Control Freak Recovery: A No-Nonsense Guide

Is your iron grip on control helping or hurting your career? In this episode, we dive into why high achievers default to control, when it serves you, and when it's secretly sabotaging your success. Whether you're a recovering control freak or dealing with one, you'll get actionable strategies to shift from micromanagement to actual leadership.

• The surprising truth about why control freaks are often the highest performers (and when that stops working)
• Two types of control that matter in business - and how to master both
• Battle-tested tactics to dial back your inner control freak without lowering your standards
• A survival guide for managing up when your boss is a micromanager

Chapters

• 0:00 Career Refresh Strategies
• 11:27 Mastering Leadership Through Coaching Approach

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey there, welcome to the Career Refresh. I'm your host, Jill Griffin, and there are so many new listeners here that I thought it was a good time to reintroduce myself. Quite the journey from being a media executive to what some clients call me as their career transformation catalyst. Other clients call me their career consigliere, which, of course, is a godfather reference, and that always cracks me up. But you know there are moments when you pause and you look around at your career and you think is this what I'm doing? Is this what we're going for? Is this where I want to be? And I've been there and I had an amazing career in corporate and, frankly, I was also helping people navigate their careers while I was running strategy for major brands. But now I've been doing this full time for almost eight years, helping people navigate their own career crossroads. So, after spending many years driving multi-million dollars of revenue for household name brands like Coca-Cola, microsoft, samsung and, most recently, hilton Hotels, I recognized that my true passion wasn't just in executing successful strategies and campaigns. It was helping others discover and achieve their full potential. So I made the leap, went out on my own. It's been eight years now and, as a girl who's always a strategist at heart.

Speaker 1: 1:21

Helping people really think about their career strategically while also being an executive coach is two completely different things that I do with people. One is building your strategy and learning how to navigate your career at whatever stage of your career you're in. The executive coach part is, once you're in the job, how are you navigating the complexities of the modern workplace and that's everything from personalities at the executive level, your peers, the people who are on your team and how are you continuing to show up the way you want to, and how does that really match to what I would call your professional brand? I started the Career Refresh podcast as a way of talking about these things and helping people get a little bit of a taste for the type of work that I do and also, if people are not sure yet, it's a great way to get to know me a bit and see if you think that my style and my way of practicing career strategy and executive coaching is the right next step for you. What makes my approach different is I bring both the hardcore business strategy from my corporate days and also the deep understanding of human potential from my coaching practice.

Speaker 1: 2:27

I've worked with hundreds of professionals who felt stuck, uncertain and ready to take their next challenge, particularly in the mid and later stages of their careers. I'm talking people you know, depending on when you actually start working. I'm talking people who have been in their career for 10 or 15 years or more and are now trying to figure out what's next. This is usually when the career possibilities and opportunities are at their highest, but so are the stakes. When my clients call me the career consigliere, I want you to think of me as your strategic partner in your workplace success. Whether you're leading a team that needs to boost its productivity, navigating workplace dynamics or seeking your own path to career fulfillment. I've been in all of those trenches and I know what works and I know what doesn't, and I know how to blend strategy and mindset to create lasting impact and change. In this podcast, I share practical insights, real success stories and actionable strategies that have helped professionals across lots of organizations find their sweet spot. It's the perfect intersection of success and satisfaction Because, let's face it, in today's evolving workplace, we need more than just career advice.

Speaker 1: 3:42

We need a fresh perspective and a strategic approach, and sometimes we need a complete bolts up from the ground career strategy refresh. I'm glad you're here. I welcome you to join me each week as we explore the strategies, the mind shifts and the practical steps that can transform your career to what you want it to be. We're going to navigate these complexities of the ever-changing workplace. Unlock your potential for greater productivity, stronger teamwork and career satisfaction. This is the career refresh, friends. It's where strategy meets possibility and careers transform into callings.

Speaker 1: 4:23

All right, now let's talk about today's episode. It's about being a control freak. And no, this isn't another feel-good pep talk teaching you how to let go. Look, if you're like most high achievers I work with. You have a grip on the details. That makes you incredibly efficient. I kind of joke in the lens of it makes me a little bit nervous, because that helps me keep on and stay on my game, and those are the things that have served you well. You're the person that everyone counts on to get things done and get it done right the first time. Your standards are high, your execution is flawless and your reputation precedes you. But here's the thing Sometimes being a control freak is like using a sledgehammer to hang a picture right. You get the job done, but at what cost? And today we're going to talk about that cost and what you can do about it. Let's jump in. Let's jump in.

Speaker 1: 5:33

I see the control freak play out constantly, especially in my executive coaching clients. Take one of my clients right. They are a brilliant both Harvard and Yale graduate, lightning fast thinker, amazing at solving complex problems, but their team is Well very often. When we did a 360 review, we found that the team was pretty much hiding under their desks, figuratively, not because this person wasn't smart or capable, but because their need for control created a field like a force field of perfectionism that nobody dared to penetrate. And before I go any further, as always I ask my clients if it's okay to share these stories. We usually have a chuckle about them and, yes, I have permission to share their story. So here's what I've learned after working with many senior level and C-suite executives Control tends to be just anxiety.

Speaker 1: 6:30

We think that if we can micromanage every microscopic detail, that will ward off disaster. But it's not true. Control, or complete control, is a fantasy and chasing it is exhausting. It's exhausting both you and you're alienating your relationships. Alienating your relationships. Consider this I had a client who was going for a promotion and his approach was to control everything and everyone until they noticed how good he was.

Speaker 1: 7:03

But he was moving into a senior level position and it was showing that he could do the work which is important that we need player coaches in today's marketplace. But he was basically squashing the agency and the contribution of his team because he kept shining the spotlight on himself and not showing how he was a leader or how people wanted to follow him. So obviously it wasn't working. He was so focused on what was happening that he often was talked about as having like a scorecard that people were seeing him as like how he was always counting up his wins and then, if things didn't go as planned, he was far from an Academy Award winning actor. So he was known for having like a chip on his shoulder that was so big that he kind of walked slanted right. It gives you sort of this visual representation of how this individual is showing up.

Speaker 1: 7:57

So what's the solution? Well, I'm going to tell you that it's really getting clear on what you can actually control, which is your thoughts. It is you can't control your team thoughts. You can't control their preparation. You can control your own right. So it's constantly separating, even if you have to take out and draw a piece of paper and put what's on your list and what's on their list to be super clear with yourself, or put it in your notes app. You need to realize that you can control your thoughts and you can control your prep. You cannot control your team's thoughts, which is what's going to create the motivation for them. You can inspire them, you can lead them that's a different conversation but you can't motivate them through control, and you can't control your client's reaction to whatever it is that you're doing, or your executive leadership or your CEO's reaction. It's not going to happen. It doesn't work that way. Ceo's reaction it's not going to happen. It doesn't work that way.

Speaker 1: 8:53

I work with a newly promoted senior vice president recently who would literally re-present every single slide that her team presented Every slide. So client meetings the feedback was from both clients and executive leadership that the teams were like confused because they would present and then she would speak over. Well, she wouldn't speak over them, but she would speak immediately after them and say it in her own way, and that's great. But what's happening is now every meeting and every presentation takes double time and her team started to shrink because they knew whatever they did wouldn't be right. So we work with her to ease up and to do some prep with the team and if she needed to have a timeline with her team as to when they needed to pre-present to her before the executive client meeting. Listen, I'm all for that. Right, you want to be buttoned up and the client wants you to be buttoned up too. But doing it in the meeting in front of the client, it's just bad look all around. Also, the client starts to see that you don't trust your team and then you also don't have the nuance or the wherewithal to not do it in front of the client. So not a good look all around.

Speaker 1: 10:03

What was happening then when she started to do the pre-work with the team is the whole team started to step up. They were getting ready for that pre-planning meeting with her. They were getting ready for that pre-planning meeting with her, they were getting ready for the pre-presentation, they were bringing their all to that meeting and overall, everyone really started to get happier because it's like we became a little bit looser. It wasn't so tight and controlling. When I have clients who I find are very intent or, as I say, high strung and I say that with love I offer you to stop asking yourself what do I need to fix and how do I make sure all of this goes right? And start asking yourself how do I want to handle this? It's a subtle shift, but you'll start to see the difference between sort of being the director of the play behind the scenes, which is trying to control every single piece of it, versus being a leader and telling people the end result of what you want and letting them bring their creativity and their strategy to the table, and it's going to offer up a diversity of ideas. And that's where the work gets stronger and people start to really feel that they can relax a little bit, and that will enable the work gets stronger and people start to really feel that they can relax a little bit and that will enable their right that's that prefrontal cortex They'll be able to start thinking better because they're not under such a tight, tight, tight, tight situation where they don't have a place to breathe or speak.

Speaker 1: 11:27

And if you are the person who is dealing with the control freak boss, I know you're out there. Many of us have dealt with it. Here's what I would suggest you do Figure out your boss's hot buttons. Is it surprises delayed updates, excel spreadsheets with broken formulas so that there's manual inputs and you know who you are right, figuring out what are the buttons that are being pressed. What are the buttons that are being pressed? You want to really think about that in advance and then move forward.

Speaker 1: 12:11

When I've seen teams that have a breakdown between the leader and the team at times when it's coming from the boss, who's the control freak, and you're reporting to that person, getting ahead of it and understanding that they want proactive updates so that again that not coming from that place of fear or anxiety is really where you're going to see the shift in the actual work and the day to day. It's going to take time. It may not happen overnight, but when you over communicate you're doing it strategically and purposefully, like got it on it. I'll update you by end of day simple, clear, proactive and then finding how they prefer to communicate. I find that more and more people are hating on email but then texting them isn't good because you don't have a track of the conversation. So if you're using a system like Slack or Teams, making sure you know how your supervisor wants to communicate so that it's all in one string and we know where to go back to find the information, being detailed, orientated and having high standards is not the problem here, folks. The problem is when those traits start running the show and you're left exhausted and stressed. The team is demotivated and you're still not getting the results that you want. That's what we're talking about. The problem.

Speaker 1: 13:20

The most successful leaders that I coach have mastered what I call what this is like the strategic release. They know when to hold on tight to certain pieces, but they also know when to be loose, like a loose garment, and let others run with the ball. They've learned that sometimes good enough really is good enough, and that we don't necessarily need to have everything at a higher level of perfection. It's sort of that like important, not urgent. Is this where we need to be focusing on perfection, or do we need to be really striving for perfection in another release or another execution or initiative? So here's your homework, because, yes, I do give homework. I want you to think through.

Speaker 1: 13:56

The next time you feel that control freak rising. First of all, where do you feel it? In your body? I start to feel it in my chest, in my throat, where I'm like I can almost hear my pulse, in my ears. I'm just going to tell you to pause and let that anxiety just sit there for a second and really ask yourself is doing it this way helping or hurting your end goal? Sometimes the answer will be great it is helping and we need to have that level of detail Awesome Carry on. But when is it hurting? Sometimes it's really hard to read the label from inside the jar and you don't even know it's hurting.

Speaker 1: 14:33

It's also helpful to have check-ins with your team. How are they doing? How is this project playing out? Is there anything we need to change about the project in order to meet the deadline? Really finding a different way of coaching your team and asking them questions and letting them roll it. The other thing it's very similar to coaching in the work that I do.

Speaker 1: 14:52

If I moved out of coaching, which is asking questions to prompt you to you think of the answers that you have inside you and occasionally you need an outside boost, but for the most part you have the answers or the path forward. If I was doing all that work as a control freak and trying to figure everything out again, that's what we're talking about exhausting. If you, as the leader, ask your team to think through it and give you the answers, then your energy is on being a leader, managing your energy and asking them the right questions, not controlling every single thing. The answer to all of this isn't about changing who. You are right, you are super effective and you've created a lot of results. But sometimes loosening your grip a little bit will really show others that you believe in them and that you are really stepping out of managing and stepping into leading and coaching, because that's what we want. We want leaders that also know how to coach their people, because you can't be there at every single time and if you always have to be there and control everything again, you're taking away their agency and they're not able to think.

Speaker 1: 16:00

Loosening that grip, asking them the right questions, asking them how they would approach it Again, you get to fine tune it, you get to massage it, you get to redirect them as needed. But trust me on this one I've seen hundreds of executives and work with them privately. I used to be the control freak myself, but trust me on this, try this, try the coaching approach. And that is again asking questions that are how, what, when, where, who, if. Avoid asking your team a why-based question Like why are you doing this? That can be really triggering for people. It shuts them down. They can't necessarily be strategic or give you an answer, but the how would you? What would happen if? When would I see this? Where are we going with this idea? Like asking questions that are more loose and open helps people think Hi, friends, you got this, and if you have any questions or any feedback, always email me at hello at jillgriffincoachingcom. I want to hear from you and, in the meantime, have a great week and I'll see you next time.