The Professional Supervisor

You will spend the first part of the day getting to know participants and discussing what will take place during the workshop. Students will also have an opportunity to identify their personal learning objectives.

Adjusting to Your Role

To begin, participants will learn some key strategies for new supervisors. Then, they will discuss ways to ease the transition from employee to supervisor, and how to solve common problems.

A Supervisor’s Responsibilities

Next, participants will talk about their responsibilities to themselves, their employer, and their employees.

Making Plans

During this session, participants will learn how to use the urgent-important matrix to plan and prioritize. Participants will also be given a framework for planning.

Setting Goals

This session will help participants set SMART goals.

Leadership

To wrap up the first day, participants will look at different leadership models, including the Direction-Support model.

The Situational Leadership Model

During this session, participants will learn about Paul Hersey’s situational leadership model.

Problem Employees

Next, participants will brainstorm ways to deal with four types of employee problems: excessive complaining, laziness, hostility, and over-dependence.

Synergy

This session will begin looking at teamwork by exploring synergy: when the whole of the team is more than the sum of the parts.

Trust

Next, participants will discuss why trust is so important in a team environment, and how to build trust.

Team Development

This session will educate participants about Tuckman and Jensen’s four stages of team development, and how leaders can help teams at each stage.

Communication

During this session, participants will discuss what communication is, what can be a barrier to communication, how to engage in active listening, and how to ask good questions.

The Communication Process

This session will give participants a three-step model to use with employees who are agitated in some way (for example, excited, frustrated, or angry).

Motivation

Next, participants will talk about three approaches to motivation: the carrot, the whip, and the plant.

Orientation

During this session, participants will rate their company’s orientation and develop ideas for improvement to bring back to their workplace.

Training

This session will give participants some guidelines for effective training, whether they are the trainer or the trainee.

Providing Feedback

Giving feedback is one of the most important management tasks, yet many people find it a tricky area. This session will give participants some tools that they can use.

Delegation

Next, participants will learn about the degrees of delegation and common pitfalls.

Dealing with Conflict

This session will give participants a six-step model to resolve conflict, and a separate model to resolve problems. Then, concepts from the entire workshop will be practiced in a role play.

Discipline

To wrap up the workshop, participants will learn about various kinds of discipline and what to do if they have to fire an employee.

Workshop Wrap-Up

At the end of the third day, students will have an opportunity to ask questions and fill out an action plan.