New Supervisor Job

pixa241

So just landed a new supervisor job. This is the first time I am supervisor, and am looking for tips from other management experienced people. What are some good tools, tricks, and items, to be able to succeed in this role, not only as a supervisor but also with employees and with the company. Thanks everyone. I will be supervising the Server/Virtualization/Storage team.

Kinet1c

I'm not at management level yet but have done some reading on the subject to prepare for the future and also to get a feel for how things look from my own manager's perspective.

2 books I'd recommend are:
The First Time Manager by Belker/McCormick/Topchik - The First-Time Manager by Loren B. Belker
Good insights in to how organisations and managers function.

Leading by Alex Ferguson - Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United by Alex Ferguson
While Alex Ferguson is a soccer/football manager, he's one of the best to ever have that job. I'm about halfway through this book right now and there's some good tips within for those who are a manager in any industry.

jeremywatts2005

Remember you are not one of the guys. New managers tend to want to hang out with the staff they are managing acting like they are all buddies. Trust me you do not want to do this. It makes those disciplinary talks a little uncomfortable. Make sure you clearly state what you vision is for your team and work to make sure you have buy in from the staff. Make sure you are also developing your employees and understand what motivates them and where they want to go in the future. Develop a succession plan when you know their goals so they have a clear path forward in their careers if they want to move up or out of the department. Use the succession plan to have them take on additional work and responsibilities and cross train. There is so much more but that is a few of the good ones.

powerfool

Remember a few key things and balance them:

1. You have a job to do: being a manager is many things, and that can vary by organization. You have a team that you are to lead and you also report to someone else. As a leader, you should set expectations and examples and also facilitate the work of your team. Have high expectations for yourself and your team. Innovate. I attempted to get a director role at one of my previous employers and failed. Where I think I failed was in two things: the existing relationships I had with my then peers (not conducive to the transition), and not communicating some ideas that I had that could transform the IT department from merely supporting the business to offering business opportunities (depends on your customers... we served small businesses in a certain industry... we could have offered tailored IT solutions to these same customers).

2. Remember that you and your team are human: as much as your expectations should be high, remember that your team is not comprised of robots. They need to be able to utilize their PTO (if desired) without fear of negative repercussions, recuperate from illness, and sometimes just handle some personal issues. It improves their overall productivity and makes them enjoy their job. If you have high expectations and you find employees that can rise to those expectations, then you want to retain them... better make sure they want to stay. In IT there will definitely be times for long days, off-hours work, etc... realize this and that this should definitely afford flexibility. And if this is a problem up the ladder, you should be the champion for your team to communicate that these are things that are in the best interest of the organization. Just don't go overboard and get taken advantage of in the process.

3. Motivation: everyone needs motivation. That motivation isn't always the same, day to day. I think the primary motivation always will be livelihood... so don't lose sight of that, as much as HR rags want to pretend that fulfillment trumps cash. However, except for in bad economic times, employees can get cash from other employers, too. So, you must give attention to other motivators. Cash bonuses work well for two reasons: 1) it leads to that primary motivator of livelihood, and 2) it has a recognition component. Also, as some employees may have higher taxes, offering better fringe benefits and reimbursements is good; these could include: cell phone reimbursement, home internet reimbursement, work from home time (this is trending upwards significantly), books and training reimbursement, education, etc. Keep in mind, these things do not have to be 100% (especially when considering cell phone and internet... assume a cost that would cover the bare minimum of what would be expected... maybe $25-30/mo for internet, $35-50/mo for cell phone... are you going to want to call them on their phone? Are you going to want them to remote in and check on something or fix an emergency task? You should provide some reimbursement.

There are all sorts of things that folks could go on and on about. You could read books, articles, etc... take courses. They all have their benefits. But there are these other factors that I would say you should have some presence of mind about.

I think my parting statement would be on reviews. Don't look at reviews and thing you need to provide a balanced appraisal. If you have a good employee, praise them for it and be done. If you have a subpar employee, coach them on where they can improve. There are so many times where you get reviews and supervisors state: "You did really well overall, but..." No, forget the "but" unless it is actually problematic... and if it is actually problematic, you probably shouldn't lead in with "You did really well...." If you first instinct is "You did really well..." then leave it at that. Highlight what went well and align next cycle's goal with what the organization needs. There is little point in focusing on individuals weaknesses. You didn't hire them for their weaknesses, you hired them for their strengths. Focus the effort on how to amplify the results from their strengths. It takes significantly more input to improve a weakness with much lower results. So unless the weaknesses are causing a real issue, leave them alone. Just keep in mind, what is your initial reaction... if it "You did well..." then that is it.

EANx

You didn't state much about the position, a lot depends on the environment. Different corporate cultures are different. Silly Valley is different from Healthcare which is different from Government. Are any contractors? How many people and at what level?

Powerfool gave some great advice. If there's one thing I'd suggest it's to try to understand your team's motivation. Out of the eight people who do or mostly report to me directly, I have a wide range of personalities and motivations. How many of your people are hard hard-chargers? How many are stuck in neutral and likely will never get in drive? How many are beginners with a self-inflated sense of their worth but need to develop skills? Who, who, who? Being a manager is about managing people and managing people is like herding cats.

If your company will pay for it, ask for some management training and take a course on MBTI. While there are other ways to perform typology, this is the one I like. Once you learn to pay attention, you learn HOW to compliment someone so that they feel it most effectively. You also learn how to have "serious discussions (aka disciplinary meetings)" in a way that strikes home.

One of the best statements I've heard when it comes to squabbling employees came from a former GF. "You're both wrong. Now either you can fix this between yourselves or I can fix it. Would you like to give it a try first?"

tmtex

Don't become best friends with the staff, don't let them walk all over you and most of all !!! Don't go drinking with any of them.