Supervision and People Skills

Do you realize the number one reason that people leave companies is due to a bad supervisor? Have your supervisors risen through the ranks and never received formal leadership and supervision training? How are their people skills? How have you prepared them for a successful transition into the supervision role? How are you creating a strong, vibrant workplace to encourage your people?

Supervision and people skills are necessary to establish a vibrant workplace, however, they are often not taught to new entries into the supervision role. Assumptions are made that if an individual was successful in their previous role they can quickly transition in the supervisor role and need little or no training. This is far from true and is actually setting the employee up to fail. Supervision and people skills' training is necessary to ensure a successful transition in the supervision ranks.

Another broad assumption made is a supervisor is a supervisor and the training is not tailored specific for that supervisory role, for example would the supervision and people skills requirements for a supervisor responsible for leading a maintenance crew be the same as a supervisor leading an administrative office? No, but most organizations utilize that approach.

Let's use the analogy of the shepherd watching over the flock of sheep. As a supervisor, recognize that you are there for the sake of the flock, your people. Without the flock, there is no need for you.

As the supervisor, you have the responsibility to set expectations for your people, provide feedback on their performance, and guide their development. No one should get to a formal performance review and be surprised by the feedback. Feedback is a continuous effort on the part of supervisor. Interestingly, sources recommend that if you can't spend at least one hour per quarter talking with your direct reports with respect to their performance and development, maybe you should not be a supervisor.

At People and Processes, we offer education reinforced with coaching and mentoring on supervision and people skills. These offerings can be integrated into the assessment and ensuing Plan of Improvement or simply offered as a standalone activity customized to your environment. You owe it to your people to establish them for success.