The Professional Supervisor

At the end of this workshop, you will be able to:

• Clarify the scope and nature of a supervisory position.
• Learn some ways to deal with the challenges of the role.
• Recognize the responsibilities you have as a supervisor, to yourself, your team, and your organization.
• Learn key techniques to help you plan and prioritize effectively.
• Acquire a basic understanding of leadership, team building, communication, and motivation, and what part they play in effective supervision.
• Develop strategies for motivating your team, giving feedback, and resolving conflict.

Course Overview

• You will spend the first part of the day getting to know participants and discussing what will take place during the workshop. Students will also have an opportunity to identify their personal learning objectives.

Adjusting to Your Role

• This session shares methods to help participants deal with the transition to a supervisory role. They will also review the pre-assignment.

A Supervisor’s Responsibilities

• A supervisor has responsibilities to employees, management, and themselves. This session discusses those areas of a supervisor’s role.

Action-Centered Leadership

• This session deals with how to balance priorities in a supervisory role using the action-centered model developed by John Adair.

Making Plans

• Planning is a vital part of a successful supervisor’s role. Rather than being adrift on a sea of indecision, planning can help a supervisor to success. This session looks at ideas regarding plans, how to use the Urgent-Important Matrix to help develop a plan, a planning case study, the elements of planning, and planning tools.

Setting Goals

• We all have dreams but turning those dreams into reality takes more than just hoping and wishing. You need to use a goal setting method to realize those dreams. This session looks at goal setting and using SPIRIT.

Defining Leadership

• This session looks at different facets of leadership through a history of various leadership studies. Then, participants will explore the theory of leadership styles. The session wraps up with a look at some case studies and a debrief.

The Situational Leadership Model

• The second day of this workshop kicks off with a continuing look at Situational Leadership and styles of leadership. It also checks into our comfort zones as leaders.

What’s Your Type? How About Mine?

• In this session, participants will complete a self-assessment to help them identify their leadership style.

Team Building Tips

• In this session, participants will complete an exercise to show synergy in practice in a team situation. Then, they will explore what a team is and the advantages and disadvantages of teams. To wrap up the session, they will complete the Square Rope exercise to illustrate the aspects of a team in action.

Developing a High-Performing Team

• This session includes a look at the stages of team development, moving a team through those stages, team problem solving, and team leadership.

Communication Skills

• Communication skills are important for any successful supervisor. In this session, students will define communication and communication barriers. They will also learn about listening and questioning skills. The session wraps up with information on probing techniques and the communication process itself.

Motivating Employees

• Motivating employees often falls upon on the shoulders of their supervisor. This session discusses different motivation techniques that students may apply in their workplace.

Orientation and Onboarding

• This session looks at orientation and onboarding and the differences between the two. This session also asks students to consider the orientation they received on their jobs and takes them through a rating exercise on that orientation.

Training Tips and Tricks

• Supervisors often are tasked with training new employees in their roles. The skills needed by a supervisor who has to act as a trainer are discussed here. Students are also given some successful training guidelines.

Providing Feedback

• One of the jobs of a professional supervisor is giving feedback to employees. This session covers the six characteristics of effective feedback and gives participants an opportunity to role play this skill. The session concludes with the topic of receiving feedback.

Doing Delegation Right

• Delegation is more than just unloading tasks you don’t want to do as a supervisor. In this session, participants will define what delegation is and complete a delegation role play.

Dealing with Conflict

• This session looks at the conflict resolution process and the problem-solving process. The Conference exercise provides a chance for students to resolve conflict and debrief in a controlled setting.

Managing Disciplinary Issues

• The workshop concludes with a study of disciplinary issues from a supervisor’s point of view, including what is discipline, meeting with an employee for a disciplinary purpose, and a sample discipline checklist.

Workshop Wrap-Up

• At the end of the course, students will have an opportunity to ask questions and fill out an action plan.