When it comes to the soft skills of supervising other people, certain basic principles can guide your effectiveness, even if you have never managed a group of people before. Generally, treating people the way you would like to be treated yourself will go a long way toward achieving effectiveness. Beyond that caveat, here are some specific guidelines to overseeing a group.
Managing a Group of People
Treat everyone with an equal amount of respect and dignity. This equates to never chastising an employee in front of his peers or anyone else. It also means you can never yell, insult or berate your people even in private.
Delegate effectively. Learn to give out jobs to each of the people you supervise. Some of them, like the older woman who has been there for five years, may not need close supervision and can be trusted to meet her quotas and deadlines. Still others, especially new people will need to be monitored periodically to ensure that they know what to do.
Be fair first and foremost. It is imperative that you impose the same standards on all employees in the same way. Don’t favor anyone or give excuses why an employee cannot do a task. If it is vital to the job, non-performance needs to be addressed with a structured disciplinary program.
Communication is Everything
Keep communication a priority. You should have departmental meeting with your people on a regular basis and in some cases, where time sensitivity is paramount, daily meetings to ensure that everyone’s priorities are the same. Encourage questions and be courteous in answering them, to encourage others to come forward if they don’t understand. If language issues exist, get someone who is bilingual to help communicate.
Always be positive. Being a winner and finding the good in everything is a gift that can make you a great supervisor instead of just an adequate one. Your optimism will be contagious and will inspire others.
Lifelong Training for Yourself
Find an experienced mentor. A seasoned manager can be a great sounding board to help guide you through tough issues the first time you deal with them. Even an informal mentor is better than none.
Develop skills through training. Get your employees ready to be promoted to higher levels, even if it means a good employee will be transferred to another part of the company. By developing your people, you are building a stronger base and your achievements will get noticed.
You will make mistakes along the way in supervising people, but if you stay true to the principles here, you are much more likely to succeed. What do you have to lose by giving these guidelines a try?
Therese Haberman - With a MS degree and 25 years in HR mgmt, in 2005, Ms.Therese began a writing career specializing in children and HR.
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