Whether you’re heading back into the office soon or you will be continuing to work from home, now is the perfect time to take a fresh look at your management style. An easy way to do that is to think of your options of how to manage others as three different approaches: Do To, Do For and Do With.

Do To is the command and control style of managing. You tell your employees exactly what to do, when to do it and how to do it. It can be useful in some situations, such as crises, but when overused, leads to fear-based compliance and avoidance in your employees.

Do For is what a lot of people gravitate towards. It is the style in which you “help” your employees. Do For happens when you notice that your employee is struggling with something so you offer to take it off their plate. It can be useful in some situations, like when there is a tight deadline, but mostly leads your employees to become either dependent on you or completely bored because they aren’t being challenged.

Do With is the style that has you working alongside your employees while still letting them control the outcome. Do With means that you are helping your employees with their work by removing obstacles and helping them to create meaningful goals, but you’re leaving final responsibility for the execution and the end product with them.

With everything that has been going on around us, you may have developed some management bad habits over the past couple of months. Take some time today to reflect on how you’ve been managing lately. Given the crisis, have you been leaning too heavily on the Do To style? Maybe you haven’t wanted to overload your employees during this already stressful time so you’ve been using more Do For. Or perhaps, you’ve been able to Do With your employees this whole time.

Most people aren’t perfect and stress, time constraints, and distanced work forces have a way of taking us off our game. Start finding ways to Do With more often and save Do To and Do For for specific needs.

If you’d like to learn more about our easy process for coaching with the Do With style, give us a call to talk about becoming a certified RealTime Coach™.

Stay safe and stay healthy.