Managers at large organizations often start as first-line employees, and with training and development are promoted to managers/supervisors. McDonald's is world-famous for its training programs that enable them to promote rather than hire most managers. They have a myriad of courses offered at Hamburger University. Additionally, an executive from Walmart told me that 85% of their managers/supervisors started “on the floor.”
I believe that a focus on promotion from within should be more common on farms and ranches today. This will not happen without strategic workforce development and a greater focus on growth and development. Below are four tips for transitioning from a full-time worker to a position with supervision. These tips also apply to all supervisors.
Clarify responsibilities
Put yourself in these shoes. You have been given responsibility to supervise a three-person work team. However, no one told the three employees that you are now their supervisor. Take a minute to think about how that would work. Not the way you would want to start your new position. Unbelievably, this scenario happens all too often.
Like with everything, clarity is paramount. Employees need to know that they have a new supervisor. Even better, the employees are included in the transition of the new supervisor.
Items to be clarified include:
- Which employees will be supervised by the new supervisor?
- Which employees will the new supervisor be managing for day-to-day operations? Some of those supervised may have job responsibilities where they are directed by another manager at times. Others may at times join the team as part of their responsibilities.
- Which supervisory responsibilities will the new supervisor have, and which will be retained by his or her supervisor? Directing day-to-day tasks and implementing the dairy farm’s performance improvement system are included. Tasks to be decided include training, compensation, dismissal and hiring.
- A communication process between the new supervisor and his or her supervisor must be established to assist in the transition. A key to this is how the superior handles complaints and requests that come to him or her without first going to the new supervisor.
- Supervisory training and development are critical. Would you ever let an untrained person operate your planter or combine or mix feed? Of course not. Why then would you let an untrained person supervise your most valuable resource – your people? To be most effective, supervisors need training in supervision, leadership, quality assurance and communication. Such training is widely available in person and online. It is best to start this learning in advance.
Working manager
The new supervisor will almost certainly be a working manager, meaning that he or she retains tasks and responsibilities as well as his or her new supervisory responsibilities. The reality is that the two responsibilities are very different, as illustrated in Table 1.
Most new supervisors are promoted because they are great decision-makers. As the first line of Table 1 shows, making decisions is still important while those being supervised are coached to improve their decision-making. Line 2 illustrates the importance of relationships – trust – with those supervised. Lines 3 and 4 recognize that most new supervisors have little prior supervisory training. This also leads to new supervisors being reactive with people’s issues. The reality is that poor performance and interpersonal issues require proactive action.
Performance improvement
Dairy producers are continually working to improve the performance of their livestock and crops. Often the limiting improvement factor is workforce development. A focus on continuous workforce development will increase cow and crop performance and workforce engagement and retention. Like with cows and crops, the key to success is processes and systems – a performance improvement system.
This system is designed to answer the two key questions employees have about their performance.
- What is expected of me?
- How am I doing? Am I winning?
The key to answering the first question is clear expectations. The key to the second question is quality feedback. There are three types of feedback. There must be large quantities of positive and redirection feedback. Redirection feedback should be viewed as learning and is used to improve performance when execution is not perfect. Only when poor performance is due to an employee not wanting or trying to succeed should negative feedback be used.
The reason this is a system is that it is a continuing sequence of setting expectations and receiving feedback. I recommend a system with three components:
- Informal, continuous feedback assisting employees to improve performance.
- Frequent – often monthly – structured meeting to assist in assessing performance and resetting performance expectations.
- Annual strategic meeting to focus on the future, often referred to as a stay meeting.
Delegation
To avoid being overworked when adding supervisory responsibilities, new supervisors need to delegate tasks and responsibilities. Excellent delegation can be accomplished with four steps. Let’s look at each briefly.
Step 1. Select the tasks to be delegated and persons to assume it
This involves matching:
- Tasks, processes, responsibilities you have that are best accomplished by someone else.
- The skills, experience, motivation, etc., of those to whom you delegate.
You should select tasks that offer a win-win, help you – the supervisor – free time for other work and help the employee feel more engaged and continue to development. Initially, these should be high-frequency, low-complexity tasks. When selecting employees to delegate to, consider current knowledge, skill and ability; potential for development; current workload; and reliability.
Step 2. Define the tasks and the expectations of the persons assuming it
The keys to this step are determining the key measure of success – performance expectations – and how they will be measured. These are necessary for employee clarity and for you to track progress and provide feedback. It is important to clarify the responsibilities, the authority the employee has and the accountability.
Step 3. Provide resources, training and support
For training, use a structured training process, carefully and deliberately introduce all the ideas, methods and tools developed in the previous step, and be certain it outlines responsibilities, including explaining why. Use the time-honored training process of prepare-tell-show-do-review.
Step 4. Monitor, review and improve
The review step in the previous step provides a transition to this step. I always encourage using two questions in monitoring performance: What is going well? And what could be going better?
