Identify peoples' strengths, and especially if they contrast with your own weaknesses, emphasize those as the initial piece of integrating people into a departmental "team". In other words, let them help you, in addition to you helping them. And let it be known at every possible opportunity how valuable it is.
Somebody in this discussion put forth a ratio of positive to negative statements, and I think there is a degree of validity there, but for me it's more so a ratio of asking questions versus giving directives. People SHOULD know how their job works, and in most cases they do, so I find that getting people to act based on posing questions that people DO know the answers to but in the moment may have blanked on is generally far better than just telling people outright what to do. In extreme cases, maybe not, but for me that holds true 90% of the time at least.
Also, help out hands-on at every opportunity. This seems natural to me, but I've worked with so many supervisors that feel like certain work is "beneath" them, for lack of a better term, and they just sit back and judge rather than show those needing assistance how things are meant to be done. Isn't that a "supervisor's" job?!
I dunno, I'm a terrible supervisor in terms of organization, but I'm oddly a pretty good one in terms of training and feedback and getting people on board with what needs to be done.
I'm very passive about busting balls, but as someone else said in here, I am acutely aware of what it was like to be on the low end of things--I'm one of not that many in my position, percentage-wise in general, who have legit experience at the absolute ground level in the field.
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I know I made them a promise but those are just words, and words can get weird.
I think they made themselves perfectly clear.
05 Dec 2015, 3:08 pm
