Supervisors are the first line of leadership in your company.  The success of your organization lies in the supervisor’s ability to gain the willing cooperation of his direct reports.

Individual contributors spend 90% of their time in task-oriented activities and just 10% of their time in people-oriented activities.  The best of these workers stand out, either because of the volume of work they complete or the quality of the work they produce, or both.  These super workers go about their job conscientiously meeting and exceeding the expectations of their supervisors and gaining approval for their dependability.

In return, super workers are promoted to supervisors.  Nothing says more about a company’s commitment to its employees than to promote from within.  Typically, the manager calls the super worker into her office on Thursday and offers him the promotion.  Exhilerated, the new supervisor goes home and tells his spouse.  On Sunday night they celebrate his good fortune with dinner at the in-laws.  He reports to work Monday morning as the supervisor.

Sound familiar?  Few companies groom their management teams.  They don’t have a plan of succession and promote superworkers with the expectation that they will get the same level of performance from the people they supervise as they contributed as a worker.  What most companies don’t realize is that a supervisor must spend 50% of his time in people-oriented activities and just 50% in task-oriented activities.  The new supervisor is expected to succeed as a natural extension of his success as an individual contributor.

But most new supervisors don’t know what to do!  They have little confidence of themselves in a supervisory role.  Their direct reports today were co-workers just a few days ago.  Success was measured in personal output; now it is measured in the ability to motivate others to perform.  Most new supervisors are reluctant to perform as a supervisor so as to not lose the favor of former friends and co-workers, and so as not to overstep their authority.  As a result, they fail to meet the expectations of their manager or of their direct reports.

Supervisors must be trained to do the job well.  The ideal is to invest in a leadership development program specific to the needs of the new supervisor as part of a pre-determined succession plan.  Successful companies identify the leader-candidates in their organization and grow them into the next position – before they are promoted.  If the ideal isn’t possible, then shortly after the new supervisor occupies her position, participating in a supervisor development process is essential.  An investment in your human capital is a practical and strategic necessity and the return in productivity and performance will return that investment many times over both in employee satisfaction and retention, and in bottom line profits.

Leaders are not born.  They acquire their skills and attitudes through purposeful and careful training and development.  Leadership in your management team begins with the supervisors.  Don’t let your super workers down by promoting them into a new position without investing in their, and your, success.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 1:55 pm and is filed under General Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.