Essential Skills Logistic Supervisors Need
When the role of a team member evolves to become a leader, it’s assumed that they inherit the essential skills logistic supervisors require to succeed purely based on the time invested within the company. That could not be further from the truth.
The number of years with any business does not translate into qualifications for higher roles.
Transferable Skills From Technician To A Leader
There is a drastic difference between technical skills on the floor and supervising team members to meet expectations.
Only 11% of HR leaders feel they have a strong enough bench strength in their front line leadership teams to take expected leadership roles.
These essential skills are often seen as things supervisors should pick up through osmosis by being around other leaders. The problem is that this approach doesn’t transform those people into good candidates for those leadership roles. Now you’ve got a problem, and you’ll realize it after the fact.
You have no one you can promote from within, and you now have to seek external candidates to add to your leadership ranks.
External Hirings Vs. Internal Promotions
Though some external hiring is good, you should still have a pipeline of leaders for internal promotion.
We helped identify this problem with one of our clients regarding their warehouse employees.
Their initial belief was that if you’ve worked here long enough, you know what you need to know to become a good supervisor or leader. When they promoted people who they thought should “get it automatically,” those individuals struggled in their roles. Taking this approach resulted in turnovers and not obtaining their performance numbers.
They came to us to deliver leadership training once they realized that leadership had its own skill sets. As a result, leaders began to understand the difference between transitioning from employee to group leader.
Once this was mutually understood, our client saw improvements in their operating results, and their leaders felt more confident, capable, and more consistent with one another.
Increase The Abilities Of Supervisors
Here are a few tips to increase the abilities of your logistic supervisors to be more effective:
Tip One: View Leadership As A Competitive Advantage
Too many companies tout their benefits, compensation, location, and flexibility. These are important to people when they’re looking for work. What if you could honestly say, “You will not work for a lousy supervisor or a bad manager if you work for us”? You may wonder how you could promise somebody they won’t work for a bad boss.
Suppose you decide you will not tolerate leadership behaviors that aren’t positive and conducive. Over time, you will not have the kind of supervisors that people want to quit and leave to go and work for somebody else. Use leadership as a competitive advantage.
Tip Two: Improve Communication
Your logistic supervisors need to have good conversations with their teams regarding performance. People generally want to win, but they must be told what winning looks like. Only when they receive feedback on how to win, can they do so more consistently.
Tip Three: Increase Effectiveness And Manage Conflicts
There are going to be disagreements over:
- How and what you do in your role
- Whether or not the goals are reasonable
- What the best method is
There will always be disagreements over proposed improvements to determine if this change will result positively. Managing conflicts and bringing constructiveness out of these disagreements is an essential skill that would make your logistic supervisors more effective.
Building Leadership Skills Within Teams
There is always room to build upon your team’s leadership skills, and our Front Line Leadership content can provide that. Whether it’s the core content or the additional content we have in our library, we can help your team master the fundamentals they initially need and provide more advanced leadership skills after.
Workshops can be delivered either on-site, in person, or through our state-of-the-art virtual training studio. An additional resource we offer is our On-Demand program. This option allows leaders to acquire training at their own pace, practice putting those lessons into action, and keep their learning going over several weeks or months.
Visit our website at uniquedevelopment.com, and from there, we can start a conversation to determine the right solution that will help your leaders elevate their performance and be more successful over time.
Together we will increase talent retention and also drive operating results.
