It’s that time of year again—the kids are heading back to school. But what about you? Should you go back to school as a supervisor? It’s a great opportunity to commit to becoming a more effective leader for your team.
Think about the difference between the best manager you’ve ever worked for and the average one. There are only a few key things that separate the average from the outstanding, and you can learn them too. Instead of settling for being “just” a supervisor, you can aspire to something greater by challenging what you believe to be true and finding ways to become even more effective.
Tip #1: Model Yourself After the Best Leaders
You can probably think of a manager you’ve worked for who was truly excellent. Chances are, you’re already doing some of what they did as a supervisor. Just like you learn from your parents, you can learn from great leaders and adopt their best approaches with your own team. By modeling yourself after the greatest leaders you’ve worked for, you can learn to lead with their same level of effectiveness.
Characteristics of Great Managers
Great managers are characterized by being positive and supportive, believing that most employees want to do well, care about the company, and welcome responsibility. They see that others have many ideas, are trusting and respectful, and prioritize coaching, counseling, and offering compliments. Their focus is on both relationships and tasks; they are friendly, open, engaged, and involved, and they focus on preventing problems. Great managers also know their people, which helps them gain respect, trust, and cooperation. They actively pursue problems to solve and prevent recurrence, involving employees and gaining their support. They continuously develop their knowledge of human resources policies, procedures, and past practices, allowing them to confidently deal with employee problems. Great managers believe in continuous learning and actively seek out training opportunities. They understand that training, coaching, and mentoring lead to improved performance, trust, and cooperation, and minimize errors, recognizing that learning by trial and error is costly and frustrating.
Contrast with Grim Managers
In contrast, “grim” managers are typically negative and critical, believing employees are lazy, don’t care about the company, and avoid responsibility. They are suspicious, have little respect for others, and tend to criticize, coerce, and complain. They are solely task-focused, aloof, reserved, or absent, and primarily focus on correcting problems after they occur. Grim managers often avoid problems, disregard their people, and are unconcerned about the overall process, focusing only on their own departmental activities. Their uncertainty often leads them to ignore problems until they escalate out of control, at which point they overreact. They also tend to ignore outstanding and good performers, losing the support of their best people, and believe employees should learn through trial and error, often making excuses for not providing training.
Leading by Example
Your leadership effectiveness directly reflects your character and values. As a frontline leader, you are an ambassador who brings information from management to your team and conveys team concerns back to management. You earn respect and cooperation not only by what you say and do, but how you say it and do it. Leaders must demonstrate their expectations through their actions, not just their words. This means showing commitment to values like teamwork, quality, and on-time delivery by what you talk about, measure, praise, and correct. It’s crucial to avoid favoritism by treating team members consistently in assigning tasks, enforcing rules, communicating, and providing training opportunities. When promoted from within, leaders face the challenge of balancing leadership with existing friendships, setting boundaries to ensure fairness and prevent resentment.
Becoming a Coach
The “Coach” leadership style is often the most effective, focusing on both performance and team member satisfaction. A Coach is approachable, respectful, engaging, and supportive, believing that people and performance complement each other. They communicate clear, achievable goals and empower and hold people accountable. Coaches encourage teamwork, involve people in all stages of production, provide training to address performance gaps, and manage conflict constructively.
Tip #2: Be a Lifelong Learner
Committing to being a lifelong learner is a crucial part of supervisory development. Even after completing a great course, the reality is you need to keep coming back to grow your skills. This could be as simple as refreshing on the fundamentals or taking a more advanced look at familiar topics. By committing to growth and development every single year, you can adapt to the changing landscape and become more valuable to your company and team.
Being a lifelong learner is essential for supervisors to continually grow their capabilities and confidence, adapt to change, and improve their effectiveness.
The Value of Continuous Learning and Training
Learning is an ongoing process for leaders. Often it’s what we learn after we think we know it all that is most meaningful, significant, and enduring. A person’s security in the world comes from a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. Training is considered an investment that should generate measurable dividends and intangible benefits. Indian companies, for example, are convinced that upgrading the skills of their people is the way to win in a globalized world.
Consequences of Lacking Training
When leadership training is not done or is ineffective, it leads to cascading costs, conflicts, and systematic problems. The lack of effective leadership training can result in increased employee grievances, escalating scrap and replacement costs, and an inability of supervisors to solve root causes. Organizations may ignore or tolerate these issues until they worsen and become disastrous. Not training sends the unintended message that management doesn’t care about performance or employee frustrations, which can lead to demotivation. Learning by trial and error is the costliest method, resulting in scrap, rework, customer complaints, and lost business.
Effective Training and Development
Effective training helps develop “know-how” and “can-do” skills, with the “will-do” factor depending on authority, opportunity, and motivation. This includes skills in interviewing, selection, hiring, and effectively training new people. Great managers actively search out training opportunities and participate in leadership development. Supervisors are encouraged to set small, incremental goals to build new habits for personal and professional growth. Programs like Front Line Leadership are designed to increase capability, confidence, and consistency, improve safety, quality, and business performance, and positively impact team members’ lives. Training should be practical, relevant, and hands-on, with opportunities for practice and application. Effective on-the-job training, like the Job Instruction Methodology (Preparation, Presentation, Try-out/Test, Follow-up), ensures team members are capable, confident, and consistent.
Overcoming Barriers to Learning
Leaders need to have a growth mindset. This means embracing new skills and challenges, taking on new assignments, and increasing personal confidence. It’s about being willing to step out of your “comfort zone” and into the “learning zone,” where growth occurs. Lifelong learning helps supervisors stay current with the changing business world and equips them to cope with constant changes in technology, competition, and markets.
Tip #3: Stay Curious and Open-Minded
After being in a supervisory role for a while, it’s easy to get negative, cynical, or overly judgmental. We want you to challenge that mindset by staying curious. This means having a healthy desire to discover new things and remaining open to the idea that there are things you can do differently. If you can embrace curiosity and combine it with the other tips, you will become a supervisor who is always in school and always learning from your team, peers, and leaders.
Embracing Curiosity and Openness
A key element in creating positive momentum on a team is to embrace an attitude of “How might we…” instead of “We can’t because…”. This involves thinking in terms of possibilities rather than obstacles, recognizing that all progress begins in the leader’s mindset. Staying curious is also a behavior that builds trust and respect.
Problem Solving and Continuous Improvement
Curiosity drives effective problem-solving, encouraging leaders to ask “Why?” to probe the root of a problem. By being open-minded, leaders can involve customers, suppliers, other departments, and their own team members in finding potential solutions and options. This collaborative approach moves beyond a “go-it-alone” mindset. Leaders should have a mindset of curiosity when facing change, being open to experimenting and looking for answers without judgment, recognizing that most change initiatives will require fine-tuning and adjustment.
Leading Change with an Open Mind
When faced with change, it’s tempting to be critical or negative. However, an open-minded leader recognizes that many changes will be effective and move the company forward, even if initial skepticism exists. It means having an experimental mindset. Leaders who are positive towards change and provide logical reasons for it can reduce team members’ resistance, which often stems from fear of the unknown or disruption to existing habits.
Resolving Conflict
Curiosity helps leaders in conflict situations by promoting a constructive view and understanding that other people might not be “bad people just because they act badly”. Most conflicts stem from misunderstandings, and being curious about the other person’s point of view is key to resolution. Asking open-ended questions helps clarify situations and builds understanding for all parties involved in a conflict.
Partnering for a Positive Culture
By embracing these three tips, you can transform your leadership journey and become an outstanding supervisor. As you get better as a leader, we’re here to help you every step of the way. We want to be your partners in building an awesome culture where employees want to work and stay, so that you can attract the talent you need for success.
Whether you continue to listen to our podcasts or bring our virtual training to your desktop, it all starts with a conversation.
