Corporate E-Learning

Welcome to the Supervising Others workshop. Supervising others can be a tough job. Between managing your own time and projects, helping your team members solve problems and complete tasks, and helping other supervisors, your day can fill up before you know it. This workshop will help supervisors become more efficient. They will also become more proficient with delegating, managing time, setting goals and expectations (for themselves and others), providing feedback, resolving conflict, and administering discipline.

First things first: your employees need to know what you expect of them in order to succeed. In this module, we will work through the four steps of setting expectations. 1. Define the requirements. 2. Identify opportunities for improvement and growth. 3. Discuss the requirements. 4. Put it all in writing.

Goal setting is the single most important life skill that, unfortunately, most people never learn how to do properly. Goal setting can be used in every single area of your life, including financial, physical, personal development, relationships, or spiritual growth. According to Brian Tracy’s book Goals, fewer than 3% of people have clear, written goals, and a plan for getting there. Setting goals puts you ahead of the pack! Some people blame everything that goes wrong in their life on something or someone else. They take the role of a victim and they give all their power and control away. Successful people instead dedicate themselves towards taking responsibility for their lives, no matter what unforeseen or uncontrollable events occur. Live in the present: the past cannot be changed, and the future is the direct result of what you do right now!

Just as important as what tasks you assign to individuals is how you assign them. Allowing employees to have a say in what tasks they perform and how they perform them can increase job satisfaction and performance exponentially. However, there are often situations where tasks need to be assigned quickly, or you may require menial tasks that no one really wants to do, to be completed. This module will give you several ways to assign work and explore which method is appropriate in which situation.

Many supervisors feel that by giving tasks to others, they’re giving their power away. This simply isn’t true! Delegation is one of the most valuable skills you will ever learn. By delegating the tasks that you don’t really need to do, you free up time for those high-reward projects. Even better, delegating doesn’t have to be all or nothing. In this module, we will learn about the degrees of delegation and when to use each of them.

Now that we understand the different ways of delegating, let’s look at the actual skills involved in delegating. At first sight, delegation can feel like more hassle than it’s worth. However, by delegating effectively, you can hugely expand the amount of work that you can deliver. When you arrange the workload so that you are working on the tasks that have the highest priority, and other people are working on meaningful and challenging assignments, you have a recipe for success.

As a supervisor, you will work with all types of people in all types of situations. With this in mind, it only makes sense that there are many types of feedback that we can deliver. In turn, delivering the appropriate type of feedback increases the chance that the receiver will hear, understand, accept, and act on that feedback.

Supervisors often find that between helping their colleagues, managing their staff, and performing their own tasks, that there are not enough hours in the day. This module will give you some tools to plan and prioritize effectively and make the most of the time that you have.

Supervisors are often called in to help mediate conflicts within their team, or sometimes within other teams. Although many people dislike dealing with conflict, when it is managed properly, it can be a positive thing. With the proper tools, people are able to air their ideas and their issues, share information in a constructive manner, and work towards resolving their differences. All of this should result in a more productive, respectful, open workplace.

Becoming a supervisor can happen in many ways. You may be hired from outside the company to take on a team. You might be assigned to create a brand new team. Or, you might be promoted from within the team. Each situation requires some special skills for success.

Being a new supervisor can be intimidating. How will you know what to do? What if you make mistakes? What if you don’t know the answer? In our final module, we will give you some tips to get you on the path to becoming a great supervisor.

Although this workshop is coming to a close, we hope that your journey to improve your supervisory skills is just beginning. Please take a moment to review and update your action plan. This will be a key tool to guide your progress in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. We wish you the best of luck on the rest of your travels!