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New supervisors need training, but admitting it means you shouldn't be a supervisor in this business world. What a dilemma! And what hog wash! But face it, there are nearly 50 separate skills new supervisors should possess. From listening, showing empathy, increase observational powers, solving conflicts, you'll flounder for years without formal training and education. The new supervisor may eventually figure it out, but not without risk, expense, and the knawing and nashing of teeth! If you are a new manager, you don't want to hear trite phrases of advice like, "just be yourself", "go slow", and "listen more than you talk". No way. You want how-to information and concrete stuff. Regardless of your head count or type of business, you must develop "people smarts" to manage, motivate, and problem-solve effectively as a manager, especially if you are new. The 14 manager skills found below include various aspects of communication: listening well, speaking clearly, resolving conflicts with a calm, and fair-minded approach, and other critical job functions like observing performance, documenting properly, preventing violence, and getting along with upper management, and many more. Let's go through the list "David Letterman" Style: 14. Observing Performance: Look for evidence to support your impression of how employees do their jobs. There's no substitute for observing employees' performance. It's an invaluable tool to assess workers' skills, abilities, motivations and attitudes about their jobs. Some supervisors prefer to study activity reports, spreadsheets and work-flow charts. But that's a mistake. Sitting at a desk behind closed doors poring over paperwork prevents you from seeing with your own eyes how workers behave and what they actually do during their shift. The best way to observe performance is to devise a system that encompasses what to look for. You want to watch each employee not only to assess work quality, but also to evaluate conduct, appearance, vitality, attitude and eagerness to learn. 13. Documenting Performance Problems: Treat documentation as a communication tool to preserve facts and remove ambiguities. Experienced supervisors know that the first question their boss will ask when they propose terminating a problem employee is, "Do you have all the documentation you need?" Document personnel matters as they occur, not weeks or months later. To serve their purpose, documents must reflect a complete, accurate account of what individuals discussed and what events transpired on a specific date. Failing to maintain ongoing documentation can not only embarrass you in front of your boss and human resources director, but also limit your organization's ability to terminate poor employees. 12. Mastering Constructive Confrontation: Many supervisors dread confronting employees. It's often easier to drop hints and make indirect threats rather than initiate a face-to-face, fish-or-cut-bait conversation with an individual who must shape up, pronto. Constructive confrontation works best when you organize your thoughts in advance. In the days before you meet with an employee whose behavior or performance is unacceptable, map out what to say so that you follow a clear, logical framework. 11. Evaluating Performance: Give employees ongoing feedback on their performance so that they always know what they're doing right-and what they need to improve upon. Effective supervisors shower employees with frequent feedback. Assessing performance is a central part of their daily interaction with their staff. They praise superior work and provide constructive suggestions on how employees can elevate mediocre or substandard work into something truly excellent. 10. Resolving Coworker Conflicts: Pick your battles and focus on shared goals to referee disputes effectively. As much as you want to supervise people who get along well all the time, the harsh truth is conflicts will erupt. And when they do, it's not necessarily your job to intervene. In many cases, the best way to deal with bickering employees is to adopt a hands-off policy. Keep your distance. Let them resolve their own issues. If you rush to referee every conflict, you may wind up breeding more conflicts. Employees may figure that they can get your attention by butting heads with a coworker, so conflicts can multiply. What's worse, your quick intervention to settle conflicts teaches employees that they need not take responsibility for getting along on their own. 9. Giving Feedback: Express both good and bad input with judgment-free specificity so that it has a more positive, lasting impact on the employee. Old-school managers fold their arms across their chest, bark orders and tell workers what they're doing wrong. With a perpetual scowl on their face, these managers point out every mistake but rarely dish out praise. Today's more enlightened supervisors, by contrast, give feedback with an eye toward motivating employees. They treat feedback as a way to help fuel good performance, teach new skills and provide guidance that leads to improvement. Feedback is defined as the process of providing information to your employees about their past behavior in order to influence their future behavior. Effective feedback requires mutual understanding. Employees must understand that its purpose is to help them excel, not find fault or shake their confidence. 8. Delegating Work and Following Up: Boost your efficiency-and your team's morale-by handing off assignments to the right people. Delegating is a win-win proposition for you and your employees. You free yourself to focus on what matters most while you train and motivate your workers by entrusting key assignments to them. Supervisors often harbor misconceptions about delegation. They equate delegating with doling out tasks to people. But it's actually the process of having employees address meaningful projects-including ongoing duties-that go beyond short-term, to-do items. 7. Dispensing Discipline: Treat discipline as a means to educate employees and elevate their behavior, not as a form of punishment. Effective discipline flows from clear communication. If you and your employer provide clear, written guidelines to employees on your standards and expectations for acceptable behavior, then discipline becomes a simple, straightforward educational and enforcement tool. Your employee handbook should state your policy for responding to improper conduct or poor performance. As long as you dispense discipline in a uniform manner, you can address inappropriate or unacceptable behavior using a fair, consistent approach. 6. Inspiring and Praising Employees to Build Morale: Energize employees by taking every opportunity to recognize their contributions and urging them to excel. Every conversation with your employees produces one of three results: positive impact, no impact or negative impact. You want to create as many positive encounters as possible. To inspire people, set their sights on a faraway goal that's so exciting and potentially rewarding that they cannot help but covet it. Help them visualize what it'll feel like to reach the mountaintop-to know that they gave every ounce of their effort to deliver superior performance. 5. Building Your Team: By choosing the right people and getting them to believe in a shared goal, you lay the groundwork for a winning team. Building successful teams revolves around trust. People work together more effectively when they share a desire to achieve group goals without egos or rivalries getting in the way. Your challenge as supervisor is to earn credibility as the team's leader. How? Admit what you don't know and ask the team for help. Allot plenty of time in meetings for teammates to give input so that you speak less and listen more. Support the team's findings and increase its influence throughout your organization. Accept the strengths and weaknesses of each member. If you play favorites and tend to only listen to certain people, you'll exclude others and drive a wedge into the team. Pay special attention to quiet individuals. Let them speak up, even if that means muzzling more vocal members of the group. 4. Communicating Effectively with Upper Management: Relate to the top brass on their terms and present your ideas as solutions to problems they face. Relating to upper management boils down to one critical skill: analyzing issues from their perspective, not yours. Use empathy to deepen your understanding of the bosses' outlook. Step into their shoes. Ask yourself what aspects of your operation management cares about most. What do they like to measure? What pressures do they face? How do they define success? Communicating with senior executives requires rigorous preparation. Before you propose ideas, you must anticipate their questions, concerns and objections-and know what to say to address them. 3. Investigating Complaints and Incidents Properly: Take an unbiased, fact-based approach when investigating employee complaints. A litigation explosion has occurred in the past 20 years. Employers face mounting legal exposure on many fronts from harassment to discrimination. By investigating employee complaints properly, you can keep your employer out of court and help all parties reach a fast, fair resolution. As soon as you learn of a problem that merits investigation, speed and responsiveness are critical. Your prompt attention to the matter sends a message that you take the employee's complaint seriously. Putting off an investigation is viewed as negligence and apathy, even if you were just too busy at the time. 2. Managing Unfit for Duty Employees: Even if 99 percent of your employees are fit for duty, the remaining 1 percent can prove a handful. Follow your organization's fitness-for-duty policy and its procedures if you have one. It is designed to provide reasonable assurance that employees can perform their tasks in a reliable manner, that they are not under the influence of any substance, legal or illegal, that may impair their ability to perform, and are not mentally or physically impaired from any cause that can adversely affect their ability to competently perform their duties. As soon as you believe or realize that a worker appears unfit for duty, your first priority is to prevent harm to the employee and others. Enlist another manager to help you approach the employee; never take action alone against someone who poses a threat. If you and a colleague confront the employee, you reduce the physical danger and you gain the benefit of having a reliable witness in case of litigation. 1. Acting to Prevent Violence: Awareness of the red flags that can signal violent behavior can save lives. Know the conditions that breed violence, and protect your workplace from toxic conflicts. Much of the violence we read or hear about in the news occurs in faraway places. But when it erupts at work, it's an entirely different type of tragedy because we are more affected by the circumstances surrounding the incident. It's impossible to prevent all workplace violence. But we can become more astute at predicting when and where violence can occur-and take sensible steps to lower its odds. See the popular New Supervisor Training Videos and Topics here: NEW SUPERVISOR SKILLS VIDEOS you own and that go on your Web site to train new supervisors and all supervisors so you reduce risk in your organization and improve productivity (and stop HR Manager Headaches.) Daniel Feerst, MSW, LISW is author and publisher the WorkExcel.com web site which offer free resources and other products for purchase by human resource managers and workplace wellness experts. Reach Dan Feerst at 1-800-626-4327.
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