Thursday, December 13, 2012

ONE MAN'S STORY

A few years ago I was conducting an all day supervisor's training workshop in a large southern U.S. city. One of the key exercises we do in our workshops is one entitled--BUILD THE PERFECT SUPERVISOR. 

In that exercise we have the participants list all of the traits they think a great supervisor needs to have in order to succeed in their career and be perfect, if you will. As each roundtable group gives me their list I put them on a large sheet of paper which we then hang on the wall. It's a fun exercise that gets the whole room involved and more importantly, gets them thinking about their position and do they have the traits to be a strong. positive supervisor. 

In this particular exercise we had probably 5 or 6 pages filled and placed on the wall with traits such as,

--Technical knowledge
--Positive attitude
--Understands the company policies and procedures
--Safety conscious
--Does paperwork on time
--Understands discipline procedures
--Knows what to do in case of injury
--Has good customer interaction skills
--Good trainer
--Empathetic
--Good planner
--Handles emergencies effectively
--And many more

We were just about ready to complete this portion of the exercise when an elderly gentleman in the back of the room stood up and asked if he could mention a couple of important traits that had not yet been listed. In fact, he said, if a supervisor doesn't have two important traits, the rest of the traits don't matter. And the two traits?----

HONESTY

INTEGRITY

He went on to tell us that if the person he has representing his company in front of the customers and employees doesn't possess these two traits, it really doesn't matter how much of a shining star the supervisor is. The supervisor is the one person who represents the company and if you can't trust him or her to be honest in all of their dealings with everyone they are in contact with, you don't need them on your payroll. THEY WILL DESTROY YOUR COMPANY if they are not honest was his major theme as he continued. 

In addition, every supervisor should be one of high integrity. He proceeded to explain that integrity is something you have when no one is watching. I learned later that both of these traits had been lacking at one time with the people he had in charge of his operations.

Stop and think about it. It's true isn't it? Don't we want people representing our organizations that are honest in ALL their dealings with employees and customers? We also need to have them have the highest integity as they carry forward with our company name and do daily business as representatives of our company. 

I talked with this gentlemen after the session and found out he was 72 years old and had been taken advantage of by some of his family members who he had turned the business over to run on his behalf when he had reached 60. The idea was to provide them a company and provide him a retirement income. Unfortunately for him, they sucked the company dry and then gave it back to him when he was 70 and now he was having to build the company back up so he had something to eventually sell, but more importantly, he needed the company to put food on his table each day. This man really was an expert on what honesty and integrity meant. He lived through an ordeal of dishonest and immoral family members so he could speak from actual experience. While the gentleman had been taken advantage of, he was very optimistic of building his company back to its glory days. Not sure how many people I know would embrace the same attiude this gentleman had. 

What about you? What traits do you look for in a supervisor for your company? Let me suggest you conduct this exercise with your key people and see what the answers are. You learn a lot about the people representing your organization. Hopefully honesty and integrity will be two of the first words put on the paper as you list the traits your staff thinks are the important ones. If you don't have a staff of several supervisors, do the exercise with yourself. It's a great thinking exercise and will help you later as you begin interviewing for supervisors. 

This year is rapidly coming to a close and I hope it has been a good one for you. Hopefully some of our blog subjects have been helpful. Let us know what you think about the blogs and we want to wish you the very best for 2013. We have a couple of more writings to bring you in 2012 to close out our first year of weekly musings. 

Till next time.



 

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