Awesome Supervision for Good Supervisors: Hero Guide (2022)
Awesome Supervision
Supervision is often a messy business that requires practical problem-solving skills. We cannot always predict how people will respond to us, but there are proven ways to educate, encourage, influence, and inspire them. If you want to find practical advice on how to become a great supervisor, there are proven and practical ways to get started.
Jef Menguin
Schedule a 25-minute consultation about your needs for leadership workshops, webinars, or customized online courses.
This Hero Guide will show new and long-time supervisors principles and practices to that will make supervision awesome. It is exhaustive, but you can jump to the learning segment that interests you. At the end of each segment are articles and tools you can use to dive deep.
Monday is a great opportunity to think and play big. I offer you my best thoughts on personal growth every Monday morning.
What is supervision?
Supervision refers to the action, activities, and process that involve a supervisor engaging, monitoring, and interacting with direct reports to ensure effective delivery of work. A supervisor has authority over direct reports and is accountable for their results.
Overseer is the direct translation of the Latin origin of the word supervision.
The word paints a picture of you, the supervisor, watching from above to ensure that lazy slaves or slow workers continue working, so the promised jobs get delivered on time.
Even today, some supervisors think that their main job is to watch those who are doing wrong or doing nothing.
A supervisor is a leader, not a slave driver. Please keep this in mind because doing so will help you succeed.
Empowering mindsets make excellent supervision. Because whatever your mind can conceive, you can achieve. Your mindset will propel you toward where you want to go.
Be careful, therefore, with the mindset you possess. It is a power that can control your "destiny."
Excellent supervision requires a growth mindset.
Embrace a growth mindset.
Becoming a great supervisor is a journey that includes a lot of falling and standing up. You will commit many mistakes (who doesn't?), and your disposition about challenges and failure will define your velocity.
A supervisor with a growth mindset knows that intelligence isn't enough. No one is born destined to become a supervisor.
That's laughable, you may say. But many people believe that intelligence is pre-determined.
Supervisors with a growth mindset aren't after looking intelligent and great. They want to learn from both failures and successes. They listen to people, keep their eyes open, and listen to others. They don't beat themselves up when things don't go their way.
Think like a servant leader.
Some supervisors think of themselves as slave drivers. Others work like slaves. You can be neither.
To think like a servant leader, consider yourself doing your job out of service.
You work to create and add value to the people you serve. You don't get paid for being a servant leader. That's why they call you a supervisor.
But make no mistake about it. A supervisor who thinks like a servant leaders wake up each morning with a mission to accomplish. He is not after ticking every task box. He serves customers and employees.
A servant leader is happy, though never satisfied.
Think Systems
You belong to a system. Most of what you do influences the behaviors of people around you. So you can design your supervision to make people work like a well-oiled machine.
I encourage you to seek personal development. Increase your influence. Be the person trusted and respected by employees. When you do, you can achieve success by design.
Promote team learning too. Enlist employees who can make the system work. Find individuals who are willing to be your first followers. Then, enable them to act.
The purpose of supervision is to monitor tasks, balance workload, solve problems, resolve conflict, and guide directs in dealing with complex situations.
Both the supervisor and direct reports are accountable for improving practice and performance. The most important job of the supervisor is to help everyone he leads succeed.
Two Types of Supervision
The two types of supervision are direct and indirect supervision.
You do direct supervision when you work directly with your subordinates. Before Covid-19, most direct supervision is face to face. Then, it became virtual.
You can be a hands-on supervisor even with remote workers. We find ways because we have to ensure that our people continue growing.
You need direct supervision when you are giving instruction, training, coaching, and mentoring your staff.
You do indirect supervision to ensure that assigned work is done. You can be monitoring performance via project management tools or emails.
You can do this daily, weekly, or monthly.
Indirect supervision works well with self-directed individuals. I do not need to spend much time with them. However, I have to ensure that they get things done through timely check=ins and performance monitoring.
Understanding the principles of supervision will help you get started right.
Often, new supervisors are overwhelmed by the expectations to become great in what they do. Individual performers don't want to do mediocre work, of course. But everyone starts as a beginner.
Here are five principles I learned from good supervisors.
Supervision should not overburden you or your team. I say that your objective is to help your team do less work for better results. You do have to be a slave driver to produce more. This is why you need to develop your skills. You need to enable your people to work faster and better. Use tools and techniques as levers.
Supervision calls for good planning, organization, and motivation. Because you are "watching from above", you see things differently. You are in a better position to help your team come up with a better way to work.
Supervision should create a suitable climate for productive work. You work with people, not with machines. Understand how your team communicates. Find out how you can reduce stressful situations at work.
Supervision, like leadership, needs influencers. That influencer can be you. Or it can be somebody in the team. You need to make people see the vision of your organization. Help them embrace it like it is real today.
Supervision demands accountability. You are accountable for your results and the results of your people. This is why you ought to help them solve problems together - even in your absence.
You can be an effective supervisor too. Your elevation to the role of leadership did not make you perfect - and your direct reports know that. Do not be too hard on yourself. You do not have to exert yourself too much. You can become an awesome supervisor one day at a time.
In a typical Filipino workplace, supervision is the primary job of a supervisor. The supervisors oversee the productivity, performance, progress, and potential of employees who report to them.
There are many kinds of supervisors. The first-level supervisors oversee the entry-level employees. The middle managers supervise first-level supervisors. C-level executives supervise middle managers.
Today, supervisors are people tasked to oversee the day-to-day performance of employees. They don't just watch and report what people are doing. A good supervisor plays the roles of a team leader, trainer, facilitator, coach, mentor, confidante, decision-maker, innovator, and salesperson to ensure goals are achieved. They drive organizational growth. 1 It will help you a lot if you can distinguish between your supervisory and management jobs.
2. Understand the Purpose of Supervision
In the olden days, the purpose of supervision is to watch above everyone. They catch employees who were doing something wrong - or doing nothing.
Today, supervisors exercise leadership and watch people doing things right. Supervisors are everyday leaders who ensure the success of organizations.
This change in purpose requires that a supervisor thinks like a business owner, a counselor, a coach, a mentor, a customer champion, and an employee.
Supervisors no longer work like lieutenants who have to wait for orders from their superiors. They are executives who must set their own goals that support the mission and make things happen.
Competencies evolved. You go beyond the POLC: planning, organizing, leading and controlling model of supervision. That's because it is not just a job; supervision is both a responsibility and an opportunity to transform people.
Promotion to the role is quicker, a lot quicker. You do not have to wait many years to get appointed to the post. Fresh graduates can become supervisors as long as they have the competencies and maturity to handle the job.
Seniority does not always equate to maturity.
3. Embrace the Core Responsibility of Supervisors
Supervisors have one primary responsibility: to make customers happy. To do that, supervisors must ensure the timely delivery of products and services, keep employees engaged and motivated, reduce waste, and increase profitability.
Sure, supervisors do a thousand things. But doing this one thing will make it clear why you have to do or not do a thousand things.
4. Aim to be a Better Supervisor
A supervisor who values self-leadership will learn faster than anyone. It is not enough that you give back to the company what you get from them. You need to return that value a thousandfold.
My objective for writing this guide is to help you do great work. I am adding value. Go beyond being a good supervisor.
But let's answer this very common question, anyway.
How to become a good supervisor?
To be a good supervisor, identify customers' success metrics. Then, work on each success measure beyond the expectations of the customers.
Practice happiness plus one.
Supervisors have two kinds of customers: internal and external. Inside the organization, supervisors must meet their key performance indicators and earn the respect of their bosses, peers, and direct reports.
These are the steps on how to be a good supervisor.
5. Evaluate your success (or failure).
To evaluate is to ascertain value. The most prominent measures of a supervisor's success are the key performance indicators.
High-performing supervisors make an organization survive. You also evaluate the supervisors' potential or the supervisor's willingness to learn new skills and accept responsibilities.
Supervisors who are quick learners are assets of the organization. Finally, consider the willingness of the supervisor to assume greater responsibilities by considering maturity and skills.
6. Build Crucial Competencies During Crisis
The four most critical supervisory skills during the pandemic are communication, creativity, resilience, and adaptive leadership.
Supervisors need to communicate clearly and with compassion.
Employees are anxious and confused. Supervisors need to be creative in finding solutions as the organization faces extraordinary challenges.
I will share with you three simple ways to get started in leadership. These ideas are very simple, you might ignore them. Please don't. Start seeing yourself as a leader today.
Where You Want to Be
Know what you really want to achieve and WHY. Leadership is moving from A to B or C or D. You want something better than today. Be clear about what you really want.
If you can only think of your personal dream, that's okay. Leadership begins with self.
If you want to make a difference in the lives of other people, then I suggest you figure out how you can sell your ideas to these people. Your vision will become a shared vision.
A vision shared with others is more challenging and rewarding.
Where Are You Now
Examine where you are now. This is very important. You need to know your present situation or the situation of the people you want to lead.
It is important that while you are looking at the heavens (your vision), you are very much aware of where you are standing.
Some gurus recommend that you do your personal SWOT. You can try that too.
My recommendation is to focus on what you have. Consider what strengths and opportunities you have today.
Do your SOAR assessment.
A common pitfall is to focus on what you don't have. Many leaders do not move until everything is ideal.
But our situations seldom become ideal. We cannot wait until life is not hard anymore before we choose to act.
You already have talents, skills, and maybe resources you can use. Find out how you can get started with them to reach your goal.
How to Execute
Find out how you can move from where you are to where you want to go.
You need to evolve. That means you have to work on your leadership skills. Amplify what you already have and find complementary skills that will multiply your impact.
Explore the strategies and techniques of those leaders you look up to. Don't just pick the "famous" leadership gurus. Instead, find those leaders who are living the life that you desire.
Supervisory leadership development refers to the process and activities that ensure supervisors acquire the confidence and competence to get things done every day.
One can be promoted to supervisory skills because of technical skills. Or get a post because of the ability to connect with people.
But supervisors must make people deliver. And people are not as predictable as machines or mathematical equations.
Supervisors can make people love what they hate. Supervisors can make people believe they can go beyond their limits. Supervisors can make people aim for what is best for the organization.
Everyone in the organization has the potential to lead others. And the supervisor is in the best position to do it.
This is why great companies design interventions to develop supervisors.
Interventions are enablers. Examples of interventions are training, coaching, mentoring, and counseling.
For professionals to succeed, they must invest in technical, interpersonal, and leadership skills.
Supervisory training refers to instructional and experiential activities provided to supervisors in an organization to increase knowledge, build skills, and develop the standards for leading people and growing the business.
Most supervisor training programs are based on POLC: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling which are done in one day. This is often ineffective.
Training providers attempt to teach four MBA courses in one day.
The best supervisory training courses are tailor-fit to the needs of the individual and the organization.
Once you recognize that you do not grow to fit in a box, then you will focus on creating opportunities for supervisors to grow.
Leadership training is an investment and is the primary job of any leader. To grow your organization, leaders must be mindful of growing leaders.
Leadership Competencies
Developing leadership competencies can make you an effective and influential leader. Competencies are performance enablers. Competencies are sets of knowledge and skills that help leaders achieve their objectives.
The leaders most people know are those who get elected to office. Often, they rely on name recall and charisma. But charisma isn't enough to make a big difference.
Think about the charismatic political leaders we had. Unfortunately, those who lack leadership skills failed us. They promised the heavens and the stars but could not deliver their promises.
To become effective, you must identify and master the skills you need to deliver your tasks, projects, or vision.
Develop Leadership Skills
You can improve leadership skills through deliberate training. Some skills are more important than others in specific functions and situations.
It is essential, therefore, to identify the crucial skills you need to perform at your best.
Start by asking your managers about your most critical skills to perform your job.
Take inventory of your skills.
Upgrade and optimize those skills that you already possess.
Work on others when necessary.
In my experience, a leader does not need to possess all skills. At times, you can leverage the skills that your direct reports have.
Explore the leadership skills below.
Supervisory Skills
Agility. Learn how to make quick decisions and keep your balance. Sometimes you don't have all the information, but you must make decisions.
Approachability. Leaders put others at ease so that they can be at their best. It means initiating rapport, listening, sharing, understanding and comforting.
Customer-focus. Leaders who pay more attention to customers than their competition can develop products and services others are not offering.
Problem Solving. Strategic leaders use simple but powerful methods to solve complex problems.
Empathy. Develop the ability to understand what others feel, see, and think. Standing in their shoes will help you know how they walk.
Resilience. Good supervisors can bounce forward. They sometimes fail, but when they do, they come out better.
Adaptive Leadership. You can adapt yourself to the unpredictables, and you can help others handle change too.
Stress Management Skills. Develop the ability to perform at your best, even in high-pressure situations.
Time Management. You do 80/20 and focus only on one thing that matter most.
Interpersonal Relationships. You need the ability to connect with people and let them work well.
Giving & Receiving Feedback. Your ability to listen to feedback and the courage to give it to others will help your team perform better.
Leading and Managing a Team. You can encourage, enable, and influence your team to achieve goals.
Managing Conflict. Good managers do not avoid conflict; they tend to it. Great managers mine conflict and turn it into collaborative opportunities.
Motivating Employees. Motivation isn't the same for everyone. But there are everyday things that people avoid or pursue. To lead effectively, you need to develop motivation skills.
Managing and Evaluating Performance. Effective supervisors pay attention to behaviors and results to operate and improve performance.
Delegation Skills. Delegation is an opportunity to enable and empower employees. By giving them challenging tasks, you help them grow.
Coaching Skills. Coaching also helps employees eliminate the obstacles that prevent them from achieving their goals.
Onboarding New Employee. Ensure that new hires get the tools and information they need to become a productive member of your organization.
Communication Skills. Communication is essential in building harmonious relationships with co-workers, customers, and suppliers.
Making Decisions. Supervisors make choices that can impact people and businesses every day. You need to make the right decisions and drive them with conviction.
Interviewing Skills. If you are involved in hiring direct reports, you ought to learn interviewing skills. You do not want to get people who cannot work well with your team.
Innovation. Good leaders fully understand their markets and see their products and services as solutions. They create and design products that clients are hungry for.
You can learn more about skills for leaders in the following posts.
My framework for developing breakthrough leadership skills is the Influencer Model.
When designing learning experiences, I used proven frameworks. Training for leaders needs to be transformational.
The Influencer Change Framework ensures that all training programs you bring to your company are focused, intensive, relevant, and engaging. You will trim it and take out all the BS in training.
Step 1: Clarify Measurable Results
You can create change if you are clear about what you want, why you want it, and when. The formula X to Y by When helps.
An effective result is specific and measurable. It is quantitative, not qualitative.
In the past, success measures for leadership training are primarily descriptive. But we can certainly measure increased revenue, improvement of net promoter score, and others.
Step 2: Find Vital Behaviors
Vital behaviors bring extraordinary results. We will find high-leverage behaviors. Leaders will find out what to do and how to do it. They will identify crucial moments that bring the most significant impact.
And we will stick with what works for your people and your organization.
Step 3: Apply Multiple Sources of Influence
The Influencer Change Framework offers six sources of influence. Then, you will apply what works for you. Each source of influence multiplies the others.
That means you’ll go beyond the carrot and stick form of motivation. Instead, you will support leaders achieve their goals while achieving corporate goals.
If you are looking for ways to improve your supervisory skills, I recommend you look into these courses for supervisors.
Practical Tips on Supervision
To be a manager, one must be able to manage her own relationship with the people around her, as well as the relationships among his subordinates. Just being perfect in paperwork and operations does not make one a good manager.
Sophie Rose
Organizations define the jobs of supervisors differently. Of course, we don’t expect middle managers to have the exact job expectations as first-level supervisors. But there are common competencies.
1. Practice Management Skills
Supervisors practice essential management skills like decision-making, problem-solving, planning, delegation, and meeting management.
In supervisory training, one typical module is leadership versus management. And mostly, it is as if a leader is better than a manager.
Supervisors both need to build leadership and management skills. When supervisors make decisions, solve problems, delegate work, and conduct effective meetings, they exercise leadership skills.
It should be leadership and management, not versus as the two almost always come together.
You are exercising management skills when you ensure you make the process work to get tasks done. You are exercising leadership when you are inspiring and enabling people to get the jobs done. Supervisors often exercise management and leadership skills at the same time.
Often, it is the management skills where most supervisors falter. And when supervisors fail in managing the process, their leadership suffers.
As a manager, the more consistent you are, the better off you are. It’s easy to be up when things go well. When things don’t go well, the players will follow your lead. So you have to be consistent and upbeat, which takes some work sometimes.
Terry Francona
2. Build and lead teams.
Supervisors are team leaders. They must ensure that their direct reports work as one unit and value the team’s goals more than their personal goals.
Building and leading a team is a process. It is a big responsibility that requires both commitment and competence.
When building a team, you must clarify goals, identify roles, establish open and honest communication, and define how decisions will be made.
To lead a team, you need to respect diverse beliefs and ambitions. It would be best if you gave direct reports opportunities to solve problems together. And you want them to participate in leadership so that they’ll be able to work even without your supervision.
Did you get that last line?
Your ultimate aim is to enable them to work even without your supervision.
People work for people, not for companies. A worker’s regard for his supervisor will affect his opinion of his employer. Production is related to attitude, so much so that an organization which disregards this human equation will not achieve as much as it could achieve.
Gerard R. Griffin
3. Identify job roles for current and future requirements.
Identifying job roles is a supervisor role in good times. This role is even more necessary in challenging times.
Our Covid-19 situation requires that supervisors re-define the roles of employees. There are changes in how people work and where they work. It would be best if supervisors would recommend the crucial roles needed to succeed in a crisis.
One day, the Covid-19 crisis will be over. We will work in the new normal. But we do not know what the new normal requires. Supervisors must consider the roles of direct reports in the new normal, for that will surely come.
What are the requirements to ensure that everyone is safe? How can everyone work more effectively in the new environment? What are the competencies needed to become successful? You will ask many challenging questions — and you must find answers to them to prepare your people.
Not all supervisors are involved in hiring employees. I prefer that they are active in the hiring process.
In hiring employees, know the current and future requirements of your organization. Figure out how your company’s strategic directions will influence the kind of people you want for the job. You will consider skills, attitudes, and previous experiences.
Though I do not believe that previous experiences are not predictors of future performance, you can get good information valuable to making excellent decisions.
5. Enable employees.
Supervisors are often required to train employees. Unfortunately, many supervisors do not know how to teach — and training does not always work. Excellent supervision happens when people are competent.
Your job is not to train employees.
Your job is to help employees learn faster and better. You will enable them to become successful. So, it does not mean that you need to bring them to a classroom.
No. Your job is to create an environment that will help employees acquire critical skills, practice vital behaviors, and choose a growth mindset.
Think like a business owner. To make your business grow, you grow people. You make them learn, practice what they learned, and get them to teach others.
A manager must always provide the employees opportunities to continuously improve their skills and reassure them that they have a promising future.
Abhishek Ratna
6. Manage employee performance.
The successes of your direct reports determine your supervision success. You pay attention to their performance, potential, and readiness.
You set goals. Define the contribution you need from each. Show to get things done. Then measure performance.
To manage performance, supervisors need to ensure that what they do daily will bring results. Give constant feedback. You praise and correct. You instruct and suggest. You make everyone focus on work and how they do work.
To check problems in attitude, you counsel them.
To improve skills, you coach them.
To grab new opportunities, you mentor them.
To save them from hell, you pray for them.
You do all of these because your failure to manage performance will surely make the organization fail.
A manager is not a person who can do the work better than his men; he is a person who can get his men to do the work better than he can.
Frederick W. Smith
7. Comply with personnel policies and internal regulations.
Supervisors are employees too. That’s obvious, but a reminder is not bad. You must comply with personnel policies and follow internal regulations.
You comply for your protection.
You comply to set yourself as an example to others.
You comply because doing so is good for your organization. You want to help others who monitor you get their jobs done too.
And most importantly, you comply because you don’t want to get fired.
8. Fire employees when necessary.
Not all supervisors can fire employees like Donald Trump. But this is an important job.
An executive who has been handling thousands of employees worldwide told me that his secret is “to hire slow and fire quick”. I am not really sold on this concept. I think it has something to do with my being a teacher: I give people many chances to redeem themselves.
He said that you don’t hire an employee because you need a person to do the job. You hire someone who can do a great job. He said that when you hire a mediocre candidate, you deprive yourself of the opportunity to welcome the great ones when they come. Why? Because the seat is filled.
But hiring is not an exact science.
Sometimes, you get to hire someone who seems excellent during interviews but doesn’t get the job done. The person is not fit for the job. You hate working with him or her. He said that you fire that employee as quickly as possible.
But you do not have that power. And I am not sure if that is even legal. But what he said about firing people who are not fit for the job makes good sense to me.
You won’t accomplish your tasks and achieve your goals if you don’t have the right person for the job. As a teacher, I will say that you give the person the support you believe is necessary. Do everything in your power to help the person, but not to the detriment of your organization.
Even before you hire someone, know full well how you can legally fire him.
9. Get good training.
To become a better supervisor, you need to develop skills that you never had before.
First, you are going to lead people. Good leaders use their personal power to influence others to do what’s good for them.
Second, there is no one way of leading others. As much as experience can teach you how to supervise others, training can accelerate your progress and help you avoid common mistakes.
Read books. You don’t have to buy expensive books. Download ebooks online. It is perfectly legal. Experts found ways to share what they know in the modern world without asking you to rob a bank.
You can watch Youtube videos.
Join courses on Coursera.
Enroll in Linkedin Learning.
You can also bring my online courses for supervisors. Go to Supervisory Training.
Write your next steps.
Next Steps
May all these kick-ass tips help you become a better supervisor. Your position is created to ensure that employees deliver. You’ve got to deliver daily without being told.
I also want to hear from you.
Please tell me which of these tips you want to apply at once. And when you have questions, reach out. I am willing to help you become a kick-ass supervisor.
FAQs
Do you have questions about supervision? You may contact me via inspire@jefmenguin.com. I answered some of the common questions.
Supervisors ensure that corporate goals are achieved. They plan, manage, and monitor the accomplishment of tasks of all employees who report to them. Even self-driven employees need supervisors to ensure that all activities move as desired.
In the Philippines, it is common to say that a supervisor reports to a manager, and a team leader reports to supervisors. However, a supervisor is anyone who has to oversee someone. Managers and team leaders are supervisors too. Take note that some office workers have titles like managers and supervisors but do not have to oversee anyone.
In the Philippines, many supervisors belong to the management. They are called first-line managers. Contrary to common belief, they are not the people who go between rank-and-file and management. There is no middle line. Either they belong to rank-and-file or to management. Supervisors monitor the daily performance of employees.
Supervisors can motivate staff by keeping a high standard and celebrating small wins. Motivation is personal. So, it is best if supervisors understand what employees need so they can help them get what they want.
Do not promote a high-potential employee who is not ready. Though no one is completely ready to take on new posts, training them will help new supervisors get a quick start. Without training, new supervisors often fail when hitting obstacles.
Best Articles to Read on Supervision
This website offers valuable articles that can help you improve your supervisory skills. Explore new insights, strategies, and tools that can help you lead people.
To Lead By Example. Supervisors need to set examples for others. That means their actions and words are the best expressions of what they want from people.
18 Awesome Skills for Supervisors. We explored supervisory skills training because we understand the value of skills as the enabler of performance. If you want to get ahead and do your job as a supervisor, I encourage you to explore these 18 skills.
Top 17 Qualities of Good Leaders. People follow leaders whose characteristics they admire. Explore the admirable qualities of good leaders. Discover ways to demonstrate these qualities in your daily practice as a supervisor.
Enable Others to Act. Good supervisors explore many ways to help employees get things done. The supervisor is a coach, trainer, and mentor. Enable others to act is a vital behavior of breakthrough leaders.
Personal Development for Beginners. A supervisor must be mindful of self-development. This guide will help you pay more attention to your self-improvement goals.
Why do Managers Need Training? This article highlighted ten workplace supervision effects. Number 8 is reduced profitability. Do you want your company to earn more? Then, take care of supervisory development.
21 Key Benefits of Leadership Training. Yes, I can list dozens more. But if you want to convince your boss that leadership training is important, read this post.
Get and Recieve Feedback. Your ability to listen will enhance your effectivess as a supervisor. You will intervene in day-to-day work of your people. Giving and recieving feedback ensure that people are fully aware of what they are doing.
Training Beliefs of Supervisors. Many supervisors do not value training. They have many reasons for not sending a supervisor to new training opportunities. Most of these reasons prevent them from succeeding.
