Today’s front-line manager faces far greater challenges than any of their predecessors. Enterprises of all kinds are not only supposed to pursue higher quality, meet and exceed ever-changing customer expectations, and beat ever-more agile competition, but expect this to be achieved in less time, with fewer people, using more modern technology, and working within the flattest possible organisational structure. Supervisors must, therefore, constantly juggle their time and energy to simply survive (and try to remain reasonably sane in the process).
Despite these challenges, the good news is that any supervisor's main tasks can be broken into five key (and relatively unchanging) skill clusters. The Competent Supervisor Questionnaire is a tool you can use to help supervisors identify their strengths in these key areas and the skills they need to improve upon:
• Setting Direction
• Planning and Organising
• Coaching/Developing People
• Measuring and Managing Performance
• Maintaining Effective Relationships.
By becoming fully proficient and competent in each of the five skill clusters, supervisors can not only survive in the modern organisation, they can actually excel in their roles and progress to higher levels of management, building on a solid skill foundation.
The self-scoring questionnaire can be completed in just a few minutes. Participants review 25 typical workplace scenarios and choose the actions they would take in these situations. The booklet includes rich interpretation and planning notes to help participants transform what they’ve learned into a plan for developing their own effective supervisory style.
Sample scenarios
• You have just been appointed to a supervisory role for a team of people that you have not met before. They have a reputation for being difficult to manage.
• Two members of your team have not been collaborating well in recent months and even have had a few public arguments.
• An enterprise-wide directive requires every team to cut costs by 10 percent over the next six months.
The Competent Supervisor Questionnaire selected contents:
• Response Form
• Introduction
• Supervisory Scenarios
• What is involved?
• Recording your results
• Interpretation
• Taking action to become more competent.
