Must control details
They rewrite your email before it goes out, check the fonts on every slide, and can't hand over a task without hovering.
Rule out first
Past failures that earned the tight grip. A team that really is green. High-stakes or regulated work where a detail can sink you.
What could explain it
Generalised anxiety: The checking calms a worry about things going wrong, and they worry the same way about health, money and family. Ask what they're afraid of and there's a list.
Obsessive-compulsive personality (OCPD): Correctness for its own sake: their way is simply the right way, they redo work that was fine, and they miss deadlines polishing.
Founder syndrome: The grip is tightest on what they built and loosens on parts of the business they didn't create.
Theory X and Theory Y: The checking is on effort, not quality: hours, log-ins, whereabouts. They assume people slack unless watched.
Coercive control: At home, the control covers the other person's money, friends and movements, and refusing has consequences.
A next move
Hand them a piece of work that's sound but done differently from how they'd do it. Changing it to remove risk points to anxiety; changing it to their style points to OCPD; reasserting authorship to founder syndrome; asking how long it took to distrust.
If it’s you
If this went 80 per cent right without me, what would I lose?