Tips for Becoming a High Performance Supervisor!

Supervisors have to work at being strong and influential leaders. There are some basic steps that all supervisors/managers need to practice to ensure that they’re truly effective as leaders in their workplace.

1. Define and explain your role and responsibilities. When your team understands the “big picture” of what your role and responsibilities entail then your direction and delegated tasks will be better understood and welcomed by your staff.

2. Set reasonable objectives that are obtainable and that do not conflict with other goals asked of your staff. Employee motivation can be damaged quickly if your short term goals interfere with your long term goals and vise versa. Don’t be the supervisor who pushes too hard on smaller objectives that ultimately interfere with larger objectives. This will hinder your overall success.

3. Provide an opportunity for your staff to participate in the decision making process. Don’t always assume that you have the only and/or best answers to achieving goals and success for your team. Supervisors often forget that their ultimately part of a team and their role is just to lead, supervisor and maintain an effective team. Supervisors should be explaining to their team why decisions are made so that they can help rationalize the decision and provide feedback on how to improve if necessary.

4. PLAN YOUR ACTIONS instead of making it up as you go! Staff needs the big and small picture for their department to be as effective and contributing as you want and need them to be. If you find yourself just making it up as you go then you’re selling your team short. It’s harder to keep employees motivated when tasks and goals change day to day.

Your team is not only as strong as your weakest link but their also only as strong as their leader allows them to be. Leaders (supervisors & managers) often complain that their team is inefficient but they never look to themselves on how and why their team isn’t being successful. This is a huge pitfall for many leaders because they’re not only doing their team a disservice but their also hindering their own individual success.