So it’s been like three months in this supervisory position, and I am not enjoying it.
The challenging responsibilities of a supervisor, for me, are addressing performance gaps, delegating appropriately, motivating, balancing management perspective with technical and people concerns, among others. I will just see if there are others.
As much as all supervisors want everyone on their team to be competent for the jobs they are supposed to do, this is not always the case. Competency gaps or misalignment may have been the result of problematic hiring process, age, reorganization, or other reasons. Whatever reasons these may be, and usually these are beyond the supervisor’s control, it is still the supervisor’s responsibility to deliver results.
Trained as I was in classical military training methodologies, my default corrective mechanism is the “sandwich method.” This is done by the supervisor providing instruction on how to address the performance gap, followed by a punishment (usually a physical activity), then the supervisor repeats the lesson on how to do the task correctly.
Of course, this is addressing a performance gap, which is addressing an immediate concern. The deeper concern is the competency gap, which is an altogether different matter.
Although the two may have a common root cause, like motivation.
Performance gaps and competency gaps can be addressed as these can be corrected. However, if the reason is motivation, addressing this is not as straightforward as either of the two.
As listed above, motivation is another difficult of being a supervisor. There are a number of theories on motivation, and identifying which approach to use for every employee’s unique situation is a challenge. Now how about if it is the supervisor that needs motivation, on staying or on delivering according to standards.
Another challenge is on delegating. I read in an HBR article that people who cannot delegate may have some behavioral issues (I will post the link here in the near future), such as trust or conceit. If I have difficulty delegating but I cannot identify which of those two is the reason, are there other possible reasons?
Another challenge of being a supervisor is balancing how to address management prerogative vis-à-vis technical and people concerns.
Depending on the company or organization, supervisors usually are promoted from people who have demonstrated above-average skills and competencies in the skills they are hired for. As such, they have been proven themselves in doing their main work as specialists with wide and deep appreciation of their work and the work’s immediate context.
When they are promoted to supervise people, they are given a new role (note that I used “new” instead of “higher” role), frequently without adequate training. Management hopes that the learned higher technical competency would translate to ability to deliver on broader responsibilities, not considering that broader responsibility usually involves managing people, which was not a key requirement in the specialist role. Thus, high technical competency will be used to address a leadership competency requirement. Unfortunately, in my experience, this can lead to frustration to the new leaders as they are used to delivering results [on their own] while seeing team results, which they see as a reflection of their performance as supervisors, below their self-determined levels.
Also, I question myself: For a limited financial compensation for being responsible for deliverables, is it worth it?
Yes, I am stepping into the realm of extrinsic motivators. Honestly, I do not love being designated a formal supervisor. I would rather be a person recognized for my skills, including relating with people, coaching and mentoring them to help them deliver and provide them with adequate resources and work environment. I realize that all these things can be done with being a formal supervisor, but perhaps the organizational reality that makes this difficult is that one has to do all these things in the context of an organizational environment that has a conflict of philosophy on leadership, responsibility, and abused culture of completed staff work.
I understand that I may be being too hard on myself… I should allow myself some learning curve, and maybe I am just experiencing these difficulties because I am learning… but am I? I am just thinking of what the organization requires of my team…. And that organization does not care about learning and think about learning curve for those below them (in general, I mean).
I miss my previous weekends studying new things that, well, yes, would be helpful for work, but they are really of different disciplines. I like playing the role of a second or third perspective on proposed ideas or activities. I miss learning how to lead people from the experience of others.
My life has become way busier compared with how it was when I was working in my previous employer. But becoming a supervisor changed it from overly loaded to overly vague and unclear, trying to guess what the bosses want without guidance or with conflicting instructions from multiple authorities.
Time to check my blood pressure now…
