Leadership – Basis for
Managers, Supervisors, Volunteers
Plus Problematic Employee Situations

n.b. You select the modules you want for your program.

A Primer for Supervisors and Managers: Well Begun is Half Done
Most of the problematic situations I have heard as coach, consultant, and trainer over a 25+ year period can be avoided by putting in place these preventive professional practices

Personal Behavior v. Professional Practice
Employees hear, “A high degree of professionalism is required in this job.” Sounds good, but provides absolutely no direction. Learn to develop a professional repertoire, to think in terms appropriate to the job, work unit, organization.

Sharing Responsibility – Taking Initiative
Avoid major confrontations from the “git go.” Clarify the job announcement, your description of it in the interview, and the employee’s role prior to sealing the deal and contracting for the job. Begin your interview contact by recognizing that supervising is a two-way street. Get the applicant to acknowledge his own initiative and responsibility in coming in for the interview in the first place.

Agreement to do This Job – Getting the Basic Contract
Before you say, “You’ve got the job.” Make sure that the applicant knows what the job is. The time to clarify the job is not in the interview, but in the meeting you hold just prior to offering the applicant the job. Before you can get that essential agreement that the applicant accepts the job, the applicant has to understand it, or you do not have a contract to begin with.

Expectations: Making the Implied Explicit
One sub-set of this initial contracting is to make explicit expectations, rather than letting them lie fallow as “implied agreement,” only to surface later with acrimony and complaint. Once surfaced, an expectation can be negotiated into a ground rule, or articulated as part of the work contract.

Orientation
Orient employees to their job, their work unit, and the organization in its entirety. Most orientations cover one of these, or at best two. Each level has distinctive requirements. This is part of the contract. When the employee is late, it inconveniences other members of the work unit, an perhaps the organization as well.

Probationary Targets
Be clear about the performance requirements you have for the employee. State a specific level required within the probationary period. Make sure that the employee is clear about this, and also determined what resources will be required to meet those targets. Failure to set clear targets may mean keeping the employee on out of guilt, or letting him go due to lack of clear outcome measures and failure to adequately supervise him.

Employee New to Task v. Seasoned to Task
Just because someone has been on the job twenty years does not mean that the employee is seasoned to every task. You might have a new employee who is already seasoned to tasks that a long term employee has yet to learn. So, we look at the necessity to supervise and resource employees in terms of where they are in learning a task.

Supervisory Conferences
One of the greatest shortcomings in supervisory responsibility seems to be the lack of formal on-going contact with both employees. This even happens during the probationary period. Other employees often find that they are having their first supervisory conference of the year during their Performance Evaluation conference. A supervisor is required to stay in contact with the employee in order to determine developmental needs, level of performance, and to provide guidance and direction.

Communicating Corrective Feedback
This is often termed “negative” feedback or “criticism.” It isn’t, if delivered professionally. There are only two kinds of feedback that have any place in either social or professional life: Confirming and Corrective. Confirming is designed to provide sufficient specific information so that the performer is aware what he or she did right, what to continue, or what is completed. Corrective feedback is an essential part of the redirecting, guiding, or re-programming of an employee. This is essential supervising. And it is also an essential part of the supervisory conference.

Advocacy for Employees
Mid-level managers get so embroiled in the day to day urgencies that they may not take on this fine point of leading, involving their employees in promoting their own ideas, projects, or programs, or in advocating for those very ideas, etc. to those higher in the organization. This teaches the employee that you can lead from anywhere.