Great Supervisors Radically Re-Think their Public Style

By Steven Grant

The front line supervisor's #1 priority is to successfully process each day's work. Accomplish that task about 250 days of the year for 3-5 years and you'll be a strong candidate for a promotion. The lessons you learn as a successful supervisor will be the most important, and intense, management training you've every received. Should you have that aspiration, these lessons will serve you well all the way up the ladder. Everything you learn, you're going to learn from the most demanding teachers in the world, your front line customer service representatives and your customers. If you can satisfy these audiences with your determination, knowledge and skill you will gain the fundamentals required to manage any group. Before this happens you've got a lot of different demands tugging on your time and energy that you need to start pulling in one direction.

The good news for many of you is that you're already an expert in the technical aspects of the job. Unlike many of the leaders above you in the food chain, you've just come from the line and actually know what is going on, most of them have been managing so long they've forgotten. Be gentle with them, if you're really successful, eventually you'll forget also.

You may have spent years developing your technical knowledge and honing your customer skills to reach the supervisor role, now there are new skills to learn and apply to be an extraordinarily successful supervisor.

The roles of front line representative and front line supervisor differ primarily in the shift from direct action to influence management. Instead of acting as an individual technical expert, the supervisor must guide the performance of 10-30 other individual experts. To successfully make this transition the new supervisor must learn the importance of their public style versus their personal knowledge. This is a major transition and one where too few companies provide practical, meaningful training.

"Style" is not to be taken lightly here, this is not about the color of your shoes or the kind of music you enjoy (but, by the way, don't wear those brown loafers with the blue suit any more, you're management now). Style is the way you move through the world, how you communicate, the confidence you exude, the respect you afford others, and your ability to hold the wheel steady when foul winds are blowing. A public style emerges when you begin to realize that you're no longer acting based on your own desires or a personal agenda, you're acting on behalf of the employees in your care, with guidance from your boss, and within the principles, values and objectives of the overall corporation. You're now a member of a larger community and are required to balance all these interests to achieve the best possible outcome.

As a front line representative you didn't have to think through any of those issues, you needed to know what you were doing, do it relatively quickly and accurately, communicate efficiently with the customers, cooperate with your team members, and listen responsively to your superiors. Do those five things with some consistency, show up on time, and you're pretty much an "A" player in the ranks.

Now, as a new supervisor you're taking it up a notch, may Emeril guide us. This is a different way of thinking about the world, even a different way of moving through the world.

Enjoy the change, fear the change, embrace the change; you're on your way to a great career in a confusing, demanding, exciting new role that can carry you as far as you're willing to reach.
Copyright 2007, Lotus Pond Media

Steven Grant is a former customer service executive from American Express with over 25 years devoted in Fortune 500 companies analyzing, improving and delivering on enhanced customer experiences. Share your experiences and suggestions on improving the customer experience at http://www.customerresearchcenter.com or email Mr. Grant at scgrant@customerresearchcenter.com.

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