Back in my 30s, I received a promotion that I thought demonstrated I was doing a pretty good job.

I moved from Marketing Manager to Regional Director at Little Caesars, with responsibility for three major markets: Chicago, Indianapolis, and St. Louis. It was an exciting opportunity, but it also meant I had to transition from managing my own work to leading other managers.

I quickly learned there was a big difference.

Not long after the promotion, I got called to the mat by Chris Ilitch, son of Little Caesars founder Mike Ilitch. Chris was in Indianapolis and, on the drop of a hat, I was told to fly from Chicago to meet with him.

I knew this probably wasn’t going to be a congratulatory meeting.

Chris had learned that I was micromanaging the Indianapolis Marketing Manager. I was too involved in the details, too focused on how things were being done, and not giving the manager enough room to actually manage.

Chris made his point very clearly: If I couldn’t let other people do their jobs, I would never be able to grow within the company and take on greater responsibility.

That conversation stuck with me.

The irony of micromanagement is that it often comes from good intentions. You want things done correctly. You care about the details. You feel responsible for the results. But as your responsibilities grow, being involved in everything becomes a liability rather than an asset.

Over the years, I have learned there are several warning signs that a leader is becoming a micromanager.

1. Requiring approval for every small decision. If employees need your approval for everything, you haven’t really delegated anything. Establish clear decision-making authority and let people operate within those boundaries.
2. Checking in too frequently. Constant calls, emails, texts, and status requests don’t necessarily improve performance. Establish a reporting cadence—daily, weekly, or whatever is appropriate—and give people time to do their jobs.
3. Telling people exactly how to do the work. Leaders should establish the expected outcome, deadline, and performance standards. Unless the process itself is critical, give employees the flexibility to determine how they get there.
4. Re-doing employees’ work yourself. When something isn’t quite right, the temptation is to take it back and fix it yourself. Don’t. Coach, provide feedback, and allow the employee to improve it.
5. Demanding to be copied on every email. You don’t need to know everything happening every minute. Stay involved where your authority, input, or awareness is truly necessary.
6. Focusing on minor details instead of results. Don’t spend 30 minutes debating formatting, wording, or personal preferences when the project is delivering the desired outcome. Focus on what actually matters.
7. Constantly changing instructions. New ideas and directions every few hours create confusion. Eventually, employees stop making decisions because they assume you’ll change the direction anyway.
8. Delegating tasks without delegating authority. Real delegation means giving someone responsibility and enough authority to accomplish the objective. Otherwise, you’re simply creating another set of hands for yourself.
9. Second-guessing decisions after the fact. If an employee made a reasonable decision within agreed-upon parameters, support it—even if you might have made a different decision.
10. Measuring activity instead of accountability. Great leaders manage against goals, KPIs, deadlines, quality, and results. They don’t measure performance by how often someone checks in, how many hours they appear busy, or whether they organize their day exactly as the leader would.

That flight from Chicago to Indianapolis was uncomfortable, but it became one of the more valuable leadership lessons of my career.

As your responsibilities grow, your success becomes less about what you can personally accomplish and more about what the people you lead can accomplish without you standing over their shoulders.

Chris Ilitch taught me that lesson early.

And he was right.

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