Micromanagement

This Business English lesson plan is dedicated to a particular management style: micromanagement. Students will learn useful verbs to talk about both effective management and micromanagement, watch 2 short videos and discuss their personal experiences.

Vocabulary: After discussing 2 lead-in questions, students look at sentences describing effective managers and micromanagers. They need to decide which sentences refer to micromanagers. This activity introduces different verbs such as praise, reprimand, hold accountable, hover. Students then discuss which behaviours they identify themselves with and give examples. Next, students complete 5 sentences with the correct verbs. In the next activity, students look at some statistics about micromanagement and its effects and talk about them.

Videos: Students watch 2 short videos: 1. “How can I avoid being a micromanager?” and 2. “Working For a Micromanaging Boss & How to Handle it“. For both videos, students are asked to write down the tips given. Before and after each video, students discuss topic-related questions.

Idioms: Students learn different idioms and expressions related to management (e.g. putting out fires, have a lot on your plate, hands-on/hands-off). They work out the meaning of the idioms from context and match the idioms to their definitions. After that they are given 5 practice questions.

This lesson will work great in combination with the lessons: “Emotional intelligence at work“, “The great resignation” and “The importance of company culture“