Leadership: Improving The Supervisory Vacuum

Know the 5 supervisory tools

Leadership is a passion of mine. Teaching it, studying it, lecturing on it and writing about it are tasks that I can do almost endlessly. It is of great interest to me for two reasons. First, everything goes better if it is well led. A family is happier, a soccer team performs better, a school is more effective and a business is more profitable – if they have good leadership. Two, it is my concerted opinion that many jobs are being lost in the US today, because many businesses are not well led. That always causes the hair on the back of some US managers necks to rise and to that I say, “Great; maybe I have your attention now”. But that is not a new topic. There is a very revealing book written nearly 40 years ago, “The Art of Japanese Management” where the authors, Richard Pascale and Anthony Athos, make this statement:
 
“Japan is doing more than a little right. And our hypothesis is that a big part of that ‘something’ has only a little to do with such techniques as its quality circles and lifetime employment. In this book, we will argue that a major reason for the superiority of the Japanese is their managerial skill”.
 

They were prophetic in 1981 and they are still currently accurate. And of the two large skillsets that managers (the job classification) must have; the skillset of management and the skillset of leadership, the one in greatest deficiency is the leadership skillset. In its simplest form, many will tell you that we “manage” the business but we “lead” the people. This is oversimplified but largely a true statement.  Speaking to leading the people and having a deficiency in that area, the deficiency that is currently the most debilitating is “managers as supervisors”.
 
If you have subordinates, senior manager or not, you are, or at least should be, supervising. Somehow most of today’s managers do not see themselves as supervisors and even fewer are behaving like supervisors. For example, I frequently work with senior level managers as they wish to hire mid-level managers. More often than not, they lament their existing population and quickly decide they must go outside to fill these roles. And they do.  I ask, “Tell me about your succession planning process”.  More often than not, I get a blank stare. I ask, “Do you have a five-year capital budget plan”?  In a heartbeat most senior managers can produce what looks like a serious document. I then ask, “What does your five-year staffing and organization plan look like?” I am never surprised when I hear, “Well we have talked about it a lot, but have no formal plan”.  Bottom line to these managers, all the rhetoric and protestations to the contrary: they do not value; they do not understand; and they do not accept their role as supervisors. They are laser focused on the plant, the sales and the finances. Most of these managers are not really interested in the growth and development of their people and do not treat them as an asset. And a surprisingly large number treat their people as an incremental operating expense which they are actively working to minimize. Is it any wonder that Gallup studies show that in manufacturing workers in the US have engagement levels in the 25-30% range? Why should they expect anything better?
 
Recently, we have been deeply involved in improving engagement levels with several of our clients. It is no secret that as engagement levels increase, all aspects, including all KPIs improve markedly.  Improving engagement is an impressive weapon for not only sales and profits but many human relations issues such as safety, morale and employee retention.  What we have always found is working with supervisors, at all levels, is catalytic to improving engagement. It has become the de facto, initial effort we make. We do not even need to see the engagement survey data to know that we can improve the engagement levels by improving supervisory skills. It has become a no-brainer. That is both revealing …and sad.
 
But we know how to improve the supervisory skills. There is usually some skills training but that is not the main issue. The key issue is responsibility. We first teach all the supervisors; from first-line supervisors to the CEO and all leaders between that their job as supervisors is to do what is necessary to make sure their people are successful.  Hence, if your subordinates are not performing well, it is not they that has the first problem…it is you, the supervisor. And we tell them that their job, as a supervisor is “to create an environment so your people can be successful”. You see, if the CEO is supervising well, his reports will be successful, and so on down the food chain until you get to the most important of the employees the plant, the assembly line worker. He is the only one adding value. Everyone else, including the CEO, is overhead and everyone one of those people who are overhead have but one task – to support the assembly line worker. So, if everyone in the chain is being supervised well, they all will be successful and the results will follow.
 
Starting at the C-Suite, we then teach them the 5 supervisory tools which are:
 

1. Individual performance planning. 

2. Five-year business growth and staffing planning.

3. Job succession planning. 

4. Individual five-year growth and development planning. 

5. Leader standard work (LSW) and daily feedback systems. 

 
Tools 2 and 3 are business tools to help the management better lead to develop the entire work team. Tools 1 and 4 are specific development tools focused solely on individual development.  LSW is a daily management tool.  Normally the next item we teach is the skills needed to execute Paul Hersey’s concept of “Situational Leadership”.  It is a powerful supervisory technique that is intensely focused on knowing the work and knowing the people. 

Then depending on the results of the engagement survey and the firm’s environment we will tailor a program to fit the facility’s needs.
 
Finally, let me leave you with another quote from Pascale and Athos:
 
“Japanese and American management is 95% the same – and differs in all important respects”.
That 5% difference is focused largely on the management’s ability to get the most from their people – which is their ability to supervise.
 

Lonnie Wilson is the author of Sustaining Workforce Engagement:  How To Ensure Your Employees Are Healthy, Happy, And Productive and founder of Quality Consultants where clients include firms in manufacturing as well as the fields of education, healthcare and other service sectors. Quality Consultants serves small firms as well as Fortune 500 firms in North, South, Central America, and China.   Visit www.qc-ep.com Connect Lonnie Wilson