Supervisors are the leaders entrusted with an organization’s relationship with customers and employees. When it comes to turning the company’s strategy into action and results, supervisors are the cornerstone of a company’s success. Supervisors have demanding roles that require specific skill sets and expertise coupled with soft skills. Soft skills include team building, better communication, and conflict resolution. Frontline supervisors and managers have a direct impact on all crucial performance metrics including customer satisfaction and employee engagement. They are responsible for maintaining quality, innovation, service, and financial wellbeing of an organization. For an organization such as Global Green Books Publishing to be successful at all fronts, Jim King and Brad Mount need to harness the following skills and competencies:
Communication
Leaders should have excellent communication skills and competencies. Effective communication is essential in dealing with customers, direct reports, and other stakeholders. It requires both assertiveness and empathy especially when managing an inexperienced team of workers. Effective communication involves conveying clear and measurable goals, enforcing the organization’s rules, providing negative feedback, and communicating with presence in an authoritative but approachable way. Managers with accomplished communication competency are able to listen keenly and use nonverbal means to improve the conversation between them and their customers and employees (Campion, 1). They should learn how to balance their heavy workload while managing other employees and projects. Additional manpower should be sourced should this prove a tall order. The managers of Global Green Books Publishing realized their weakness and hired someone equipped with excellent communication skills to help them. Samantha was able to turn things around within nine months. One of her achievements was to improve communication with stakeholders.
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Managing Performance
After striking a lucrative deal with a local college, Global Green Books Publishing had to hire additional part-time employees to help them with publishing. Some jobs were much larger than they had anticipated. Printing, quality issues, and delivery became problematic. The customer was unhappy with most service issues. One of the main challenges was managing new and inexperienced employees. Supervisors enhance accountability in their departments by building a motivating and supportive work environment. They are able to manage and delegate a wide variety of people and skillsets. They also communicate performance standards and expectations in a timely manner. Constructive feedback to employees on assignments is essential.
Supervisors are expected to recruit and select staff on merit. It is their duty to ensure tasks are delegated appropriately and performance monitored (Wilkinson, 2). They should train and develop their employees to enable them to provide constructive performance. Since they understand the company’s goals and objectives better, they are responsible for inspiring their subordinates. Supervisors should also foster and provide excellent customer service.
Strategic Thinking
Supervisors and managers must have foundational business skills to enable them to understand their company’s strategic priorities and how each department supports those priorities. The business knowledge they are equipped with helps them align their work with the company’s objectives. Strategic thinking is a useful skill in understanding how to methodically and collaboratively drive the company’s agenda, solve challenges, and foster creativity. A leader with strategic thinking skills is able to develop a step-by-step process from identifying a problem to coming up with a solution. Such thinking helps to create a collaborative environment in a team with different thinking styles. It enables leaders to organize available resources, manpower, and activities to obtain collaboration and the achievement of the company’s goals and objectives. At Global Green Books Publishing, Samantha was able to use her project management training to solve the problems that were facing the company. She identified the problems the company experienced, studied them, and came up with solutions that changed its fortunes.
Competencies for Team Members
There is a lot of emphases focused on the skills and competencies of individual project managers and rightly so. But what about the project members as a whole? Team members need to possess some critical competencies and skills in order to enhance their performance and ensure the success of the company. Project teams mainly comprise of a variety of specialists all with different skills and competencies. Below are some of the key skills and competencies that an effective team needs to perform at the highest level:
Basic Project Management Skills
All team members are supposed to be equipped with the basic level project working skills in order to contribute effectively to the overall success of a project. These include key competencies in organizing and planning. If a team member does not know what needs to be done, it will be particularly difficult for that person to accomplish tasks appropriately and in time. This was one of the reasons that Global Green Books Publishing faced with its new employees. They were not conversant with the basics of what they were required to do.
Problem-Solving
Problems are bound to crop up in the life cycle of a company’s project. How successful a project would be is partially determined by how team members rise to the challenge of solving relationship-related and business-related problems (Kahkonena, 3). Teams require problem-solving skills which should be continually refined to achieve the success of the company. There exist systems and practices designed to systematically analyze information collected to aid in this. Team members should work in collaboration to leverage their thoughts and expertise. Team members are supposed to be generally open to new tactics and ideas that will aid in solving an existing problem to help the situation.
Risk Management
At Global Green Books Publishing, Samantha was able to institute risk management by looking at what was happening to the business. She was able to identify risks and potential ones. Risk management is not only a crucial skill for managers and supervisors but for team members too. It’s especially important for employees with cross-functional specialties where there is limited oversight. Risk management skills make employees accountable and able to anticipate and explain potential risks in the tasks and assignments they are carrying out.
Conflict Management
Conflicts arise between employees, between employees and their bosses, and between the company and customers. When people with diverse personalities and skills come together, an environment is created that can potentially lead to internal conflict. Effective conflict resolution skills are essential in achieving a collaborative team. There may arise situations where team members are forced to deal with difficult situations or people. Employees should cultivate a culture that fosters a spirit of cooperation for the greater good of the company. Collaboration and teamwork are enhanced when team members have conflict resolution skills and are able to suppress their ego.
Customer Management
At the end of the day, customer satisfaction is the main focus of the company for it to achieve financial success. While this role is often handled by project supervisors and managers, clients can bypass the management and speak to team members. It is therefore important for team members to be equipped with basic customer management skills to handle clients and answer any questions they may have. Technical and professional knowhow is a sign of credibility to each other and to the clients. Customers may seek advice, opinions, and guidance regarding the project, a product, or service and it is crucial that employees harbor basic knowledge and professionalism to handle the customer.
References
Campion, M. 2014. Full competency model. Society for Human Resource Management . https://www.shrm.org/LearningAndCareer/competency-model/Documents/Full%20Competency%20Model%2011%202_10%201%202014.pdf
Wilkinson, R. 2017. Essential supervisory skills. International Training & Education Center for Health . https://www.go2itech.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Essential-Supervisory-Skills.pdf
Kahkonena, K. 2013. Core project teams as an organizational approach for projects and their management. IPMA World Congress . https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82442271.pdf
