How to Be an Effective Supervisor
There are always ways to improve your ability to supervise. It doesn't matter if you're new to managing, or have been guiding others for years. Being an effective supervisor is about finding new and better ways to help your subordinates reach their goals. These goals may be set by you or someone higher-up on the corporate ladder.
What is a Supervisor Responsible For?
As a supervisor, you’re responsible for the performance of everyone working underneath you. If they’re not able to generate results, it will be difficult to meet the goals that you’re bosses have set for you.
To be an effective supervisor, you should be able to help guide others towards a unified goal. You should also promote growth in your company’s human capital. To do so, you need to be:
• Setting goals for your team members
• Monitoring their performance
• Correcting any problems before they grow
• Encouraging your employees to increase their capabilities and achieve new goals
Communicate Effectively
Communication is one of the most important aspects of being a supervisor. If you can’t effectively communicate with your team, it will be difficult to align them with company goals. You will also find it hard to relay the best ways to achieve them.
When supervising, you must make it a point to communicate your expectations clearly. This can help prevent confusion. Being clear with what you expect also allows you to hold employees responsible for their performance.
Be Gentle with Criticisms
No matter how great your team is, every supervisor is faced with the situation of pointing out shortcomings. One of your core responsibilities is both keeping employees on track by correcting issues early on.
You’re also motivating them to push the limits of their capabilities. This often involves focusing on ways they can improve.
Criticism is a natural part of being a supervisor, and shouldn’t be negative in nature. Instead, you should portray criticism as an opportunity to grow. You should always follow with ways that the staff member can work to reach your expectations of them.
Ask for Feedback
One of the best ways to become a more effective supervisor is to discover your shortcomings. Just like you provide constructive criticism to your employees, you should welcome the same from them.
Take the time every few months to have an open and friendly talk with a few different people that you supervise. As them about any ways they feel you could be more effective, and any areas they feel you’re lacking in.
Regardless of how good of a boss that you think you are, you’re going to find that others may have different perceptions. Encouraging and implementing feedback from your team will help align their perception with yours.
Being an effective leader means being able to communicate with the people who work for you. You must also guide them towards the results you want and help prevent any missteps along the way. Just like you should push your employees to always be improving, you should expect the same from yourself.
To be as effective as possible, you should always be working on ways to improve your skills, your performance and the way you interact with your team.
Always communicate with your staff. The longer you delay information, either to everyone or to one person, the more difficult it will be for your staff to prepare for changes and listen to you as a leader.
March 26th, 2014 “Stepping Up to Supervision” 1:00 pm EST / 11:00 am PST
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Tracey Fieber helps business owners simplify, automate, and grow their businesses and their lives. She believes in the power of hiring the right people, and helps her clients cultivate highly effective teams that allow them to focus on the work about which they're passionate. By nurturing business owners' strengths and holding them accountable for their own success, Tracey's leadership, communication, and coaching techniques help her clients take massive leaps forward.