Some bosses prefer to lead with an iron fist, expecting their employees to constantly update them throughout the day, condemning mistakes and giving excessive directions for completing a task.

Not Roland Busch. The 60-year-old CEO of tech conglomerate Siemens prefers a more hands-off approach, and says the former can stifle autonomy and creativity at work.

His two-word rule for leading his more than 300,000 employees effectively? "Don't micromanage," Busch said in the latest installment of LinkedIn's "This Is Working" series.

"Empowerment is not anarchy," he added. Even if you think, 'I would do it differently,' let them do what you believe they are good at — and accountability comes with empowerment." 

Busch, a physicist, has been at Siemens for over 30 years, starting out with corporate research and development in 1994, then moving up the corporate ladder about every three years until he became CEO in 2019. It's a role that earned him a $9.04 million compensation package last year, according to Reuters. 

Busch recalled having a boss earlier in his career who trusted him to run a division of the business he had zero experience in. He spent the next three years working and "learning like hell," he said, helping launch a "multimedia system for BMW." Bosses like that, who challenge their employees and give them room to explore in their roles, are the key to helping you "stretch in your career," he added — and that's the kind of leader Busch wants to be.

"I can let go," he said, adding that part of that comes with putting the right people in the right positions. "And if somebody says, 'I do it a different way,' I say, 'Okay, why do I believe that I know it better than the person in charge?'"

Some bosses swear by micromanaging

While billionaires like Mark Cuban and Bill Gates, a reformed micromanager, have warned that hovering bosses make the workplace uncomfortable, other highly successful people say they owe their success to it.

Take Peter Beck, the billionaire CEO of Rocket Lab who says his meticulous, restless leadership is his "superpower." Beck described himself as "[a] chronic workaholic, micromanager and paranoid about everything, especially failure," in an interview with CNBC Make It last year.

""If s--- goes wrong, you get amongst it," he added. "Seemingly small technology or business decisions can have massive impact. So you have to really be down in the weeds [as a CEO]."

Though preparedness and getting ahead of a problem before it happens are traits that make up a great leader, bosses can have a toxic reputation when they overdo it, like expecting detailed updates every morning and evening, or marking up their employees work with a red pen.

Many professionals have experienced this firsthand, studies show. More than two-thirds of employees say they've had a toxic boss at some point in their career, according to an October 2023 survey of more than 1,200 Americans from The Harris Poll and global marketing firm Stagwell. Almost 50% say that they've had a boss that "gets too involved in the details of my job when it isn't necessary," the survey added.

The best leaders strike a healthy balance between care and accountability, workplace culture expert Tom Gimbel told CNBC Make It in 2022.

These bosses are difficult to come by, as few people are able to find the sweet spot between both, Gimbel added — but it's still worth seeking, or trying to become, this kind of unicorn boss.

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