The Eurobubble Micromanagement Problem: From Control to Trust.

On empowerment and autonomy: from control to trust

Do you need five layers of approval for a zero-risk event announcement? Have you ever been asked to print a draft email and receive dozens of handwritten comments back on your desk? Do you have to justify why you need to buy a pack of Post-its? A board member commenting on the colours of your pie chart? Someone up in the hierarchy is controlling the menu of your chosen catering?

Sadly, you’re not alone. The #Eurobubble has a micromanagement problem. And it is hardly surprising!

Politicians are risk-averse. EU institutions are risk-averse. Risk aversion is probably the main cause for the desire to overcontrol.

But it doesn’t stop here.

A substantial share of the jobs in the Eurobubble have highly unclear success metrics. What is the definition of success for your position? If you have one, you are already among the lucky ones. Do you have a process to evaluate if you’ve been successful?

The lack of such metrics and a process to evaluate success adds to the risk of micromanagement. In the absence of success criteria, people are left at the whim of their manager’s emotions.

If that was not enough, in most cases in European affairs, one has a very limited control over the outcomes of one’s job. Knowing if a final impact is the direct result of your job gives you agency. But if you’re one policy officer among dozens working on the same topic, some pulling in your direction, some pulling the exact opposite way. How do you know that your specific work brought the desired impact?
The lack of an answer to that question is another avenue that facilitates micromanagement.

Add to this the high turnover of staff, especially in support roles, and the endemic use of temporary contracts for junior staff. It’s difficult to build long-term trust in teams that are in constant flux. When institutional memory is thin and political priorities shift quarterly, managers often resort to command-and-control behaviour to keep things on track or to give the impression of control.

Finally, junior professionals who haven’t experienced a diversity of work environments are less likely to identify a disempowering micromanaging environment.

In theory, European institutions and organisations at large in the Eurobubble pride themselves on hiring smart, mission-driven people. In practice, too many of those people end up disempowered, disengaged, or overly cautious. When autonomy is undermined through micromanagement, people do what’s safe, not what’s meaningful or impactful. They are less innovative, less efficient, and less engaged. They stop challenging assumptions. Ultimately, they stop caring and leave.

Micromanagement never works. For no one, managers and managees.

Reversing this culture requires more than HR reform or better training. It demands a shift in managerial mindset—from control to trust. This starts with clarity: about roles, about expectations, and about what good performance looks like.

It also means creating space to experiment and make mistakes. Not catastrophic failure, but the everyday trial and error that is essential for innovation and progress. Empowerment and trust are not a motivational speech; it’s a structure. One that builds feedback loops, psychological safety, and professional growth into the fabric of how we work.

Trust isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s the foundation of long-term performance and impact. Here are a few practical steps you can take to build it in your organisation.

What does it take to build trust, empowerment and autonomy… concretely?

  • The Board and Management must agree on trust as a goal in itself

The Board and Management must explicitly agree, and make that agreement known to the staff, that trust, empowerment, and autonomy are to be fostered in and for themselves.

It might be through an agenda, points, and minutes of a board and management meeting, which translate into clear working principles.

It might be through a communication from the board to the staff, which allows the board to be accountable.

What matters is that the objectives or principles towards trust and empowerment are enshrined in some form of written agreement or declaration of intention at the Board level.

  • Create shared ownership of the vision, mission, and strategic objectives

Building ownership all across the organisation around the strategic documents, and what they practically mean,  is a very powerful tool to build shared trust and autonomy.

If all parts of an organisation, from the Board to the newest intern, understand these and know their part they are playing towards these objectives, and if this understanding is mutual, it allows for drastic relief from micro-level control. It allows for the outputs to be independently created with a shared compass in mind.

How can you create this shared ownership?

  • Dedicated ‘big picture’ sessions for the newcomers, explaining how the dots are connected between the big strategic vision and their role

  • Regular involvement of the staff in adjusting strategic documents

  • Deep collective work to revise foundations, such as the vision statement of your organisation

  • Be uncompromising regarding success criteria and expected impact

Some form of theoretical success criteria should be non-negotiable. In an ideal world, they are “impact” criteria, but often, due to the lack of control over the outcomes, they will be found at the level of the best available proxies: outcomes and outputs.

This starts at the level of building job descriptions. List the ideal expected impact, outcomes and output for a certain position and select the ones that can be an appropriate measure of quality and success for the job holder.
Some impact expectations can be beneficial, even if you cannot in practice measure them.

The more clarity at this level, the more natural the autonomy and trust will follow.

  • Create a clear process for appraisal and feedback

Obviously, closely linked to the previous one. A clear channel to provide feedback on good or bad performance, with different timeframes, remedial processes, and agreed criteria, allows everyone to work mainly free of worries the rest of the time.

  • Create a framework to allow trial and error: creating safe spaces

Micromanagement is a vicious circle. Micromanaged employees will not take initiative, will feel disempowered, and will make more mistakes, prompting increased micromanagement.
Creating pilot-friendly workflows where teams and individuals are encouraged to try new ideas, defining clear delegation thresholds to allow teams to work independently, and identifying low-risk outputs where corrective measures can be taken after production, these are among the concrete measures you can take.

But you should also reassert regularly to your teams that making mistakes is ok as long as corrective measures are possible and lessons can be drawn from mistakes.

There are many more practical approaches to avoid micromanagement, to create trust and empowerment for high-performing, innovative and efficient teams. These are the core tips we think you can implement quickly!

Need us to help you with it? Contact us!

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Why People Burn Out in Brussels: Unpacking the Eurobubble Stress.