We all strive to meet challenges and advance our career goals and often find ourselves moving up to the role of supervisor without the knowledge and tools to succeed. New supervisors fail because they do not understand the general supervisory framework. Increasing your chances of success in supervising others lies in understanding the five basic management functions of planning, organizing, leading, controlling, and coordinating.
1. PLANNING: When supervising others, think of it as supervising yourself by answering the following questions. Some examples are provided to help guide you:
a) Why are we here? Make a quality product or provide a quality service for our customers.
b) How do we think? Make our people grow – knowledge/training – teamwork.
against) What are our objectives? Being world class: increasing market share, maximizing efficiency and productivity.
d) Who are the people? Training, development, delegating, growing -fixed and seasonal staff- parent company, interns, suppliers, customers.
e) Planning – short/long term requirements?
f) Implementation? Cascading Goals – From Head Office to Managers and Staff.
g) Evaluation? Focus on the growth of the company and prepare for it (increase in market share); focus on world class (quality); focus on maximizing efficiency and productivity (figures/statistics).
2. ORGANIZATION – With an overall plan for your team, list your main goal, which could be to reduce costs by 10% or increase revenue by 5%. Break this down into expectations and “baby steps” tasks, such as reducing paper costs by 2% by reducing the use of photocopying for sundries, or increasing market share by 5% before the end of the quarter. Establish how and when you will monitor and measure your results. Ask who or what else I need to connect with to be successful and how I will translate this to others so they know what is expected of them and what to do. Make sure you have two-way communication to get the information you need to monitor results.
3. LEADER: Use the formula of Seek first to understand, then to be understood as your general rule. Stay objective by focusing on stats as much as possible. Understand each person’s job and how you will measure their results. Use these measures to lead them to better results. Your job is to guide, grow and develop your people so that they no longer need you because they understand where they are going and how to get there on their own. By asking good questions and setting objective, achievable, and challenging goals with them, you have a better chance of being a good supervisor.
4. CONTROL: Be aware of the standards you are setting and be consistent in communicating them to others. Continually discuss what is okay and what is not okay to accept with your staff. Stay informed and if a standard has to be overlooked, make sure the group understands why and is informed so that the standards are taken seriously on an ongoing basis. If you don’t address discrepancies as they appear, lower standards will be created by default. Excuses get in the way of efficiency and productivity and standards are lowered, which is not the goal of any team and can act as a demotivating factor for the entire team.
5. COORDINATION: Always strive to guide, grow and develop people so that they achieve the objectives of the company, as well as their individual objectives. By doing this, your staff will feel challenged, recognized, and want to contribute in a meaningful way. Most organizations want to grow and expand their market share. If this is true for your organization, know that your position will also grow and expand. This is why it is essential that you get better at delegating and ‘getting out of the way’ of your people so that they can step up and eventually not need it at all. When this happens, you know that you have done your job and that you are a successful supervisor. Strive to get your staff where they feel powerful enough to initiate activities that do their job and only have to report back to you on their results. This frees you up to develop and move into higher management roles and functions.
CONCLUSION: The five management roles for supervisors are the cornerstone for increasing your chances of success as a supervisor. New supervisors often fail because they are uncomfortable with power and being in control or under control, but they must control it and they can do it in ways that respect, challenge and grow their people. A supervisor’s job is to encourage your people to take risks, to be innovative, and to work with you to achieve company and individual goals. You can do this with clear objectives and fair and consistent management practices based on objective quantity and quality of productivity.