Employee Supervision - Quick Guide

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Employee Supervision - Introduction

Let us take a hypothetical case to understand the importance of Employee Supervision.

Jessi was like any of those hundreds of employees you would find in a company; the ones who would moan and complain if they got a new work assignment. As a result of this, Colbert, Jessi’s manager, didn’t like handing him new work assignments.

Jessi always found his job responsibilities totally unreasonable and worthless, and Colbert never fully understood why Jessi didn’t do his job whole heartedly, even if everyone else had the same work load. If you would spare a few moments from your work routine and spend it observing the employees you manage, chances are you may find some who exhibit similar difficult behaviors.

Even to a "hands-on" manager, who believes in taking up much of the work assigned to his team, employees like Jessi might cause a long-term problem. Initially, there might not be an issue as the manager would succeed in creating a perception in the minds of his staff that he can do everything. This might even lead to great output quality as the manager is himself involved in all the different processes.

However, this approach can only work when the team is very small. When the number of people like Jessi keep increasing and the process starts blooming, this "hands-on" approach will ultimately create the issues of missing deadlines, which creates a negative ripple effect of unproductivity that spreads all across the organization.

What is Employee Supervision?

In the simplest terms, Supervision is the tact of getting a job done through others amicably. This definition of supervision states the relationship between the managers and their subordinates. This, however, doesn’t explain the manner in which coaches, instructors and mentors motivate people to take up leadership responsibilities for the first time in his/her life.

Newly appointed managers find themselves in a new role of coordinating individual efforts in a team’s cause and that requires quickly adjusting to new roles, responsibilities and relationships. To be considered a successful supervisor, they need to develop their skills in administration, technology and interpersonal behavior.

The origin of these difficult behaviors will give you the answers to why the employees you manage or supervise show these unprofessional behaviors. There are two primary sources for these −

• Hereditary

• Formative life experience

Hereditary and early life experience are the roots of personality. These are the origins of human behavior. Once you identify the hereditary, physical, mental and emotional characteristics, you can appropriately work on them to alter or bring changes in the difficult behavior your employees show.

People who are in customer service are especially prone to these shifts in behavior, primarily because they deal with different customers every day. Depending on the customer’s attitude, mood and personality, the experience of the customer service guys could range from great to downright insulting.

And yet, these people are expected to wear a professional face and deal equally with different types of people. While many manage it beautifully, there are people who experience a “snapping point”. In today's world of social media, one small mistake from any of these employees could cost the company the carefully-honed reputation and brand image that they have built over the years, in just a matter of hours.

The Case of an Unfortunate Employee

A customer walked into an eatery and claimed that she had ordered a box of donuts from their eatery the day before and had paid for it, but didn't get the receipt for the purchase. Now as a policy of this particular eatery, if a customer claims that he hadn't received a receipt for what he has ordered, the company provides the entire order free. But there is a catch.

This service is only for that day itself, and that's exactly what this particular customer was all riled up about: she wanted a free meal for not getting the receipt of a purchase made the day before.

Although her demands were not covered in the company's policy and the customer service representative politely made it clear that her request would have been perfectly redeemable had she only made it the previous day, the customer was in no mood to budge and kept shouting expletives, racist slurs and abuses at the girl behind the counter, who was at her wits' end by now.

Finally, the girl's patience gave in and she started to match word-for-word with the customer. At this point of time, someone in the queue made a video out and posted it on some social networking sites.

Those who saw it thought it was the customer service agent who had started the fight and was abusing the customer, which would be anyone’s first impression as the video didn’t have the part where the customer started it all. It was viewed and reviewed millions of times all over the world causing a major embarrassment to the company and seriously tarnishing its image of a customer-centric company.

When this video was played at a training session by a manager of the same company, in front of other frontline employees, almost everyone agreed that the customer care representative didn't necessarily pick up the right thing to do.

However, they themselves were found short of ideas when asked how they would have handled a similar situation. This exposed the knowledge of differentiating between right and wrong (common sense) and knowing what to do in this situation so that the company wouldn't have suffered that way.

This is exactly where a supervisor could have stepped in, to whom the customer service representative would have escalated the issue immediately. A supervisor would have dealt with this unpleasant situation is a much better way, which in most cases is to politely give the customer what she wants, without giving him time to create further ruckus and disturbance.

Physical Characteristics and Difficult Behavior

In today’s world, people are greatly affected by the notion of being perfect physically. Concerns towards their physical characteristics have shown a sharp increase. No doubt, TVs and print media have been acting as catalysts when they repeatedly show how important it is to maintain physical perfection.

They try to follow and look like the models that are being portrayed and in this process, end up blaming their gene pool. What has physical appearance has to do with the difficult behavior in later life? We know that, First impression is always the last impression and the fact is physical appearance is a major determinant in the first impression we have.

Although there is no link between how a person looks and his talents, study shows looks determine how a person’s talent is perceived by others. Our physical characteristics easily help us leave a positive impact in our workplace, our genes play an important role in determining our behavior in the workplace.

Studies show that if a person has good looks, has great hair, is tall and well-proportioned, he/she has a better chance of getting hired that others when work qualifications are otherwise equal. If our physical characteristics help us creating a positive impact on people around in the workplace, we tend to relate positively with the fellow people around.

On the contrary, if our physical characteristics doesn’t favor the usual model rules, we tend to develop certain negative behaviors. Personal dissatisfaction and seclusion from the environments lead us to create some negative image.

Although under the anti-discrimination laws, discrimination based on visible characteristics, such as age, sex, race, nationality and disability is illegal and punishable, yet many employees reportedly face a “glass ceiling” when it comes to their workplace. This could result in isolation, introversion, lack of confidence, suspicion, lack of personal care, skepticism, pessimism, bitterness’, anger and hostility. This might well require mental health professional assistance if gone to an extreme limit.

How would a supervisor help with improving or improving a person’s physical attributes, so what could be the answer to the last question of the previous exercise? The best possible thing would be to ignore the physical attributes, while concentrating on the skills and talents they show in the workplace. In the coming chapters, you will see how to do this quite effectively.

Brain Dominance and Learning Styles

People tend to use both sides of their brain equally. However, research shows that men tend to favor the left side of the brain and women the right side. No doubt, there are differences between the behaviors of men and women, which is an effect of the brain dominance.

Dominance is due to the hormonal levels a child inhibits before and after birth. The capabilities that result in the usage of the left and right sides of the brain are listed below. But, keeping in mind that these are based on tendencies, and are not absolutes.

Left-side Functions

Right Side Functions

Difficult behaviors are caused due to the imbalance in the usage of the two sides of the brain. As for example, a left brained person using only facts and logics, but devoid of any emotions, may hurt the fellow people’s sentiments. They may be mechanical and insensitive.

On the other hand, people who are right brained using only emotions may be emotionally drained as their emotions could be misled and misused or manipulated into a costly error. The left brained people are very good navigators, they tend to process directions and instructions even more easily than the right brained ones, who use landmarks to reach a place or navigate.

The right brained people are more sensitive to the environmental conditions like heat, light, noise, smells, etc. Being very creative, they will always try to find out new ways to do things unlike the left brained who may have trouble thinking out of the box. Right brained people do not stick to rules, policies and procedures to do something.

If there is a team with both left-brained and right-brained people, a supervisor will need to understand that one method of instructing won’t work on all. The needs to fully be aware of the different ways in which people interpret statements, and then ask questions, get inputs, and use both sides of the brain to instruct and coach effectively. It is important to address both the logic and fact and the emotional elements.

The supervisors need to identify the origin of difficult behaviors, they should be well aware of how they need to coach or train their employees, ensuring that each one of them fully assimilate what has been said by their supervisor. The auditory learners prefer listening to some kind of media to learn something unlike the visual learners who learn by seeing.

Different Learning Styles

Learning, as we know, is the process of receiving an input and applying it later. It is greatly determined by heredity. Listed below are the three basic learning styles −

• Visual
• Auditory
• Emotional

Visual learners

Visual learners find it easy to learn using visual aids. They store information by seeing. Visual aids are most important in presentations and training because they find it easy and effective to learn from diagrams rather than listening to audio or verbal instructions. These prefer to receive information visually. They like to get information in written form.

A visual person would like to read an email or see a fax of something before taking any decision, no matter how articulately you explain things to him. They will tend to use sentences that will have a lot of visual words like “I don’t see a lot of profit here”, “Look, I wanted things to be this way”, “Did you see what he said?" etc. They enjoy reading, watching TV, writing stuff and playing intellectual games.

Auditory Learners

On the other hand, the auditory learners find it easy to just listen and follow up instructions. The most frequently used comment would be “The manual is too long to read, please tell me which applications are to be used.”

Auditory Learners like to ask for information in speech. Instead of reading a book, they would like to listen to audio book where the lines will be narrated to them. If you send them even a brief mail, they would most likely respond somewhat like “Yeah, I got the mail, however couldn’t get the time to go through it. Could we talk about it now?”

Auditory Learners use auditory sentences like “I don’t like the sound of that.”, “The plan sounds great.” They like listening and humming, sometimes unconsciously, and love listening to music. They enjoy word games and having conversations.

Kinesthetic Learners

Kinesthetic Learners would want to meet you in person before taking any decision. They would use words that are predominantly related to touch, feel and presence. Their sentences would sound like “This is a touchy issue.”, “This doesn’t feel right”

They like to hold things while talking. Even if they are complimenting the color of your dress, they might reach out and touch your dress. They enjoy sports and dancing. The emotional learner tries to relate every information he/she receives and retains with emotions and feelings.

Feelings play an important role when it comes to emotional learners, they retain and retrieve information in relation to feelings or emotions. They believe in actions and applications and strengthen their learning by doing so. The typical response would be ’Okay, I’ve seen or heard what you want me to do, now let me try it”.

They prefer applying it rather than listening or seeing it, for them application is important. In this case, good supervisors will combine visual, verbal and emotional methods to give a misunderstanding free effort and follow up. If you ever come across an employee who seems to be in his own world or “preoccupied”, the best strategy would be presenting the information in variety of ways.

People do cross over from one style to another but researchers say that we stay in our own comfort zone 70% of the times. So identifying and adapting to someone's primary style can help you break the ice quicker with them and build a rapport.

Take a moment. Which style do you usually prefer while communicating with your fellow employees? Which adaption technique do you use while receiving information so that the other employees understand with a different learning style?

Overall, understanding diversity is about feeling comfortable in an interrelated society and providing optimal output in an interdependent workplace that is a representation of the different demographics of the world.

Know Learning Style of your Team-mates

When working with team-mates with different learning tendencies, it’s important to know the learning preferences of each one of them. Communicating with them in a manner they like to receive information could not only make them more responsive but also productive.

This worksheet is designed to give a clear indication of a person’s learning preference. Answer the questions to the best of your ability.

Compare all your “Yes” responses with the chart given above. Depending on the type of learning that question fits into, write the corresponding question number under suitable headings in the table.

The box with the maximum number of question numbers in it will determine your dominant learning style. If someone doesn’t find a clear dominant style emerging, there’s nothing to be worried about. He could be a versatile individual!

How Feelings Contribute towards Behavior

Some of the most difficult employee behaviors can be rooted in bipolar diseases like passive aggressiveness, manic depression, paranoia, and schizophrenia. But, there are some mental disorders like hostility, addiction, depression, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorders which can be treated by normal medication.

Difficult behaviors are sometimes adopted by us to achieve what we want. For example, children who show their temper to get something they want grow up to become adults who use their emotions to achieve what they want. Difficult behaviors are also adopted when we want to avoid something that is unpleasant. For example, children who are discouraged or criticized for expressing themselves may become adults who never express themselves or tend to share less information or expertise even if that could benefit the team.

Have you ever thought that you may be someone’s first boss? Each employee’s experience play a major role in what you get in a pool of applicants, when you are promoted. Your dream may be to hire an employee who is energetic, interactive, skillful, a quick learner and eager to excel. But, it could also turn out that you get employees who are depressed, whose work reflects poor self-image because of multiple rejections they may have faced before, guilt, financial issues, and inability to cope up with other fellow employees.

Today most of the employees in a workplace show behaviors like mood swings, depression, eating disorders, and violent behaviors. Basic skills like reading, writing, mathematics, may be minimal or absent.

As a supervisor, when you suspect your employees to have mental illness, you should refer him to a competent health professional who would look into this matter. If company provides assistance, it can help the employee go through the treatment without violation of privacy. If not, you should keep the referral ready so as to refer him/her to a health professional as soon as possible.

Most of the people use physical traits to create a first impression. People tend to relate more positively if their physical appearance help them to strengthen the image. On the contrary, we tend to exhibit negative behaviors if our physical characteristics create a negative impression.

Supervisors cannot help much in bringing a total change in the mental characteristics, but they can alter the ways people think, which they can do by adjusting the way they relate to employees. In this way they can deal with different kinds of people around. Our emotional characteristics greatly determine the way we express and relate to others. Personality are formed by emotional characteristics.

Employee Supervision - Case Studies

An effective manager walks a fine line in micromanaging his employees' initiative, and giving him sufficient creativity. If the employees don’t find your working style interesting, it will reduce the productivity of your team. On the other hand, if you give your staff too free a hand, you will not be able to keep an adequate check on what targets have been met. The following two case studies effectively explain the following points −

Case Study 1

A team of management consultants was engaged by a bank to clean up a bookkeeping department. The bank people tried cost-cutting as much as possible by using inferior automation, sloppy procedures, minimal controls and stingy pay that attracted only low-quality personnel.

One of the new bookkeepers found out that an ex-employee had been forging reports and making up numbers for months and this action of his had gone undetected by his manager.

When an internal investigation was launched, it was found that the manager used to operate in a very “hands-off” manner and left his team-members to their jobs completely. His style of working was largely influenced by the enormous size of his team, which didn’t allow him time or tools to micromanage and co-ordinate with each and every member of his team. This situation was created because the management had unnecessarily piled on too much work on the manager to save costs.

It took the bank months of overtime and auditing to clear up the mess. In the end, the bank had to shell out millions to its depositors to make up the botches in their account records and these sums far outweighed the petty savings that they had managed to make through cutting corners so blatantly.

Everything said and done, the manager was found out as a convenient scapegoat and was fired. A few years later, the bank closed down.

Case Study 2

A new departmental controller had very nominal responsibilities of budgeting and expense reporting. However, an opportunity came up, and he got the chance to handle valued-added tasks like departmental strategy and market research. The new controller had neither experience nor interest in those tasks so he started delegating all responsibilities to his subordinates.

The subordinates didn’t have to face any queries or didn’t have to answer for their actions as the controller was too ignorant to start asking questions on the process. Putting all faith on the subordinates, the controller started enjoying his new-found authority. He freely promoted and recommended those people as they were willing to do all the hard work, leaving very little for the controller to worry about.

All was good till the subordinates completed in question got things done without any apparent hitches, and the controller had a lot on his plate, so he never bothered to delve deeply into exactly how the employee did what he did. This was a big mistake. For one, this exposed the controller to a potential crisis if the key employee took ill and had to be out of work for an extended period, or if he suddenly quit.

Those crises never came to pass, but the controller made a shocking discovery after the employee moved to another job within the company. Because of staff reductions, the controller had to split the departed employee's tasks with one of his remaining employees.

It soon came to light that these tasks required only a fraction of the time that the departed employee had led the controller to believe was necessary during his 16 month tenure in the group. It was, by then, too late for the controller to take back the top performance reviews that he had given to the departed employee, and which had led to the latter's promotion. For the controller, this was a lesson learned the hard way in supervising employees adequately.

Employee Supervision - Profiling Employees

Today, we have over 40 different personality instruments which are designed basically to identify a person’s dominant personality type, out of which, there are four types of personality traits that supervisors observe at the workplace on a daily basis.

The supervisor or manager may improve or alter the situation by considering the employees physical, mental and emotional makeup and understanding the sources of the difficult behaviors. Let’s discuss these basic personality types, and how the four types blend together.

The four prominent types of personality traits are −

• Dominant
• Extroverts
• Patient personalities
• Conformists

Dominants and Extroverts

• They take a bigger approach, a general one.
• They are multi tasker, they do multiple things at once.
• They are natural leaders and love starting new assignments.
• They never say what they are exactly thinking, but will refer to it obliquely.
• They convey their thoughts effectively, they are very outgoing in nature.

Patients and Conformists

• They are result-oriented.
• They are natural finishers.
• They avoid structured guidelines.
• They are thoughtful and cautious.
• They are good listeners and introverts.
• They focus on inserting details in the surroundings.
• They tend to do one activity at a time, but do it with perfection.
• They say exactly what they are thinking and are good communicators.

As we can see, the dominants and extroverts are task-oriented and more people-driven. They make factual and logical decisions, tend to also take emotional decisions, rely on team extensively, are congenial and of the “happy-go-lucky” type.

Conformists tend to be alone, and accept changes very fast. They support causes passively, and make decisions based on facts and principles.

Can you identify your type? Write down the qualities that you think led you to decide your personality type. Now think of an employee who shows difficult behavior in the workplace. What type do you think he is? What qualities led you to take that decision? Now compare your profile with him and see which qualities in him are in direct conflict to the ones you have. It could be the root cause of the overall air of hostility between you both.

Personality Type Worksheet

The following activity is designed to give you a clear idea of your personality type, and the personality types of your team-members. Keeping in mind the qualities that we had associated with individual types, you will be able to make a clear assessment of their personalities from the answers they give −

Strengths

• What are your greatest assets?

• What work are you really good at?

• What skills do people like in you?

• What do you do better than your co-workers?

• What one thing about are you most satisfied with?

• Which life-experiences of yours makes you stand out from others?

Areas of Improvement

• What skills and competencies you need to have to improve?

• What skills do others have that you wish you had?

• Which project in your office will help you learn new skills?

• What certifications do you need to move ahead?

• Which courses - business writing, organizing - will give you vertical growth in the department?

• What development opportunities are there in your daily professional life?

• How will you track the progress you are making?

Desires

• Do you want to be a better writer?

• Do you want to visit a gym and improve your physique?

• Do you want to improve your leadership skills?

• Do you want to be a better communicator?

Results

• What would attaining these goals mean to you?

• What does is this success mean to you and how will it impact you?

• How would your life change if you be the change you want to see in you?

• How will you measure your development in the areas you have identified?

How to Deal with Different Personalities?

In a workplace we find people from different cultures, and we see a lot of emphasis given on the cultural diversity around. Understanding different cultures is important so that we do not offend others. But, focus is much on training on how we are different. Everyone in this world has got a personality and this could be used to know and relate to people around. This helps us understanding them on their personality rather that the physical traits and our behavior toward them changes. This would greatly minimize the basis of prejudices made.

If you notice, a person can have all the four personality traits in him, with one being prevalent. One personality trait is always prevalent, but it may subject to change as a person adapts a new situation and environment. It may so happen that they may change their personality trait according to the job skills and required behaviors. However, their original personality trait may resurface soon. And, if the work becomes stressful, they tend to develop difficult behaviors.

Remember that you are identifying the employee based on the tendencies rather than the absolutes of the personality types. Infarct, there are no absolutes in the areas of personality based behavior because the variety is infinite.

Valuing all Personality Types

When you start recognizing people of different personality types, you will also notice that each is unique in its way and are variation of normal human behavior.

For example, you will find that a personality type can create a leader but leaders of different personality types may not lead in the same way. Achieving the success will not be in the same way, although you may find each personality type will find success.

Blending of different types is very advantageous. Each personality trait would have their own strengths, this may reflect in a team and the work may turn out to be successful. Imagine they have the same personality traits, they would simply be replicate each other.

Of course, they wouldn’t have misunderstandings and conflicts but the required skills would be missing. And, with different personalities working in a team, different approaches to do a task will be done and the results will be better, balanced, and their execution and planning will be effective enough.

Encouraging Behavioral Change

Different people have different perspective of viewing things and situations. In the midst of a problem, a person’s first thought would be “how will this affect me?” it’s creditable that one puts the interests of others before one’s own, but it may so happen that self-interest and self-preservation may come into existence. And, these efforts may develop the difficult behaviors like anger, denial, aggressiveness, defensiveness, sabotage, change resistance, jealousy and withdrawal.

To keep in mind, you cannot change people, their behaviors because they have their own perspective and may see situations differently. They do things for themselves and it depends on them when they want to change and what sort of behavior they might develop next.

An attempt to change might resort to the use of fear and punishment. This may well change the behavior for a short term but the underlying attitude won’t ever change. The only person who can change the difficult person is him- or herself. What can be done by us now?

One thing that can be done is change yourself in a positive way so as to motivate your employees. “Why should I change? It’s all because of him that this happened. Why shouldn’t he change?” this may be common but what you want to do is change the difficult people but not by forcing them. They will only change if the change will favor them and will be in their best interest. You need to find the interest and find best possible and reasonable way to achieve them.

Identifying Dominant Traits

These kind of people are more easily identified and about 15% of the general population are of this type. Listed below are some of their basic traits −

• Dominants are aware of what they have to do, they know their goals and work and, this drives them to success. Dominant people are well known for their creativity, they tend to think even when they are asleep. They have enough ideas to keep everyone busy with implementation.

• They are open to changes and believe that changes will open new ways to implement things. Dominants believe in action as soon as they get an idea. They are the leaders who lead by examples.

• Dominants become even more productive when they are in stress, they tend to encounter the obstacles by hitting them hard.

• They are risk takers, they enjoy taking risks. Their cycle of activity is : situation problem → risk → challenge → effort → accomplishment → satisfaction.

• They are born leaders and believe that they need to control people to accomplish a task.

• They are always confident in their approach and re natural problem solvers and decision makers. They are fast, assertive and active

• They believe in facts and logics to communicate.

The career choices of dominants are supervision, sales, trial, attorneys, law of enforcement, military, coaching, construction, firefighting, and manufacturing and communication based on facts and logic.

Identifying Extrovert Traits

You should ask for their ideas and inputs and if they do not engage in decision making and problem solving, they are most likely to reject the outcome.

• They will test your convictions by making absurd statements. You shouldn’t agree to agree. And, you need to show some respect and judgement as long you do not have to compromise with your position.

• They are impatient people and do not prefer long written or verbal communication. They prefer factual and logical summaries.

• You should show your full support and cooperation. You might actually see them delivering their ideas on the spot. They will like it if you confront issues boldly. You should provide situations where you include competitions.

• They like to follow a bottom line approach. So, you need not give a detailed approach. They do not like being controlled. Do not control. Their actions and responses.

• They do not like wasting time. You shouldn’t make excuses on emotional grounds. They dislike whining. You should not resist change until you have facts to support them.

Identifying Patient Traits

Patients are very focused regarding their work, and may do whatever is required. Patients should be made aware of how others may have perceived them.

• Talk to them and show them concerns, and if they understand the problem, they will be apologetic about it.

• In the process of getting accomplishment, they may even forget or may ignore the authority above them. This may be disruptive for a supervisor.

• You need to speak about how proper ways should be followed in an organization else, it may be disruptive. They are usually apologetic when they understand the problems.

• But, they may use their physical strength to show their anger. In this case, check your own defensiveness and see how they will help you. Also, notice the behavior in this case.

• It may so happen that these people in the process of leading may do something defensive that may irritate others who also wish to lead. You need to talk to the patients about how their actions may be sabotaging others desire. Ask them to opt of the leadership while giving others their chance too.

Identifying Conformist Traits

Conformists usually use their physical strength to show their anger, their response to the ones who act as obstacles in the way to success is direct confrontation which may be verbal or physical.

• They tend to get red-faced when usually in anger. You need to act like an umpire and should not back out. Backing up may increase their difficult behavior and stepping forward may cause to accelerate even before impact. You should be calm and composed at this point of time.

• Wait for them to cool down, and then talk to them slowly and quietly. And, it may happen they may apologize and forget what had happened within 15 minutes. Conformists are risk takers and love challenges. However, in this process they make the others uncomfortable, anxious, uncertain, and overly careful.

• You need to talk to them and inform them that what they are doing may turn disruptive to others. You should also state that they do not support any of the sides and you aren’t participating. Give them every possible reason as long as they sound like you are giving excuses.

Making Hasty Decisions

They may at times will not know that what they’re doing might be wrong. They may look confident but they are wrong. Alterative solutions can be provided to them in this scenario. Ask them to provide facts and figures to back up their position, and ask them to provide alternatives. They are known for their creativity and will surely come up with many alternatives.

Conformists people are impatient, and their manners may be imposing, most of them make direct eye contact, with their arms folded or hands on their hips. They are always hasty in their approach. You need to focus on their content more than their body language. You should not impose behavior as this may lead to insecurities.

Conclusion

Employees may sometimes be rude in their approach, they may at once present the facts and figures of a case without actually explaining them. They may even state that they have already discussed the issue when they haven’t. It is difficult to understand employees when you are a supervisor. It’s important to not let personal issues and personality egos clash or else productivity will suffer. We hope this tutorial will give you ample scope to understand the different personalities and extract the best out of them.