Basic Leadership Skills for Managers and Supervisors
Sanjay Goel
Soft Skills, Behavioural and Leadership trainer, Outbound training, DiSC trainer, Coach, Author, NLP and Hypnosis Practitioner, Customised Content Design and Delivery, Learning Consultancy
In organizations, employees who perform well are promoted to higher levels along with increments as a reward to their performance. This motivates employees to perform better and also benefits organizations in terms of cost.
That means, employees at the bottom level of a hierarchy, when perform well, are moved to supervisory role.
Now, they were individual performers whereas when they become supervisors, they have to get work done from others. They have to lead their teams. Both these roles are vastly different, and requires different mindset, attitude, perspective and skills (Leadership MAPS)
Not all of them who get promoted as supervisors succeed in their new role. When they fail, organizations have no option but to demote them to individual roles, or employees leave frustrated. Organization has lost a valuable resource.
Managers and Supervisors who are leaders can give a edge of their competitors in many ways. One of the major areas is innovation and improvement in systems and processes. You get many valuable suggestions from the bottom that can benefit in reducing the costs.
Many don’t give suggestions because the credit is taken by their bosses who are not aware of the damage they are doing. Leadership skills are presumed.
In separate researches conducted by Ohio and Michigan Universities, they concluded, Leadership at any level can have two parameters, performance (getting results) and relationships (supportive behaviour). As the human resources are gaining importance day by day, relationship (supportive behaviour) becomes critical for any leader. You will be amazed to know that, during my sessions on managerial/ leadership development, most of the participants believe that the key to leadership is getting results and rarely aware of importance of the supportive behaviour. This leads to high attrition and low job satisfaction at the bottom level. In any leadership workshop, it is important to change the mindset of the participants and make them realise the importance of supportive behaviour of a leader.
Dr. Paul Hersey, during a consulting assignment observed this and realized that many good performers were lost when they got promoted to supervisory level.
He later researched and concluded that leadership style does not depend on the leader alone and follower or subordinate should also be considered before choosing the kind of leadership style that is needed to be used. Also, one leadership style will not work for all the subordinates.
To choose the right leadership style, we need to know the competency level of the subordinates (Dr. Kenneth Blanchard named it as Maturity Level and Dr. Paul Hersey named it as Readiness level).
The competency level is subject to the task and depends on knowledge, skills and attitude (motivation) of the employee to perform that task. There are four competency levels and managers or supervisors need to use right matching leadership styles.
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These four leadership styles are combination of performance (directive) and relationship (supportive) leadership behaviour. These four leadership styles are,
Directive - Directive style where leader completely directs and instruct the subordinates on what is to be done. Only leader communicates and the subordinate follows instruction. This would generally work with fresh employee with no work experience. (High directive and low supportive).
Mentoring – Directive and supportive combined where leader directs and gives instruction. However, at this stage, leadership checks with the subordinate willingness to do the task and motivates to do the task. Communication is still one way. (High directive and high supportive). This is a very critical style as this is used for employees with some months of experience. Attrition is higher in employees at this level.
Supporting - Now focus shift from directive to supportive style, and two-way communication. Here, leaders create buy-in or involvement of the subordinate in the decision making on how to perform the task. (Low directive and high supportive). Here subordinate has high level of ability but low level of motivation.
Delegating - This style is low directive and low supportive style used for subordinates who are high on competence. Their motivation is high and they are ready to do the assigned task. Leader empowers subordinates to take decisions and monitors the process by taking periodic feedback. This is again one of the critical styles as leaders need to learn to delegate the tasks without unnecessary interference. This is also a very difficult style as it requires to come out of the mindset of distrust and interference.
Note that the competence level of the subordinate is in relation to task. As soon as the task changes, competency level also changes. For example, an experienced driver may need delegation while driving but when it comes to making noodles, he needs to told (directed) about every step if he has never made noodles before.?
Leadership MAPS, Leadership styles and delegating tasks to highly competent employees are the critical people skills that organizations should ensure every leader in the organization learns and implements when they are promoted to supervisory or managers role.
Thank you.