What supervisory skills do I need?
Seven keys you must have as a supervisor;
- Clearly defined objective specific duties
- Clear “To Do list” with Priority and Plan
- Right person, Right task
- Intelligent motivation of every member of the team
- Feedback/results that are constantly monitored by you
- What’s not working; Make Course Corrections
- What’s working; Give praise/recognition to the people who earned it
Here are some further supervisor instruction on each skill set.
Set and communicate clear, specific goals. The team comes together to realise goals. The first task for the Supervisor is to clearly define the IMPORTANT Goal and to subdivide the IMPORTANT Goal into its component parts and pass on these subset goals to the team. Secondly, make the work as effective as possible arrange the work in the most logical order.
You cannot do everything the same time. Thus, you must prioritise sub tasks in logical sequence. Everything has a logical sequence to do it (in the best order). If you do “the right things,” but in “the wrong order,” you can expect very bad results. Supervisors must appreciate the value of pre planning for prioritising and organisation.
Supervisory skill; Do the right things in order of rightness. Task specificity; divide up the right things into parts. When you have the tasks in the right order, then you give them to the correct employee. Delegation is one of the most important skills for a supervisor to become efficient in. Delegate everything you can, to the correct employee, at the correct time.
Motivate every person on your team. If you assume everyone is aware of the goal and the strategy, all you have to do is get people moving. Some people tend to procrastinate. Supervisors need to overcome any procrastination that is present in the team. Supervisors must motivate people to take action.
Monitor the feedback results being created. However, with the team’s next action, it generates ‘feedback results’, which in turn can be positive or negative. The supervisor continuously monitors the quality of the feedback results of the team’s latest actions. Is the feedback encouraging or not? Observe what IS NOT WORKING properly; Correct the plan to the extent possible. Negative feedback stands for everything in the plan that doesn’t work well. The supervisor’s talent is to detect the negative and immediately change the course of correction to help the system return to normal.
This is one of the hardest and most important skills that the supervisor needs to learn and so you may need some focused training in this dimension of supervision. Pay attention to what is going well; Advice: express appreciation to the team. Likewise, it’s important to communicate what is going well and to give those members of staff who deserve it positive feedback. Employers should be quick to reward staff with correct praise, thanks and recognition. Failure to give correct appreciation has been the cause failure for many supervisors.
Supervisory skills also need an immune response to the ‘social motivators’ of thanks, appreciation and praise.
I firmly believe that people are promoted to positions of supervisors and managers because they are high achievers and have shown some management potential. The challenge is that they also lack the training to succeed in a management role.
Through our work with hundreds of these new leaders in organisations, we learned a great deal about their readiness for a new role and their ambivalence toward it. ‘It should be an honour to be asked to lead a group of people. You should be thrilled to have this chance because you’re good at what you do and you take your work seriously,’ he said. But he immediately added: ‘Ah, but the doubts fill your mind. Am I capable of being a leader? What will others say? Am I ready to take on the challenge? Will I know what to do day by day?
The transition into and performance of supervision of others takes focus and deliberate development; if supervisors receive an insufficient amount of training, tools or support, team morale, frustration, stress and quality suffer more than necessary. As was recently demonstrated, many fledgling great managers take their supervisory hats off and migrate back to non-supervisory levels. That’s a loss to the individual but also to the business.
David Alssema is a Body Language Expert and Motivational Speaker. As a performer in the personal development industry in Australia he has introduced and created new ways to inspire, motivate and develop individuals.
David Alssema started his training career with companies such as Telstra and Optus Communications, and then developed Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) within workplace training as principal of Paramount Training & Development.
As an author/media consultant on body language and professional development David has influenced workplaces across Australia. He contributes to Media such as The West Australian, ABC Radio, Australian Magazines and other Australia Media Sources.
