Leaders play an essential role in the management of institutions. Supervisors are such an example of leaders who are expected to have good leadership skills to improve supervisees' service delivery (Govaerts et al., 2017). This paper will discuss the roles of supervisors and discuss differences between effective and ineffective supervisors.
Roles of Supervisors
Supervisors perform an essential role as they are the central figure in the relations between employees and management and, subsequently, between employees and clients. Supervisors align the individual expectations and performance of individuals with organizational objectives. One way of ensuring this is by developing performance goals that should be regularly revised and making sure these are communicated to the employees. A fundamental way of achieving optimal performance is by evaluating employees' performance by established standards and policies. They also support the employees and coach them to ensure the best and most quality service is delivered by employees (Govaerts et al., 2017, Talukder, 2019). They are also involved in the training and orientation of new employees and assisting them in their roles. Supervisors also ensure that employees have professional development goals and can enroll in professional development goals.
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Supervisors are expected to identify employee needs and communicate the same to the management. Therefore, they are expected to be close to employees and give them appreciative and regular feedback on issues. This ensures that they can identify and help solve problems among the employees. Also, having a close relationship with employees helps supervisors delegate tasks, assign projects, and help employees transition training to job performance (Govaerts et al., 2017). Such is because they know the capability of the employees under their supervision. Where a project or task is unachievable due to gaps among the employees, they communicate this to management to ensure the organization is not caught off guard.
Clinical Supervision
Clinical supervision involves junior colleagues' supervision by their senior colleagues, whose primary goal is to support continuous learning. In healthcare settings, nurses will have regular discussions with a senior colleague whose aim is to reduce nurses' emotional burdens and help them solve problems. This is because supervisors give support and guidance to the nurses as they gradually transition to autonomy in decision making and practice. The reduction of burn out and stress goes a long way in improving nurses and their patients' lives. Recently, there has been a focus on resilience-based supervision, which equips nurses with resilience strategies that help them cope with stressors and work around external constraints such as organization failures or limitations (Stacey et al., 2017). It results in job satisfaction among nurses through the creation of safe spaces and offering encouragement to supervisees. Good supervisory support also helps employees have a good work-life balance, and organizational commitment to this goal leads to stress alleviation and performance improvement (Talukdel, 2019). Quality improvement of the whole nursing industry is also achieved due to supervisees' evaluation, ensuring that supervisees' effectiveness, competency, and capability are maintained and encouraged.
Demands of a Supervisor
Supervisors are expected to be professionals and experts in their relevant fields to impact their supervisees' best knowledge and skills. They are expected to be role models and act as reference points for those they supervise. Thus, they should be ethical, diligent, and professional figures in their undertakings. Peter et al. (2018) reveal that person perception affects supervisors' performance in that people choose organizational role models whose success adheres to one's morality. They are also expected to be good and effective communicators who possess good leadership skills. Good and close communication with employees is the foundation that gives a supervisor insights on how to deal with each individual in their team. Counseling and coaching are only possible where there is a good rapport between a supervisor and other team members. Supervisors should also be willing to listen to their supervisees, encourage, motivate, educate, inspire, and guide them. Therefore, they should possess good social skills and be willing to go out of their way to help the supervisees. Supervisors should also collaborate with those they are supervising when setting development goals and the standards to apply.
Good and Bad Leadership
During one of my high school holidays, I volunteered at a company where the leader was very ineffective. This is because he randomly shouted at employees and was very harsh to those who committed the slightest errors. Leaders who are supposed to act as role models are judged according to social concerns, and when they fail in this regard, their task competency is overlooked (Peters et al., 2018). I remember me and a few other volunteers were afraid to approach him and ask questions or observe his operations. This negated the whole purpose of the program, which was to help mentor young leaders.
When I joined college, I interacted with a very interesting person who was the environmental club's chairperson. He was collecting trash as I sat at a nearby bench in a local park. He invited me to join the club, and when I refused, he proceeded to ask me a few questions about my knowledge of environmental pollution. During the conversation, he passionately advocated for the environment logically and reasonably, which made me join the club within about twenty minutes into the conversation. Afterwards, I came to resect and be motivated by him due to the hard work and commitment to organizing the club's activities. Good leaders can motivate those around them by being ethical and role models (Peters et al., 2018). The way he listened to me and then went ahead to help me shift my views towards environmental issues was a hallmark of a good transformative leader.
Conclusion
Supervisors are leaders and should, therefore, have good leader's skills to be effective in their work. A good supervisor will help bring out the best in employees while improving the organizational standards. An ineffective leader or supervisor will add stress to employees hampering their growth and job performance.
References
Govaerts, N., Kyndt, E., Vreye, S., & Dochy, F. (2017). A supervisors' perspective on their role in transfer of training. Human Resource Development Quarterly , 28 (4), 515-552. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21286
Peters, K., Steffens, N. K., & Morgenroth, T. (2018). Superstars are not necessarily role models: Morality perceptions moderate the impact of competence perceptions on supervisor role modeling. European Journal of Social Psychology , 48 (6), 725-746. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2372
Stacey, G., Aubeeluck, A., Cook, G., & Dutta, S. (2017). A case study exploring the experience of resilience-based clinical supervision and its influence on care towards self and others among student nurses. International Practice Development Journal , 7 (2), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.19043/ipdj.72.005
Talukder, A. K. (2019). Supervisor support and organizational commitment: The role of work–family conflict, job satisfaction, and work–life balance. Journal of Employment Counseling , 56 (3), 98-116. https://doi.org/10.1002/joec.12125
