Supervisory Skills Training

In a lot of organizations people are promoted to management with little or no supervisory skills training. This is costly, because the front line supervisor has more impact on the performance of your organization’s employees than anyone else.

Furthermore, the supervisor makes dozens of decisions daily that affect your company’s bottom line. The manager’s daily interaction often makes the difference between a highly motivated employee and one who just “shows up;” between a well-trained and competent employee, and one who is unsure of what to do and how to do it; between an employee who enjoys coming to work, and one who finds every opportunity to be away from the workplace.

Researcher Marcus Buckingham of the Gallup organization discovered that employees are most “engaged” and perform best where they get clear expectations and honest feedback from their supervisors, and get a chance to do what they do best every day.  Annual surveys continue to show that communication with their immediate supervisor is the number one predictor of performance and job satisfaction. Surveys show that people don’t leave jobs – they leave supervisors.

Effective Supervisory Skills Training helps companies reap important benefits

• Greater productivity and measurably higher quality
• Greater customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Lower turnover and reduced grievances or union avoidance
• Higher employee engagement, commitment, and creativity

Supervisory Skills Training highlights:

• What employees want from their supervisor (in order to succeed on the job)
• The Straight Talk Supervisor’s communication toolkit: when to ask, listen, and tell
• How to get employees to open up and tell you what they’re thinking
• How to increase employee engagement
• How to build trust in the team
• How to make sure they understand what’s expected
• How to encourage with positive feedback
• How to use teachable moments to coach to stronger performance
• How to address performance and behavioral deficiencies and get commitment to change
• How to address “attitude problems”
• How to keep employees informed with nice-to-know as well as need-to-know information
• How to develop people with delegation and coaching

Supervisory Skills Training Methodology

Participants in Supervisory Skills Training spend most of their workshop time in lively, engaging practices with coaching and feedback using customized exercises, case studies, and simulations. They bring their own real situations to use in the practice sessions. These practices are designed to develop skills supervisors can apply immediately.

Supervisory Skills Training Customized Solutions

To ensure that training is not just an “event,” but instead produces enduring results, we customize Supervisory Skills Training to fit your unique situation, business strategy, culture, and people.  After discussion with you and other experts within your organization, we select the emphasis, specific skills to be developed, key learning points, exercises, and case studies for practice to create a solution tailored just for you.

Supervisory Skills Training Applications

The following are some of the ways our clients have used custom versions of Supervisory Skills Training:

• To strengthen and enhance the interpersonal communication skills of supervisors, often in response to poor scores on employee surveys
• To prepare team leads to become first-line supervisors
• In both union and non-union environments, to improve employee engagement through more professional supervision
• To help companies make unions unnecessary
• To ensure that workplace environments are respectful

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