Management: Recommend not Command

Continuing from yesterday’s post, I share my management practice in getting my team to do things:

Always recommend, never command

This method works with my style. I know I can be over bearing when I get excited on a topic. I can know so much on a topic that the knowledge puts people off.

Instead, I just ask:

Would you like my recommendation on this topic?

They can say yes - which I would share my recommendation. If they say no, I don’t take it personally and let them know they are welcome to ask for my recommendation again.

Why do I take this approach? It’s a balance of offering help and validating the receiver of help genuinely wants it. I follow the old adage:

You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

I also give what to do as recommendation instead of step-by-step commands. Why?

Because sometimes, things have changed that the steps don’t work. If there’s an issue with the step, I want the person to think through the problem themselves instead of coming back to me for updated steps.

If I know the exact steps of what to do, why not just… do them myself instead of telling someone else to do it??

The more I command something, the more responsible I am for it’s outcome. I take away opportunity for the team to work by doing it myself. Let them have your former work so they can improve.

Things change and the best I can do is recommend what I would do to get the job done.

At the same time, you never know how your team may impress you.