On Supervising, after ten years
Intro
Over the years, I have written a few articles on LinkedIn about supervision. I wrote an article after my first year and another after my second. I also originally published this article on LinkedIn after five years in a senior leadership position with lots of supervision duties. And after five years more, my sense of how to approach this task remains largely the same, with some additions. This article is written in the first and second person perspectives to give readers a sense of what I’ve learned and what I recommend. I point out what I would adjust at the ten-year mark.
Ten years out, I still have four big take-aways, and I’ve put them in categories: Use of Self, Teamwork, Love, and Style Plus Boundaries.
1. Use of Self
While I think a distinction like “big-picture thinker” and “detail-oriented thinker” is too simplistic, it helps us to imagine scenarios in which brilliance could be evident in various approaches to work. Some folks are much more focused on the details, on getting each step accomplished perfectly and with, even, an artistic flare. Indeed, there is vast potential for creativity in the detail work, but sometimes calling it “innovation” doesn’t compute for detail-oriented thinkers.
Since I am a big-picture thinker, I regularly find myself encouraging direct reports to be creative and innovative. I say things like, “I want you to have space for cultivating your own vision for what your work is and could be.”
It took me several years to realize that I wasn’t coaching my detail-oriented people in the most useful way. I needed to reset my whole framework of supervision. This is how “use of self” really hit home. I’d been using this idea intermittently but also flippantly. It has now become a touchstone for my work with direct reports. For me, use of self has a few elements: self-awareness, strengths first, idiosyncratic language, iterative trust.
Self-Awareness Knowing how to use one’s whole self in useful ways at work requires having a sense of oneself in the first place. You need to coach your direct reports in cultivating self-awareness.
Strengths First While growing edges are definitely important for any supervision agenda, knowing one’s strengths and how to play to them, as it were, is essential for making the work meaningful.
Idiosyncratic Language Make sure that the language you use for coaching matches the language that your direct reports already use to describe themselves. This helps drive home what you are trying to show them. It also means, of course, that you need to spend time getting to know your direct reports. This in turn requires a manageable number of people reporting to you – five at the most.
Iterative Trust There has to be a sense that you are trusting your direct report to develop something of their own. As the supervisor, you have to release some control and acknowledge that a deliverable can still be brilliant without ending up the way it would have, if you’d had all the say. There has to be a trusting back and forth.
TEN YEAR ADDITION: Self-awareness is something everyone approaches differently, and it’s incumbent upon you as the supervisor to demonstrate how you cultivate self-awareness, and how this is an ongoing, ever evolving, and vulnerable process. Also, we talk a lot these days about cultural competence, transformative leadership, and being trauma informed. These are just buzz words unless we are actually studying and practicing them closely. I highly recommend supervisors in any organization gathering regularly simply to talk about the practice of supervision and nothing more, reading resources, discussing difficult cases, and inviting guest experts to help train you in the work of being ever more culturally competent, transformative, and trauma-informed.
2. Teamwork
Healthy, friendly competition is good, but it shouldn’t be at the root of the staff system. When collaboration is thriving at the foundation, then people are much more likely not to feel any type of shame when they need help. This ensures that everyone efficiently gets what they need to do their job. Collaboration greases the gears of work.
Infuse your staff system with a collaborative, team-based approach. Form teams and encouraged different teams to collaborate. Overtime, this will lead to greater depth of field (people knowing what’s involved in other people’s jobs) and increased morale. Engaging in this shift in the staff system also helps you notice more quickly what fires need to be put out, for example, and to have more unified strategies in work across the board.
Most profoundly, I have come to see that teams are always how we get anything done. Everything happens in a team. We don’t choose to do work as a team, we can only choose to see or ignore a team. This is what culture shift requires: seeing the teams that already exist and encouraging their development.
Teams take work to encourage. As the supervisor and leader, you need to make sure you are keeping track of everyone’s individual portfolios to ensure that they mesh. You need to be maintaining good one-on-one relationships with your team members to help frame their participation in the team and ensure that no one feels like someone is getting more time from you than others. As with Use of Self, above, you also need to let go of the specific ideas regarding things you want to accomplish. Teams have a wonderful way of generating outcomes of which you never would have imagined on your own, and which are brilliant in their own right. A good team leader leaves just enough space for this, while providing a solid framework of direction. Likewise, you need to be willing to apply a balanced amount of structure and discipline to keep people on track and attached to the long-term goals. One way to do this is to create team goals as well as related individual goals, so everyone is invested on a personal and group level.
If you don’t have facilitation training, get some or hire me.
TEN YEAR ADDITION: The whole organization (large or small) needs goals, big strategic goals that are derived from a clear sense of vision and mission. Everyone in the whole organization (board, admin, staff, community, donors, etc) need to be able to recite the vision and mission. Offering regular elevator-pitch trainings for all stakeholders is a great way to build resilient cross-pollinated organizational culture and ensure everyone is deeply aware of the vision, mission, and strategic goals. The organization also needs more specific goals that directly relate to the strategic ones. It’s useful to design goals to be stacked, one atop another, getting ever more specific. Eventually in this stack, you’ll arrive at a team’s goals, and the individual team members’ goals. It may seem pedantic, yet being very clear about this helps every single member of the organization connect their small part directly to the bigger picture and purpose. This helps cultivate a sense of connection and meaning in the work, for everyone at every level. It also directly improves the efficiency and effectiveness of program design, funding development, and measuring impact.
3. Love
I often talk about relationship as the most powerful tool in supervision. Making sure that you have an actual relationship with people who report to you is key to ensuring that their work is meaningful to them and useful for you. You should know an appropriate amount about the personal lives, professional goals, and various motivations at least of everyone who reports to you.
When it comes right down to it, love is at the core of relationship. I’m not talking about romantic love; I’m talking about friendship love. I’m talking about feeling an energetic, personal investment in the wellness and happiness of the people you work with and who report to you. And I’m talking about this as a two-way street. As the supervisor, you should be willing to talk about your own personal and professional motivations (with appropriate professional boundaries) as well.
Why is this important? People are capable of powerfully influential feedback within this kind of relationship. As we all know, supervising people isn’t always sunny. There are times when performance needs improvement or when behavior needs to be changed. If there is a sense of personal investment between you and your direct report, the likelihood of improving performance and/or behavior is tremendously positive. Motivating people to face their growing edges is partly about establishing a sense of trust and love between them and you.
In my first article about supervising I talked about how a supervisor can’t expect feedback from supervisees. I think I was ultimately wrong about this. You want to make sure that you are inviting feedback, both positive and negative, about how you are doing as a supervisor. If you invite feedback and show that you are invested in growth based on your relationship with your direct reports, then it’s easier for them to do the same based on their relationship with you.
TEN YEAR ADDITION: In my first article, I wanted to be clear that supervisors shouldn’t seek feedback simply to validate their use of power. Power is operating between a supervisor and their direct report, and this needs to be acknowledged openly and navigated with care. So for me it’s a both-and. Sometimes it is okay and even necessary to ask for feedback, and sometimes it’s better to keep the yearning for validation to oneself. Yet, generally speaking, when a supervisor is open and vulnerable about their life and about their own strengths and weaknesses, and invites input, feedback, and others around them to fill in the gaps, the supervisor is encouraging others to use their power fully. Contrary to what might be a toxic tendency in some organizations to want to compete with others’ excellence by keeping them from fully shining, a truly secure supervisor and leader knows that the organization is at its best when everyone is full up in their own power, and when we consciously embrace co-creation from this way of being.
4. Style Plus Boundaries
Knowing your supervision style is key. It helps you keep track of your weaknesses, so you can sufficiently compensate.
Since I’m so invested in cultivating trust and in building substantive relationships with my direct reports, I can sometimes be a little too “hands-off”. I need to make sure that I am providing enough structure that people feel like they are headed in the right direction. For me, the intervention is always to take a breath and think through whether I am doing enough to make sure my expectations are known.
On the flip side, there is always a limit at which my supervision style works for people. Any supervision style is never going to work well for everyone. I think this is fine, ultimately. This article could be read perhaps as an exposition of my own supervision style, and so it will most speak to those with dispositions similar to mine. I can face my growing edges, compensate for my weakness, and I can play to my strengths. In the end, there will still be people who just don’t resonate with my style of leadership.
I can do my best, as we all can do, and I can also set boundaries. Knowing my supervision style means that I can be extremely honest and upfront with people about how I work, what I expect, and what my limitations are. This helps me be clear about my boundaries, and it helps people, whatever degree of compatibility they have with my approach to supervision, know likewise what they need to do to meet me in the middle.
TEN YEAR ADDITION: Supervisors and leaders are people, so they are capable of learning and growing. Per number 3, love, in the context of feeling invested in the wellbeing of those you lead, your direct reports are not the only ones who are opened to change as a result of feedback and generative conflict. When everyone is being encouraged to bring their whole selves and to be full-up in their own power, there is bound to be conflict. When that conflict is generative, held with care and intention, it leads to deeper transformation for everyone involved. So, yes, set boundaries and make sure people know what to expect with you as their supervisor. One of the expectations should be that you expect generative conflict, and you value the possibility of growth, transformation, and innovation that conflict brings!