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Supervision is the toughest job in the organization. Supervisors are the first in line when problems are escalated upwards, and the last in line when “bad stuff” runs downhill from top management. Yet supervisors are also one of the key leverage points for organizational success because they are the ones making sure things get done at the front line.
So how do you improve supervisor effectiveness? Here are five ideas …
1. Train first, then promote
Most organizations promote supervisors, let them struggle awhile with their new job, new people, and new problems, then send them off to “New Manager School.” They come back overwhelmed with leadership theories, terrified about their compliance responsibilities, and facing a giant backlog of work.
In the Fire Department, candidates have to complete the training and pass the exam before they are put on the “ready to promote” list. Not only are they more able to hit the ground running in the new job, they’re much better employees until they are promoted. And doing all this work ahead of time is a great measure of their personal motivation.
IDEA: Set up “promotion-ready” training curricula. When candidates have completed it and passed the tests, put them into the pool of ready-to-promote front-line candidates. Then always promote from that list.
2. Coach new supervisors past the common early mistakes
New supervisors often come from the existing ranks, and may even come from the existing team. One of the most difficult issues for new supervisors is how existing relationships must change in moving from “co-worker” to “boss.”
There are a number of common mistakes new supervisors make—particularly if they haven’t been trained before the promotion: trying to stay friends; training to make everyone happy; thinking supervision is bossing everyone around; getting buried in paperwork; not addressing problems; and panicking over the pressure.
IDEA: Middle managers need to spend extra coaching time in the first few months of a supervisor’s tenure. Managers need to be particularly on the lookout for these common mistakes, and be refreshing/reinforcing key training topics with the new supervisor on a regular basis.
3. Build personal development into job expectations
Leadership knows that employee development is a critical need, yet can’t see the hard-dollar return on it. Training bemoans the fact that management doesn’t see training as a strategic need. And learners roll their eyes at being trapped in a classroom all day or experiencing coma-inducing e-learning.
The research is clear. The place to learn is on-the-job where the new knowledge or skill can be immediately applied a real-world task. That means learning has to be just in time, just as needed, and just enough. It also has to be a regular feature of each employee’s work week.
IDEA: Establish a cultural statement that, “Everyone can spend 10 minutes per week to improvement themselves.” Then provide them with a curriculum of weekly learning … for the rest of their work life … and have supervisors make it happen. (See #4.)
4. Separate “learn” from “apply”
When organizations can’t or won’t spend money on a comprehensive training capability, they often adopt a “trickle-down” approach to employee development. They provide rudimentary train-the-trainer instruction to supervisors, then give them training materials to use with their teams. Management is usually pleased with this approach, but the reality is that it doesn’t work. Training is a profession, and supervisors aren’t professional trainers.
Supervisors will tell you, “I’m not a good trainer. But I know everyone’s job and I’m great at showing my team how to apply the training. Give me the training content—particularly in a short e-format that I can use in team meetings—and I’ll take care of the ‘apply’ part.”
IDEA: Chunk front-line learning into short segments that can be used during weekly team meetings, then teach supervisors how to facilitate discussions about applying that content to daily real-world tasks.
5. Keep up personal development
In most cases, the supervisor-ready training (see #1) will not cover everything a supervisor needs to know. In addition, organizations will be continually adding new content and updating old content, which won’t necessarily be completed by existing supervisors.
IDEA: Create a multi-level curriculum for supervisors consisting of one program per week. (See #3.) Get creative by packaging the curriculum in certification levels or labels. One organization established a five-year curriculum from “freshman” to “graduate school” with company “diplomas.” And don’t stop there. These supervisors are your next middle managers. What is your manager ready-to-promote curriculum going to be? |