“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
Ernest Hemingway
“Annoying” is one of those labels I toss around casually, as effortlessly as complaining about traffic or the weather or people who reply-all to company-wide emails. It’s become shorthand for something trivial—an irritation I notice, roll my eyes at, and promptly forget about until it surfaces again.
But lately, I’ve started to wonder if annoyance isn’t as superficial as I’ve assumed.
Maybe it’s actually a clue, a kind of emotional breadcrumb trail leading us toward something deeper: frustration, misalignment, even a subtle but persistent erosion of trust.
The question that followed me home
This realization hit home when I ran into a former coworker at an industry conference—the kind of brightly lit event where I find myself squinting politely at name tags and pretending not to notice that the pastries have gone stale. We exchanged pleasantries, each dutifully feigning genuine excitement about the other’s recent professional accomplishments.
But small talk quickly faded, replaced by familiar comfort food: shared workplace complaints.
He described a recent project his team had wrapped up—a project I would’ve been responsible for had I not moved on. Between lukewarm sips of hotel coffee, he shared his frustrations, subtly hinting at how much smoother things might’ve gone had I still been there.
It felt oddly flattering—like being indirectly praised for my absence. Feeling generous (or maybe just nostalgic for when I wore the cape), I offered a few unsolicited pointers, mostly out of habit, like someone rearranging magnets on another person’s fridge.
Then, without warning, he stopped mid-sentence and asked, awkwardly earnest, “Was I annoying to work with?”
The question landed abruptly—like someone handing me a mirror at precisely the wrong angle. I laughed nervously, buying myself time before answering diplomatically, “Yes…sometimes.”
We both chuckled, letting the awkwardness dissolve into safer topics like mutual acquaintances and industry gossip.
But long after the conference ended—after I’d abandoned my name badge in a hotel trash bin overflowing with identical lanyards—his question lingered. Because the honest answer was far less diplomatic and far more emphatic than I’d admitted: yes, he was incredibly annoying to work with. So much so, in fact, it partly influenced my decision to leave.
But why exactly?
What specific brand of irritating had he perfected so thoroughly? And more importantly, was there a deeper lesson hidden beneath all that carefully cultivated annoyance, just waiting patiently for me to finally recognize it?
The science of being annoying
The honest answer—if I’d been brave enough to offer it on the spot—was a resounding, neon-lit, billboard-sized “YES.”
He wasn’t just casually annoying, like someone who replies to every email with “Thanks!” He was systematically annoying, the kind of annoyance that sneaks quietly into your weekends, spoiling perfectly good Sunday evenings by reminding you that Monday exists and you’re going to have to talk to him again.
Now, let me be clear: he wasn’t mean or rude.
Quite the contrary—he was bright, capable, and entirely likable in short bursts. But working closely with him felt like assembling IKEA furniture alongside someone who insists they don’t need the instructions, yet secretly glances at them whenever your back is turned.
Every simple conversation stretched into an endless game of edits, revisions, and “one more tiny thing,” until our emails felt like tennis rallies without winners—lobbing the same ball back and forth, pretending it was progress.
Gradually, I found myself anticipating his edits, adjusting my ideas preemptively to match what I imagined he’d approve, even if it meant choosing fonts or colors or phrases I personally found questionable.
And here’s the funny thing (funny in hindsight, anyway): it wasn’t the edits themselves that annoyed me most. It was realizing I’d quietly become his psychic assistant, pre-editing my work to avoid the inevitable back-and-forth that followed any hint of original thought.
It was easier, frankly, to just surrender up front.
Looking back, I realize what bothered me wasn’t simply a difference in aesthetics or style. After all, I’ve happily worked alongside people whose tastes were wildly different from mine without feeling like I needed therapy afterward.
No, the deeper problem was the message hiding behind every nitpick: “I don’t trust your judgment.”
When micromanagement creeps in
That’s the tricky part about micromanagement: it sneaks into relationships disguised as “helpful guidance” or “friendly advice,” but underneath, it whispers quietly, repeatedly, “Trust me, I know better than you.” It’s irritating enough when someone else does it to me.
Even worse, I sometimes catch myself doing it too..
Maybe that’s why his question lingered: it was less about him being annoying and more about me recognizing, awkwardly, that annoyance is often mutual—and terrifyingly contagious.
When bold ideas turn beige
The worst thing about micromanagement isn’t just that it frustrates people—though it certainly does. It’s that it quietly reshapes the entire team’s dynamic without anyone even noticing. Like an invasive houseplant, it starts small—a leaf here, a subtle vine there—and before we know it, it’s taken over the whole culture.
People begin arriving at meetings armed not with their best ideas, but with carefully sanitized, leader-approved concepts. They’re no longer brainstorming—they’re cautiously guessing, scanning for the right eyebrow raise or nod of approval, as if the leader has become some kind of corporate oracle. Before long, the whole team looks less like collaborators and more like nervous contestants on a game show called “Will They Like It?”
And this is the heart of the problem: micromanagement trains us to stop trusting ourselves. We learn that bold ideas are risky, because risky means edits, and edits mean more work.
So we adapt.
We compromise.
We artfully sand down the edges of our creativity until we’ve reached that safe middle ground—the beige paint of workplace collaboration. And while beige is perfectly serviceable on a living room wall, nobody wants to build a career around it.
The sneaky irony is that, as leaders, this setup can feel great at first.
Everyone seems to be doing exactly what we want. But what we gain in short-term predictability, we lose tenfold in creativity, passion, and originality. Instead of having a team empowered to innovate, we end up with talented people carefully tiptoeing around our preferences, treating their jobs like a frustrating version of “Simon Says.”
The leadership multiplier
The truth is, micromanagement is deeply myopic.
It keeps the spotlight fixed on the leader—our preferences, our control, our fingerprints on every project. But leadership isn’t supposed to be about us. The point isn’t to create work that reflects our tastes—it’s to build teams that are empowered to create work no one of us could accomplish alone.
When trust is missing, people play it safe.
But when trust is present—when it’s practiced and reinforced—something remarkable happens. People stop guessing what the leader will approve and start bringing their best, boldest ideas to the table. They work with more joy, more pride, and more innovation. They create things they actually want to sign their names to.
And here’s the part we often overlook: the more we extend trust, the more we earn it back. When we give people space to lead, to decide, to own their work, they repay us with commitment, creativity, and accountability.
Why trust breaks the math
Leadership, at its best, isn’t about making sure things get done—it’s about making sure the right things get done, in the right way, by people who feel trusted enough to actually own them.
That’s where the math changes.
With micromanagement, the output is capped at what one person is capable of. At best, 1+1=2.
But with trust, it’s exponential.
Teams build on each other’s ideas, spark new solutions, and generate momentum that feels almost impossible to explain. 1+1 doesn’t equal 2 anymore—it equals 11.
Of course, trust isn’t easy.
It takes discipline to resist the urge to control, and practice to give people space to surprise us. But that’s the difference between a team that’s simply doing tasks and a team that’s doing its best work—work that is bigger, brighter, and more meaningful than what any one of us could accomplish alone.
The question behind the question
That coworker’s question—“Was I annoying to work with?”—still makes me smile. In the moment, I laughed and dodged with diplomacy, but looking back, I see it differently.
It wasn’t just a self-conscious question, it was a human one. He wanted to know if the way he showed up left room for others to do their best work—or if it got in the way.
And that’s the question I keep returning to myself.
Not because I want to beat myself up for every tweak or suggestion, but because I’ve seen how easily the impulse to control can creep in, even with the best intentions. And I’ve also seen how much is possible when trust takes its place.
Because in the end, the measure of leadership isn’t whether the work looks exactly how we imagined it—it’s whether the team feels empowered to bring forward ideas we never could’ve imagined ourselves. That’s the difference between annoyance and inspiration, between a culture of beige compromise and one of bold creativity.
So maybe the better question for all of us isn’t “Was I annoying to work with?” but something harder, and more generous: “Am I creating an environment where people can do their best work—and actually enjoy it enough to want to keep doing it tomorrow?”
