If you are like most supervisors, you were chosen for a management position because of your strong individual performance. You have likely been a high performer throughout your career resulting in praise, recognition, and increased opportunities. From school to the workforce, you have developed your skills and those skills have landed you a leadership role.
If you are like most supervisors, you did not receive any training for this role. You may not have thought anything of it at the time and imagined you could simply figure it out on your own as you have with so many other things. You have gotten where you are because of your hard work and performance. What’s one more thing, right?
If you are like most supervisors, you are shocked to find that managing a team is not in fact just one more skill to learn. It is a challenging and complex combination of multiple skills that need to be constantly adapted and adjusted to meet the needs of each person you lead. You may also be shocked that initially, you are not very good at it. This is to be expected, but when you are not prepared for it, it can be a real challenge.
In all the complexity that is managing and leading, often the biggest challenge- one that hardly anyone bothers to share- is that your entire way of working has to change. The very reason you were chosen to lead- your strong individual contribution- will ironically negatively impact your ability to lead effectively, because leading is not about you. It is about the people you lead. You need to completely change the way that you have gone about your work, the way that has made you successful until this point. You need to flip it on its proverbial head and switch from I to We.
This shift is abrupt, and most new supervisors are not prepared for it. They do not know how to adjust to it. And why would they? It is a complete inverse of the way you have always gone about your work and suddenly, without warning or preparation, you are expected to simply figure it out. No wonder so many new leaders struggle.
To help you overcome that struggle- or better yet prepare yourself before you even experience it- it is important that you understand what it means to be a supervisor. Not just the title and not just the additional tasks, but what the significance of this new role is. Once you are a supervisor, being a supervisor is the most important part of your job.
Your time and energy should now be directed toward your team- what their goals are, where they want to grow, what they need from you. As you support each individual person on your team, so too must you spend your time and energy on building and supporting the team as a whole, somehow meshing all those individuals into one cohesive unit.
In almost all cases, you will have work outside of your supervisory role and managing it all can be challenging if not outright impossible. Your time will be stretched in a way it may not have been stretched before. The expectation for you to be available to your staff while still getting all of your other work done is not always feasible and you may find yourself being challenged by time management when you were previously able to manage it just fine.
This will require some skills you may not have used before like delegating. And it will most certainly require you to let go and trust those around you, something that can be extremely difficult if you are used to relying on yourself. One of the keys to time management as a supervisor is letting go of tasks and letting go of the need to monitor and control of every little detail.
It is a lot to learn and a lot to manage. I promise you can do it. As long as you make that concerted effort to shift your approach from focusing on your own performance to approaching your performance through the performance of your team, you will do just fine.
Find out who your staff are as individuals and who they are collectively as a team. What are their goals? What motivates them? Where do they struggle? What support do they need? How do they communicate? How do they like to be praised? What is their favorite snack? What are they interested in outside of work?
Getting to know your staff as people as well as professionals helps build trust, communication, and strong relationships. It helps you build those connections that help in that shift from I to We.
When you are a supervisor, your staff’s success is your success. Their challenges are your challenges. Your job is helping them do their job. They say there is no I in team (though there is unfortunately one in supervisor), and this is both literally and figuratively true. You can only be a supervisor if you have someone to supervise. Whether your team is one person or 101 people, everything you do in your role is inextricably tied to the people you supervise. You are now a We, and your job as a leader is to lead with that mentality always at the forefront.
Trying to shift from a focus on yourself to a focus on others can take time to get used to. Give yourself that time and keep working at it. You may still find yourself resorting to old habits and tendencies trying to do it all yourself. It will likely take time before you get into the new habit of sharing the work with others, sharing information with others, sharing praise with others, and it is time you must invest.
You still get to be the star performer you have always been, but you will no longer be able to do this on your own. Instead, you will necessarily do this as We. Your role is to hold the spotlight and watch your team shine. Then, you all get to shine together.
