromanagement is perfectionism. Now, perfectionism is rooted in a deceptive self appraisal that says, the way I do things is always best. The way I do things is always best. And in order for me to be perfect, I need to do things my way, the right way, every time so that I'm satisfied that we've achieved perfection as I view it or as I define it.
Jeff Iorg:You know, a number of years ago, I had an opportunity to work with a pastor who was incredibly
Jeff Iorg:gifted. Man, this guy was good. He was
Jeff Iorg:a good speaker. He was a good organizer. He was really good at reaching people. He planted a new church and it it grew fairly rapidly to a few 100 people, and then the whole thing crashed and burned. Lots of people left, and he spiraled into some time off.
Jeff Iorg:Then he came back to the church and re recalibrated with the people that were remaining, and they started growing again. And a couple of years went by, and they'd reached a few more people. Another couple of 100 had come, and and then it crashed again. And after the second crash, I was able to sit down with him and consult a little bit about what was happening, and he said, you know, here's the pattern where the church started and it did extremely well. And then we got to a place where we sort of had an implosion and a lot of people left.
Jeff Iorg:But but the ones who stayed, I I recovered from that and came back and we started up again. And then we had another surge of growth over the next couple years. Then we had another implosion and then here you are here talking to me about this and helping me try to sort out what's going on. I said, Well, do you What do you attribute this surge of growth? And he
Jeff Iorg:said, Oh, hard work and total focus on the details. And as we talked more, he said things like, I have to be
Jeff Iorg:sure things are done right. I have to be sure
Jeff Iorg:things are done the right way. I have to
Jeff Iorg:be sure things are done up to the up to my standard. And this was a repeated theme that he kept coming back to over and over and over again. And I realized that what the what's happening, there had been two cycles of this. He was very gifted and capable. Because of that, he reached people.
Jeff Iorg:Because of that, he had more responsibility. And because of his conviction that everything had to be done perfectly, meaning defined as up to his standard or the way he wanted it done, he did everything. And what he didn't do personally, he had his fingers all over on a daily basis and was working sixteen, eighteen hours a day trying to keep up with all the massive detail associated with this growing movement that he was facilitating through his church. Perfectionism. It drives micromanagement, but it's based on a deceptive self appraisal that we have when we say our way is the right way, our way is the best way, our way is the only way, and our way is what must be enforced so that we come up to the standard of perfectionism that we have imagined in our own mind.
Jeff Iorg:Now, the cure to this is some honest self appraisal that says your way may not always be the best way. One of the things that I found most rewarding in leadership over the years is turning projects over to competent younger leaders and saying, here's the goal, here's the outcome, here's what I'm trying to get to. Now, figure out a
Jeff Iorg:way to get us there. And I have been
Jeff Iorg:consistently amazed at the creativity, the fresh ideas, the new approaches, and sometimes just the stick to it hard working commitment that it took to get our organization moved where I said we needed to go. Listen, this is gonna be hard for you to hear if you're a perfectionist, but there are people out there who are better at things than you are. Now you might be the best at some things, but you're not the best at everything. And having the capacity to turn things over to other people and let them do it differently than you would have done it, and accomplish the goals that have been laid out, yes, but in ways you would have either never imagined or never thought of or never done is one of the rewarding moments of ministry leadership. So if perfectionism is driving your micromanagement, take a giant step back and recognize that by empowering and trusting others, they may surprise you and even impress you with what they're able to do.
Jeff Iorg:Well, the third reason for micromanagement is an undue avoidance of criticism. Now all of us want to avoid criticism. Criticized. You don't like being criticized. Believe me, I wanna avoid criticism.
Jeff Iorg:But I don't want to avoid criticism as my ultimate goal, and I don't want to do whatever it takes to avoid criticism. I know that there's simply some criticism that comes with being in the leader's role, and I'm not going to be able to avoid all of that. Few years ago, however, I
Jeff Iorg:worked with a leader that
Jeff Iorg:came into a ministry organization. He was a bit naive about what that was going to be like when he got there. Within a few months, he started to experience some pretty significant criticism of his work. Frankly, most of it undeserved as far as I was concerned, but nevertheless, it was still real. Once this, pattern got established, he started to do some pretty serious adjustments in his work style in order to avoid the things that he was being criticized for and to try to correct or in some cases resolve these issues so that he wouldn't be criticized anymore.
Jeff Iorg:And I realized how serious this problem was becoming when he broke out in some very significant rashes on his arms and hands. And when this happened, of course, he went to the doctor. He did the treatments.
Jeff Iorg:He he was trying to figure out what was going on. But this went on for months until finally, he
Jeff Iorg:said one day, I I can't keep working in this context. I wasn't prepared for this level of criticism. I I I can't I can't continue with this role. I need to step back into what I was doing before, move out of these responsibilities, and just let someone else come in and take this on, and maybe they can do it better than I've done it. Well, as I said, I thought the criticism in some ways was unfair, but nevertheless, I knew that he had reached a breaking point, that he wasn't going to be able to continue.
Jeff Iorg:He stepped out, and within three weeks, all the rashes went away from his arms and hands. He was back to normal health because he was no longer under the stress of this what he perceived to be a barrage of constant criticism. And it was really affecting him in his work style and all, obviously, in his health because as the criticisms mounted, he became more of a micromanager trying to get down into the details of every single project and every single possibility of anything that could go wrong and anything that could be a subject to criticism. And because of that, his not only work suffered, but his health actually suffered. So if you are micromanaging
Jeff Iorg:just so you can avoid criticism, well, you need to take
Jeff Iorg:a giant step back from that and recognize, first of all, that criticism comes with ministry. There's no escaping it. You're going to experience some. And then second, perhaps the situation that you're in is so toxic that it isn't just criticism that you're trying to avoid, but it's avoiding the reality of having to face up to what may be a very toxic ministry situation that you either have to either confront or step out of, and that's another podcast.
Jeff Iorg:A fourth reason for micromanagement
Jeff Iorg:is what I call misplaced ministry fulfillment. Misplaced ministry fulfillment. It means you're not able to get fulfillment out of the vicarious success of others. You have to experience it yourself. A number of years ago, I was working with a youth pastor and the church was really growing and the youth group started growing, and then it sort of stalled out.
Jeff Iorg:And the rest of the church kept growing, but this youth group just really stalled out at around twenty, twenty five kids. And the pastor was working with this youth pastor and trying to help him to understand that he had to change his work style, that he could no longer be a micromanager who was on top of every meeting, who went to every activity, who knew every kid by their first name and spent time with every one of them on a personal basis every week. You could do that when you had 10 teenagers, but you can't do it with 50. And he was in that middle ground of around 25, and he was still trying to work like he had 10, but the church was trying to get him to understand that they had to have a work style that would take them to a 100 teenagers. He struggled.
Jeff Iorg:And finally, after many opportunities to work on this, he came to this insight. He said, you know, my problem is
Jeff Iorg:I get fantastic fulfillment from working one on one with teenagers, and I want to do that. I do not want to
Jeff Iorg:have the oversight of a larger ministry to teenagers. I want to draw my fulfillment. I want to work with them one on one. That was a great moment of insight for him because he realized that what others were calling micromanagement, he just called ministry fulfillment. And he left our church, or he left that church and became a group home parent where he had a small group of teenagers that he and his wife were working with intensely.
Jeff Iorg:Was a good move for everyone. Now, I'm not saying that everyone needs to be a to to do that. What I'm saying is this, if if you're micromanaging and some people are saying, why are you such a micromanager? It may not be that you're really a micromanager. It may be that you draw your ministry fulfillment from the hands on work that you do with a small group of people, and that's where you need to
Jeff Iorg:be assigned. If you're going to lead a larger organization, however, you're gonna have to draw ministry fulfillment from other places. You're not going to
Jeff Iorg:be able to delve down deep into that kind of work. I think this is one of the reasons that when I was a seminary president, I enjoyed working with baseball chapel and working directly with players is because I had a little bit of an opportunity to get my hands on in ministry every week or two, but the big part of my job was not doing that. The big part of my job in ministry and life was oversight of a large organization. And so I had to draw most of my fulfillment, not from the little bit of hands on work that I got to do, which was fulfilling, but I had to draw equal or even more fulfillment from watching other people flourish as they did the hands on work of ministry, and I coordinated or guided that to happen. Well, there's one last reason for micromanagement, and that's what some people would consider just a lack of management skills.
Jeff Iorg:And that's a longer podcast than we have time for today, but management skills are simply learning the skills and techniques of good management. Time management, delegation, organizational leadership, and of course, those are broad themes I understand. But that's also one of the sources of micromanagement is the absence of those capacities and learning those things or learning skills about management by reading books, going to seminars, having a mentor, just helping you learn to be a better manager might be one of the cures also if you're a micromanager. Well, here's what we've talked about today, Ministry Micro Management. Yes, it is about getting your hands into the details and spending way too much time there, but it can also be some other things like I talked about at the beginning of the podcast.
Jeff Iorg:It's those other things that have been more of a problem for me over the years. It has negative impact, loss of vision, demoralized staff, health and relationship problems. And I've given you at least five causes of micromanagement today. Look, if you're a micromanager, you can learn to be a better manager. You can learn to be a macro manager, seeing the bigger picture and empowering and trusting and rewarding people who delve down into the details of getting the work done.
Jeff Iorg:Being a micromanager has a demoralizing detrimental effect on your organization. If you're doing too much of it, it may be a negative that you need to avoid. Learn how to manage appropriately by keeping your focus where it needs to be and empowering others to work alongside you. Put it into practice as you lead on.