What makes a good supervisor?
#payitforward
They come with different names. Supervisor. Coordinator. Team Lead. Boss. CEO. Some of us are blessed with great leaders who guide us to our employment potential. Others create quite the hostile working environment, which makes us want to quit. What traits differentiate a great supervisor and a deplorable one?
This is on my mind today, all week actually, because I have a new position at work. As a reminder, I work as a direct support professional, supporting adults with special needs such as down syndrom and autism. I support these individuals in a day program. We do activities with them, help them to experience a rich life, even if they are quadriplegic and non verbal.
The coordinator herself seems to be efficient and socially in tune. She has a smile and a kind word to her staff, even when their request is impossible. She does her best to explain why the request wouldn't work, and then works to resolve it if she can.
And then there is the one who likes to think she is in charge.
I guess she's the assistant, so she does have some authority. And I can respect her efforts to keep us DSPs in line and keep the Day Program running smoothly. But, oh my, what a hostile environment she engenders!
Now, I am rarely the one to complain, and I do my best to look at things from others' points of view. I can see the pain in her eyes and imagine the things she has suffered to warp her attitude towards other people.
If I ask her a question of any kind, I typically get silence, a scowl, or a "do this because I tell you to." Yesterday, she randomly moved lunch to noon rather than 11:30, even though that would make afternoon activities rushed and departure late. I hesitated asking why; when I did, I got a huff and a "because I said so."
I pick up our people from their homes in the morning and take them to the program. Last week, I made the mistake of changing the order I picked people up, and she chewed me out when I got to the program. One of the guardians of the individuals got upset because I picked her son up later than usual. "You must follow the order I've written exactly!" the assistant said. "You must make parents happy or you will lose your job."
Needless to say, I was a bit cowed.
On Thursday, another guardian asked that we pick up her daughter at a specific time. I agreed and told the actual coordinator.
So on Monday morning, I followed the transport list exactly. It was different from the one last week, but I figured they had rewritten it to accommodate the guardian's request. The assistant had put the list in the van book, she did every morning that there was a change. Unfortunately, she forgot to update it, it was the wrong list, and I ended up not picking up one of the people I was supposed to.
Ok, I should have called her when I couldn't get hold of the coordinator. But honestly, I hate talking to this woman and avoid it whenever I can. And that's really saying something, because I can generally talk with anyone, from a non-verbal individual with down syndrom, to an astrophysicist.
Her eyes vibrated in anger, her lips tightened, as though I had done something so insulting to her personal dignity. As if this were an offense to her. As if it wasn't her responsibility to update the transport list for a new staff, especially when a change had been discussed.
I asked her, politely and respectfully, if she could understand how I could have made the mistake. She said, "No. I cannot. You should have called me! You should have done the transport you were trained on!"
I didn't bother to remind her that there was a change in the transport. She seems unable to listen to any suggestions of any kind from an underling. I smiled as politely as I could manage, apologized profusely, and promised to do better.
Can I just say, I love an environment where questions are always welcomed? And here I have this position in which all questions are impossible. And now I am a bit intimidated by the job.
How about you steemians? Do you have any horror stories about supervisors you have suffered under? Or, what do you think makes a good supervisor?
ROFLMAO!!! My blog post today is about a game called 42 casandra, and with my latest vote your rep just hit 42.
Hope you don't mind. It has nothing to do with you, it's just what the researchers decided to call it.
Anyways, great job leveling up!
I had a comment, then I thought better about it. Realized the tone was wrong and not the message I intended to send. Keep your chin up, hang in there. She'll be forced to quit eventually.
Im guessing this person is a fairly new supervisor, is probably threatened by the magnitude of their new position, or have even been doing it for some time but cant get comfortable with it.
If you never tried it you should, being a direct supervisor for staff is what some people call the 'meat sandwich', you (the meat) get wedged between those below and those above (bread), you then get chewed by all concerned. When your team screw up as supervisor, you carry the accountability for that, when your team do well, they did their jobs, so what. You get people coming to you with all kinds of crap 'my cat died, I need time off' or the manager telling you 'headcount reduced, so who would you choose to lose?'.
A good supervisor knows they are there to protect the company by improving the performance of everyone on the team, and doing that by making the people want to perform to their own highest capability is the best way. As a supervisor you cant control people though, and if someone decides not to tell you whats going on, then you dont know whats happening and cant do what needs to be done.
@scalextrix
Nah, that's no excuse for being this kind of nasty.
My guess is she is someone who was constantly filing frivolous complaints about her superiors and coworkers, ended up getting fired. Then she ended up suing for some weird thing like sexual harassment or racial discrimination, then got her job back as a condition of not furthering her suit.
Another possibility is she is a nepotism hire. Being a support program for people with disabilities the most likely reason the company exists is some politician is diverting money from a govt program to their own pocket and using the place as their own personal piggy bank. When that happens usually there is someone who no matter how nasty they are, are just "unfirable". You come to find out it's because they are well connected socially.
Possibly both.
She's been a suoervisor for a while, then her program was shut down (I don't know why.) Then she demanded to be in this day program, where for some reason the company let her be... but would not hire her as the actual coordinator. I get the sense she's got a lot of emotiomal problems, I just wish she could find a position that doesn't require interactons with other humans.
Interestingly, she was also nasty to the person I replaced, but she all but ignores a couple if other staff who have been with the company for a few years. So she is very keen on seniority. She is also respectful to the actual coordinator, who has been with the company for a few months.
Oh, so she is a victim. Her other role was removed and now she lost status by being placed under another supervisor. Ill bet she resents the situation and her new boss, but she knows fighting her boss wont work so she takes it out on you instead.
She is weak, remember that the next time she is hortible, it comes from her weakness.