Being a Great Manager: The Art of Supervision

Dec 11, 2015 10:02:00 AM

Robert Taibbi L.C.S.W.
Fixing Families

Posted May 25, 2015 from Psychology Today


The key to management is having a clear game plan for each individual

Imagine you’ve been hired on as a manager to supervise a team that includes the following two staff members, among others:

Mary has been working at the same job on the same team since the dawn of time. She is planning on retiring next year.

Tom is straight out of school. He’s anxious, feels pretty incompetent compared to the others on the team, and is doing his best of look good and keep his head above water.

Supervising both Mary and Tom, who are at entirely different points in their careers, is sure to pose some challenges. In this article we’ll talk about some of these challenges and how to deal with them.

As a manager, you have two primary goals, the first being to provide quality control to make sure that clients are receiving high quality services. Here is where you are assessing Mary’s and Tom’s performance, gathering feedback from clients, making sure that they are trained and working within budget guidelines.

The second goal is that of developing skills and performance in both Mary and Tom. Their different levels of experience come into play here. You need to be a different supervisor to both Mary and Tom and you need to be a different supervisor as they both move along in the job. Especially with someone like Tom, if you are doing the same thing at Day 300 that you are doing at Day 1, either Tom isn’t going to grow professionally, or he will become frustrated and eventually leave.

Being a good manager is like being a good parent. You need to anticipate and adjust to the ever-changing needs of those you work with.

Qualities of Good Managers

Be the role model you are. You can’t help but be a role model for your staff. You can only deliberately decide what type of role model you will be.

Demonstrate leadership and proactivity. Leadership is … leadership. This is not being the control freak but one who sets the pace and tone. Leadership is what helps folks like Tom settle down. The other side of the coin is being proactive. You don’t want to be a reactive, crisis-driven supervisor. This only creates a reactive and crisis-driven staff.

Be realistically optimistic. Again you set the tone and climate. Be positive without be Pollyannaish. Speak the truth, have high energy.

Think individual, think team. Decide how you need to approach and manage Mary and Tom differently—one size does not fit all. Also don’t assume that Mary’s occasional bad attitude is only about Mary. She may be representing the tip of a bigger iceberg. Determine when problems are individual and when they are reflective of something bigger.

Have clear expectations, standards, and actions. This doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind. But what clear expectations, standards, and actions do is create a stable structure that staff can psychologically build around. Without it, they are either constantly testing the limits or feeling anxious. Structure creates reliability and dependability in you.

Treat everyone fairly. Teams are like small families and you’re the parent. Favoritism only breeds sibling rivalry and manipulation.

Challenges of a Manager

You inherit people you didn’t hire. You’re Mary’s 80th supervisor and she wants little to do with you. You need to find a way of building an alliance with her. Tom, on the other hand, is banging your door every five minutes with questions. You need to find ways to help Tom calm down.

You are the sandwich generation. You are part of middle management. You need to bring stuff down from the top to your staff without the drama that may come with it. Similarly you need to be an advocate for your staff so those above understand their needs.

The art form here is being able to speak two different languages. To advocate for your staff you need to translate their concerns into the concerns of upper management—usually these are budget, productivity, and quality control and public relations. Somehow the concerns of staff that their workloads are too large, for example—have to tie into those upper management concerns. To just say that your staff are overworked means nothing—those above likely feel overworked themselves.

On the other side, you have to translate upper management talk into staff concerns—show how billing impacts client services, or how the policy affects their everyday work tasks. If you don’t, you are just imposing more stuff on them; without demonstrating the context, they will resent it.

You want generalists not specialists. You want to cultivate staff who have a range of skills. Why? Because when Sally goes on maternity leave for three months you want Tom to be able to take over some of her clients. To do this Tom needs to develop a range of skills both technical and person-centered.

Assessment: The Key

To bring this all together, assess needs and develop a supervisory plan for each and every person on your team. Some questions to ask yourself:

What is the nature of my relationship with this person? How can I improve it, develop rapport and trust so he or she feels safe coming to me as a supervisor?

How does this person learn? Some are visual learners, some experiential. Find out how each person learns best to maximize skill development.

How do they manage stress and anxiety? Does Mary become a control freak, does Tom overdo it and burn himself out? How can you help them manage their anxiety and stress better?

What are reasonable 3–6 month goals? What does Tom need to learn most in the next few months? Develop a list, have a plan.

The aim here is to not go on autopilot, not to treat everyone the same, because they are not the same. Deliberately discern and discuss what it is that each person needs, and needs from you and the company to be successful.

Be creative, be deliberate, be honest. Be the role model you are.

Topics: Art of Supervision

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