Should Supervisors Be Expected to “Lead” If Not Trained for Their Job AND The Jobs of Those They Lead?

by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations, Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.

Employers are faced with a lot of challenges these days. Corporate structures are putting pressures on local management to extract higher and higher efficiencies and to endlessly lower costs. These directives tend to vacillate with the earnings report seasons but always assume that the supervisors and managers who are expected to implement these orders have received proper training to do so with, in some cases, fewer and fewer resources. Nearly anyone can master driving a car, but it takes an entirely different skill set to fix it…with disappearing tools and a shrinking budget to replace them.

When it comes to first line supervisors, sometimes they are selected for the ability to “go along and get along.” Others may be selected from among consistently performing workers in the area because of their knowledge, demonstrated expertise and performance of their work. Often when selecting supervisors, managers lack the opportunity to assess other leadership qualities or to provide remediation of areas of weakness. Without benchmarks, tools and standards in place to train workers, a prospective supervisor selected may not become the most fully trained worker upon which to add management responsibilities.

In a more dire situation, a supervisor may be selected with no background or experience with the work or workers performing the work they are assigned to supervise. In both cases, proper training of supervisors would be greatly beneficial and appreciated, including training on the tasks for which they are monitoring workers performance as well as new administrative tasks. The latter includes tasks such as filling out necessary forms, communicating both ways in the chain of command, scheduling and monitoring work and even providing minimum assistance to their workers to help them better perform their tasks given the changing constraints and expectations that often arise.

A supervisor or manager that does not have the expertise and knowledge to oversee the work is placed in a precarious, sometimes adversarial, position to receive criticism from their workers and management. Without structure and a framework to fully train supervisors, some may succumb to their vulnerability. Supervising people to perform critical tasks for measured outcomes before receiving proper and complete training can develop symptoms detrimental to the firm’s business model not to mention the notion of teambuilding. Insecurity, branding as incompetent, giving orders to workers who view them as unready and unworthy or, worse, giving orders that would lead workers to malperform can be toxic on many levels. This can cause a potentially good supervisor, or manager, who could be a good leader to spiral out of control and onto a path toward voluntary or imposed separation.

For employees to willingly follow a leader, they have to believe the leader has legitimacy, competency, and that that leader’s directions are reasonable and compliable, leading to completion of tasks culminating in a measure of performance of the group. To get employees to work towards the common goal, there has to be a consistency of purpose and common thread demonstrated by the supervisor and the management that chose him or her.

Just as each employee should be trained completely and correctly to perform tasks required of their position, their supervisor/manager must also be trained to recognize competent performance of those tasks and to be able to provide technical expertise should it be required. Throwing a supervisor or manager into a position of leadership and holding them accountable to that without proper preparation in the supervisor role NOR in the job being supervised is a recipe for failure – not only for the individuals directly affected, but the organization and potentially the company. Sure, a few may be able to self-train themselves into the role, but did they train themselves correctly and completely? More troubling still is the many who don’t make it when they, with a little structure and guidance, could have been great, respected and followed leaders.

Companies have to become more deliberate in developing all levels of their organization if they want maximum efficiency and effectiveness, as well as their return on worker investment, Periodic objective reviews can keep training on the right track. Having records showing each person has mastered all of the required tasks of the job classification no matter if the job of the supervised or the supervisor, or both, should be seen as an obvious necessity.

Proactive Technologies, Inc. has experience in setting-up structured on-the-job training system and providing implementation support for hourly and salary positions, designed exactly to the clients needs, to ensure smooth and reliable succession moves at all levels. Check out Proactive Technologies’ structured on-the-job training system approach with the accelerated transfer of expertise system® to see how it might work at your firm, your family of facilities or your region. Contact a Proactive Technologies representative today to schedule a GoToMeeting videoconference briefing to your computer. This can be followed up with an onsite presentation for you and your colleagues.