Total quality management (TQM) requires trust to make it work. Goetsch & Davis (2021, p. 52) describe the importance of trust in business settings as follows:
People who trust each other will be able to get along and work well together even in the worst of circumstances. On the other hand, people who do not trust each other will be unable to get along and work well together even in the best of circumstances. Trust is also a critical element in conflict management. A manager must be trusted by both sides in a human conflict to help resolve the conflict.
This is especially true in front-line positions, meaning internal customers interacting directly with external customers, like customer service representatives (CSRs). From the external customer’s perspective, an empowered front-line employee makes their interaction brief, efficient, respectable, pleasant, and valuable. Making this happen requires that management trusts the front-line employees to make the right decisions within the range of his or her capabilities: managers must trust the CSR to meet the customers’ needs without giving away the store.
Imagine being a CSR where the manager does not trust you. The CSR’s decisions are constantly questioned, the CSR becomes risk-adverse, and the CSR’s range of abilities shrinks. The ultimate betrayal is when the manager undercuts the CSR in front of a customer. The CSR is embarrassed and rightfully so. A customer witnessing this would be right to take his business elsewhere.
This results in decreased CSR engagement and motivation: the manager is implicitly saying that the CSR’s contributions are below standards. The manager and CSR enter a death spiral: the manager doesn’t trust the CSR, the CSR’s motivation vanishes, the manager notices this in decreased service quality, which leads the manager to further mistrust the CSR, and it repeats. As Ken Metral puts it,
Micromanagement signals to employees that their managers lack confidence in their abilities to perform tasks independently and make decisions. This lack of trust can be demoralizing for employees, who feel their skills and contributions are undervalued. Over time, this perception creates a rift between managers and their teams, with employees becoming less likely to seek guidance, share ideas, or report issues, fearing criticism or dismissal. The result is a work environment where communication is stifled, innovation is hampered, and resentment builds. (Metral, 2024)
If the CSR calls the manager on this, the CSR is seen as insubordinate, as criticism is never taken in the constructive sense.
The CSR’s only alternative, if he wishes to preserve both his dignity and his soul, is to leave the company. With the high-turnover rate, the manager is finding he must constantly train new CSRs.
The untrusting manager adds more work to himself: not only must he do his own job, but he must closely supervise the CSR. The manager, already far from being a leader, becomes a micromanager.
Celestin & Vanitha (2020) analyze several types of “toxic leadership,” including micromanagement, and they find that 67% of leaders exhibit this trait. They conclude that “toxic leadership significantly correlates with a 35% reduction in employee retention and a 28% drop in engagement, with variations across sectors.”
Micromanagement not only undercuts the specialization or division of labor, but it also eliminates one of the prime advantages to having leader-follower relationships: to multiply efforts through delegation. This ultimately sabotages the goals of TQM: customer satisfaction is no longer the focus, and continuous improvement depends on the particular CSR, instead of being an intentional act taken by all employees.
References
Celestin, M. & Vanitha, N. (2020). The dark side of leadership: Identifying and overcoming toxic traits. International Journal of Advanced Trends in Engineering and Technology, 5(2), 26-33. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Prof-Celestin/publication/385826992_The_Dark_Side_Of_Leadership_Identifying_And_Overcoming_Toxic_Traits/links/676c0a5a00aa3770e0b991b2/The-Dark-Side-Of-Leadership-Identifying-And-Overcoming-Toxic-Traits.pdf
Goetsch, D. L. & Davis, S. B. (2021). Quality management for organizational excellence: Introduction to total quality (9th ed.). Pearson.
Metral, K. (2024, 15 February). 7 Reasons [micromanaging] is killing your team. Cosmico. https://www.cosmico.org/7-reasons-micromanaging-is-killing-your-team
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