Gary Turning Supervision into the Opportunity of a Lifetime

Excerpted with permission of the publisher Jossey-Bass, a Wiley company, from “The 21^st Century Supervisor.” Copyright (c) 2000 by Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer. This book is available at all bookstores, Amazon, and from the Jossey-Bass Web site at www.jbp.com, or call 1-800-956-7739.

Gary started working for his company almost right out of high school. After five years, he was promoted to the company’s first third-shift supervisor position. Without a night shift plant manager, Gary essentially had the responsibility for the entire facility.

“I tried going right by the book in the early years,” Gary explains. “I wanted every employee to respect me and understand that I was the man in charge. But I was a supervisor in job title only. My people didn’t respect me. Because I’d had no training to be a supervisor, I just did what I observed other supervisors and managers doing before me. Doing things that way, though, never worked for me.”

At that point an unpleasant confrontation with a trusted friend at work began the change needed in Gary’s career. Having just competed in a darts tournament early one evening at his favorite bar, Gary walked in a few minutes late to work. Although he was not drunk, he had consumed a few beers during the competition, so the smell of alcohol was still on him.

One of Gary’s better employees (and a personal friend) confronted him about being late and for having alcohol on his breath. As Gary recalls, “He told me that I was supposed to be the leader of this shift, a mentor for those wanting to be supervisors. But, what kind of leader or mentor could I be if I didn’t first set the example? His words hit me right between the eyes.”

Such a confrontation from a subordinate might have sent some supervisors into a fit, but not Gary. “He was right,” Gary says. “I was so challenged by his words that I met with him later that same shift to find out more about his observations of me and my leadership. By the end of that night, I determined that I had to change. I could not remain as I was and survive as a supervisor. It was definitely a low time for me personally, but it was just what I needed to turn myself around.”

However, as is true for many people, deciding to change is one thing — putting those changes into action is something totally different. It wasn’t easy for Gary to change his way of acting and thinking after all his years as a supervisor.

Shortly after Gary’s third-shift “conversion” experience, he began to hear about quality, continuous improvement, and work teams. “There was a lot of skepticism about these things at first,” Gary says, “especially from the managers and supervisors who had been around for awhile. While I didn’t understand it myself, what I heard seemed to make more sense to me than the way we had done things in the past. I thought it would be great to pursue quality and work teams if we could get everyone else involved.”

During the early 1990s, the talk about quality and teams began to come together for Gary. He had just turned forty, and the light suddenly went on. “Maybe all the awareness about quality and teams was my midlife crisis,” he says, “but things really did begin to make sense. Being a supervisor meant that I was charged with making sure that what was produced met the needs of our customers. Anything I could do to make sure this happened began to be an obsession for me.”

By this time Gary was a supervisor on the first shift and was recognized as a competent and caring frontline leader. After he moved to the first shift, he began attending night classes at the local college, taking classes in business, speech, English, and computers.

During this period of time, two other important things happened: he took a class on Total Quality Management at the college and a consulting firm began to work with Gary’s plant. “What I was learning formally in the classroom at night once a week,” Gary explains, “I began seeing applied during the day with the assistance of the quality and team consultants that had been hired to help our facility. For the first time I began to see that employees were the key to better performance and that supervisors had to lead in a different manner than was traditionally expected.

“People really do want to follow a good leader. When I began to approach people on a more equal basis, rather than as a dictator, I began to see people think through their decisions before carrying them out. I soon realized that most people want to think when they work. I had been informally trained that supervisors were the brain centers, or jockeys, of the production process and that employees were simply the horses, waiting for their supervisor to crack the whip. But the more I worked with my people, the more I saw their willingness to perform at a level I had never dreamed of.

“Early on in this process, we formed a few small Quality Action Teams to address production-related issues. The response was unbelievable. Production began to improve, morale among the employees began to increase, and I was beginning to have the best time of my life as a supervisor.”

“If I could have known in my early twenties what I began to learn in my forties,” Gary says, “I could have been a lot more effective as a supervisor, not to mention that our plant’s performance would have been better. There is no substitute for education. As a supervisor you have to be constantly learning new things and helping your employees to learn.”

In a little over ten years, Gary moved from being a supervisor who was no different from many of his peers, to being a supervisor who experienced very positive opportunities. During this span of time Gary realized how instrumental leadership was to his success. His education in quality, problem solving, team building, financial reports, and other topics began to have a positive impact on his ability to lead and to make better decisions.

Not too long ago, a special position was created at the facility Gary once led as a supervisor. Because his firm wants to keep the continuous improvement and work team processes alive, it created the position of director of continuous improvement, and Gary now enthusiastically fills that role.

“It is incredible to think that such a position would be filled by someone like me,” Gary marvels. “I’ve certainly learned a lot over the past ten to twenty years, but every day I realize how much more I must continue to learn. My company has put a lot of faith in me in asking me to assist our natural work teams. It’s an opportunity that I hope and pray I can live up to.” If Gary’s past history with personal challenges is any indication, he should have little problem meeting this challenge.

Gary would be the first to say that he doesn’t have all the answers about being a more successful supervisor, but he is willing to offer some thoughts based on what he has been through.

“There are a few things that I would highly suggest supervisors do if they desire to be successful floor leaders in the future,” he says. “First, make an honest commitment to yourself that you will change your behavior about how you deal with people. Probably the best thing that I did was improve my people skills. Supervisors must learn to coach their people, to talk with them in a positive manner.

“Second, a supervisor must learn how to present information and facilitate meetings. Maintaining continuous improvement will require that others are kept informed about problems, solutions, and improvements. The supervisor will make a number of ‘speeches’ to upper management as well as lead team meetings. Learning how to organize meetings, create an agenda, and things like that will go a long way toward leading your teams.

“Third and finally, supervisors must be committed to learning in general. Whether it is computers, statistical process control, basic accounting, or even developing better equipment knowledge, supervisors will need to be the best students in the company. We can hardly expect our employees to learn if we as supervisors are not also learning.”

Gary is living proof of what can happen to supervisors who are committed to being the best they can be. Reflecting on Gary’s experiences, it seems apparent that there are no shortcuts to becoming a twenty-first-century supervisor. The only way to be successful as a supervisor in the future is to get started now. Take it from Gary, even after the age of forty, old dogs can still learn new tricks.