Do people avoid "keeping you in the loop" or giving you too much information? Are you tempted to snoop around their desks? If your team have tried to include you in their projects and you have changed everything or taken control for no real reason other than you "mean well", then you may be a control freak.

Control freaks typically have three attributes in common:
 

1. They genuinely believe that they are doing what is best for the people they are controlling. Take note of this for yourself. Don’t make the mistake of believing that you are not over controlling because you have good intentions, or that your controlling nature is justified because of your good intentions.

2. They are insecure. They feel that they have shortcomings and that the rest of the world is judging them. In order to protect themselves from such judgments they resort to controlling their environment and everyone, or everything, in it.

3. Control freaks are insecure and don’t want to address their own performance weaknesses, therefore, they focus on others.

In trying to understand leadership, it is a good idea to take a brief look at some negative motivational techniques so that you can identify whether you are too controlling, and understand ways that you can leave your competent team to do the job.  

Control freak management is not allowing a team member do anything without permission. Whatever the employee does is criticised. Control freaks feel they must have direct authority, be in command and criticise everything. Even when an employee performs a task correctly, praise and encouragement is never given. Does this sound like you? Even a little?

Being a leader is not about taking charge. However, it is not the absence of guidance either. Ken Blanchard describes this as: “leave alone, zap.” Some managers provide their staff with no guidance, then criticise them when they fail to meet expectations. A manager often causes this absence of guidance when they do not know what they want themselves, or how to communicate that with their staff.

Letting go of your control freak nature means not setting up staff to take the blame for failure. Many managers meticulously document their employees’ errors so that they can prove that any problems were a team member’s fault - and not their own. In fact, a good leader does these two things:

• They look for people doing things right, not wrong, so that they can praise them

• They usually accept the responsibility for failures and problems

Losing your inner control freak also means putting a stop to threats. Instead, use more of the carrot and stick philosophy of motivation, with special emphasis on the stick. The employee is motivated by fear, which is usually a threat along the lines of whether they have a future with the company or not. This thought process does not work. People are not motivated by the threat of negative repercussions, instead they subconsciously avoid the situation that the threat arose as part of.

Finally, if this is your first position in power, tread carefully. It's easy to think that you know it all - especially if you crave recognition as such. Leadership is not craving authority. Although authority is tied to position, leadership is not. It is not the position that inspires people, it is the character of the person doing the leading that either inspires or detracts. The first step in avoiding becoming a control freak is to carefully analyse your behaviour and people's reaction to your input.

If you find that you are controlling, STOP! Remember the bully you had as a teacher? Enough said - focus on your own growth and leadership development and your team will follow you with pride.