BMGT 253

Leadership

Module 1:
Tradition & Contemporary Trends

Instructor: John Lewis

 Learning Objectives

• Define what a supervisor is.

• Summarize research findings that have led to basic
ideas of what managers should do.
• Describe the basic types of supervisory skills.
• Describe how the growing diversity of the workforce
affects the supervisor's role.
• Identify the general functions of a supervisor.
• Explain how supervisors are responsible to higher
management, employees, and co-workers.
• Describe the typical background of someone who is
promoted to supervisor.
• Identify characteristics of a successful supervisor.
 Supervision

• Supervisor: Manager at the first level of management.

• Ensures that the employees in a particular department
are performing their jobs so that the department will
contribute its share to accomplishing the organization’s
goals.

• For the top executives of an organization, managing is

ensuring that the organization’s goals will be met
through its vision and business strategy.

[Link]
Simon Sinek – Leader vs Manager
 Functions of a Supervisor

Planning Organizing

Leading Controlling
 FOCUS ON PEOPLE
Supervisors emphasize a people orientation.

• Deal directly with employees and have knowledge

about an organization’s customers.

• Abraham Maslow recognized that people have

different sets of needs that are met in a hierarchical
pattern.
• Needs: Physiological, safety, love and
belongingness, esteem, and self-actualization.
• Supervisors must help workers satisfy their
personal needs while being productive in
organizations.
 Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

 Types of Supervisory Skills

Classic view of management skills.

• Technical skills: Specialized knowledge and expertise
used to carry out particular techniques or procedures.
• Human relations skills: Ability to work effectively with
other people.
• Conceptual skills: Ability to see the relation of the
parts to the whole and to one another.
• Decision-making skills: Ability to analyze information
and reach good decisions.
 • Clarifying roles.
• Monitoring operations.
• Short-term planning.
• Consulting.
SKILLS OF • Supporting.
SUCCESSFUL • Recognizing.
MANAGERSSEE • Developing.
TABLE 1.1 • Empowering.
• Envisioning/managing change.
• Encouraging innovative
thinking.
• Monitoring for success.
 Diverse Workforce

• Number of black, Hispanic, and Asian workers in the

United States workforce is expected to rise.
• Women now make up more than 46.9 percent of the
adult labor pool in the United States.
• Enables supervisors to draw on a greater variety of
talent and gain insights into more perspectives than
ever before.
• Challenge: Diversity, coupled with laws and policies
intended to ensure fair treatment of work groups,
requires the supervisors to work successfully with a
wide variety of people.

[Link]
Statistics Canada
Question: why is it
important to diversify
your workforce?
 Subtle Discrimination

• Subtle forms of discrimination persist in every workplace.

• People hold some stereotypes that consciously or
unconsciously influence their behavior.
• Supervisors and other managers can use several tactics
to improve attitudes.
• Have employees work with someone who is different.
• Use the kind of behavior they expect employees to
exhibit.
• Question negative stereotypes.
 PLANNING
• Setting goals and
determining how to meet
them.
• Supervisors determine how
their department can
contribute to achieving the
organization’s goals.
• Includes planning how
much money to spend,
what level of output to
achieve, and how many
employees will be needed.
 ORGANIZING
• Setting up a group, allocating
resources, and assigning work
to achieve goals.
• At the supervisory level, it
involves activities such as
scheduling projects and
assigning duties to
employees.
• Includes modern supervisors
setting up and leading teams
of workers to handle special
projects or day-to-day
operations.
 STAFFING
• Identifying, hiring, and
developing the necessary
number and quality of
employees.

• Crucial to a supervisor’s
success.
• Supervisor’s performance
depends on the quality of
results that he or she
achieves through his or her
employees.
 LEADING
• Influencing people to act, or not act,
in a certain way.
•Supervisors:
• Are responsible for letting
employees know what is expected
of them and inspiring and
motivating them to do good work.
• Require good human relations
skills.
• Need to be aware of and use
behaviors that employees respond
to as the supervisor desires.
 Management function of
ensuring that work goes
according to plan.

CONTROLLING Monitoring performance and

making needed corrections.

Role of supervisors.
Providing employees with the Utilizing the people and the equipment
resources and motivation to identify available in the best way possible in
and correct problems themselves. order to meet or exceed goals.
 RESPONSIBILITIES OF
SUPERVISORS
• Recognizing the talents of each subordinate.
• Sharing one’s vision of where the organization wants to go.
• Treating employees with dignity and respect.
• Conducting necessary meetings efficiently and ensuring
that they accomplish their intended tasks.
• Keeping one’s staff informed and up to date.
• Being accessible to those under one’s supervision.
• Conducting periodic evaluations of one’s group’s progress.
• Providing an opportunity for employees to evaluate them.
• Praising one’s staff for their accomplishments.
 Responsibilities of Supervisors, cont’d

Keeping in touch with one’s industry.

Being able to perform the duties of those one supervises and being fair.

Following proper hiring practices, keeping accurate employee records, and

knowing how to fire an employee without violating his or her rights.

Knowing the law as it applies to one’s company and one’s job.

Adhering to workplace safety rules and regulations.

Avoiding sexual harassment and discrimination based on gender, age, race,

pregnancy, sexual orientation, or national origin.

• Sources: [Link], “When You’re the Boss,” reprinted at [Link]/wwn/[Link]?

contentId=513&ChannelID=210; Rona Leach, “Supervision: From Me to We,” Supervision, February 2000, p. 8.
RESPONSIBILITY
AND
ACCOUNTABILIT
Y
Supervisors are accountable
for carrying out their
responsibilities.

Accountability is the practice

of:

• Imposing penalties for

failing to adequately
carry out
responsibilities.
• Providing rewards for
meeting
responsibilities.
 BECOMING A
SUPERVISOR
• Employees with a superior grasp of
the technical skills needed to
perform well in a department.
• Employees with more seniority than
other department employees.
• Employees with good work habits
and leadership skills.
• Recent college graduates who
demonstrate leadership potential or
a specialized skill that will help in
the position.
 PREPARING FOR
THE JOB
• Learn about management
through books and observation.
• Learn as much as possible about
the organization, the
department, and the job.
• Continue the learning process
when on the job.
• Learn about the employees by
talking to them and to one's own
manager and reading
performance appraisals.
 From Peer to Supervisor 2

Commun-
Set Don’t be Figure out Be Learn
icate
Set limits on Don’t be a Figure out how Communicate Be firm. Learn from
one’s rescuer. to measure with everyone. others.
behavior. success.

• Sources: Based on Brandi Britton, “Making the Move from Peer to Supervisor,” Los Angeles Business Journal, October 10,
2005; Ed Lisoski, “From Peer to Supervisor,” Supervision, May 2005, both downloaded from Business & Company Resource
Center, [Link] Lisa Quast, “8 Tips to Transition from Co-Worker to Manager,” Forbes,
[Link]
WHAT ARE THE
CHARACTERISTIC
S OF A GOOD
SUPERVISOR?
Some Characteristics of a Successful Supervisor
Activity:

• Go to the website below on your computer or phone.

• Follow the instructions to determine your personality type.
• Let’s see if there is anyone else like you in the class.

• This will help in your overall understanding of yourself and

your journey.

[Link]
 End of Main Content

[Link]
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