Supervising involves securing, developing, and using essential resources to ensure the company's success. Supervisors are effective if they achieve their goals and efficient if they do it with a minimal amount of resources. One of the company's most important resources is their employees. Supervisors spend a lot of time and effort planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling the work of employees (and other resources, such as equipment and inventory).
Origin of the term “Supervisor” – the term supervisor has its roots in Latin, where it means “looks over.” It was originally applied to the master of a group of artisans.
Characteristics of a Supervisor
The job of supervision is so demanding that companies tend to look for super people to fill the role. Some of the characteristics companies are seeking in their supervisors are:
· Job knowledge
· Results orientation
· Problem-solving
· Communication
· Leadership
· Teach-ability
· Adaptability to change
· Ability to build a team
· Integrity and credibility
· Tenacity and perseverance
· Willingness to take initiative
· Positive attitude
· Dependability and reliability
· Demonstrating a customer-service attitude
Five Stages of Transition
Typically, supervisors have greater experience, have held a greater variety of jobs in the company, and have more education than the employees they supervise. The fact that someone is named a supervisor doesn’t mean that a complete change happens overnight. Most often, the transition takes place through five stages:
1. Taking hold: learning how to run the department, establishing personal credibility, and beginning to build a power base.
2. Immersion: the supervisor gets to know the real problems of the department and becomes fully informed about the operations there.
3. Reshaping: the supervisor gradually rebuilds the department to fit their style, making meaningful contributions to operations, and placing an “imprint” on the way of doing things.
4. Consolidation: the supervisor works to remove deeply rooted problems while perfecting the changes previously made.
5. Refinement: fine-tuning the operations, consolidating the gains, and seeking new opportunities for making improvements.
Which phase are you in? How do you see yourself transitioning to the next phase?
Henry Fayol, a French industrialist, believed that managerial excellence is a technical ability and can be trained. Fayol’s 14 Principles of Management (1916) still meet the requirements of modern management.
Practical Guidelines
1. Study the job of supervising and keep learning.
2. Maintain a focus on your key tasks (planning, organizing, staffing, leading and controlling) despite daily crises.
3. Recognize that your job must mesh with the priorities, demands, and goals of the company.
4. Find ways to involve employees in key tasks and use their input.
5. Follow the chain of command whenever possible.
6. Treat employees fairly.
7. Be patient with your own developmental progress, remembering the stages of transition.
8. Display integrity, consideration, energy, patience, and flexibility.
9. Find creative ways to achieve results.
10. Strive for balance between being employee-centered and task centered, between pressures from higher management and employees, and between your work and your personal life.
For more information about what a supervisor is and their role in management, go to McGraw-Hill’s Higher Ed, Chapter 1: http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/free/0073545082/323131/Chapter_1.pdf.
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