Module 1: The Role of the Supervisor
Your ability to carry out your role effectively as a supervisor is critical to your department’s ability to achieve its goals. As a supervisor, your work is done primarily with and through others. This course presents an overview of the role of a supervisor in a human services setting, covering what is expected of you and techniques that can be used to guide the work of others. Participants will learn ways to create an environment that encourages people to do their best work and develop a new mindset that shifts the learner’s perspective from “I” to “we.”
Topics include:
- Understanding your role as a supervisor
- Shifting your mindset from an individual contributor to collective contributor
- Setting professional boundaries
- Understanding the phases of transition
Module 2: DiSC for Supervisors
Self-awareness allows supervisors to identify the gaps in their leadership skills and reveal the areas where they are most effective – as well as areas where there is opportunity for improvement. Prior to attending this session, participants will take an individual DiSC Style assessment. During the workshop, participants will increase their self-knowledge about how they respond to conflict, what motivates them, what causes stress and how they solve problems. The assessment will assist supervisors in improving working relationships by recognizing the communication needs of team members.
Topics include:
- Learning about the DiSC model and completing an individual DiSC assessment
- Identifying individual style and explore the driving priorities during the workday
- Discovering the similarities and differences among DiSC styles and how to use them to connect with others and engage a team
Module 3: Team Building
Developing effective teams is a primary responsibility of a supervisor. The early stages of team development are about establishing the purpose of the team and its key goals, but once the team is up and running, the supervisor has a prominent role to play in guiding the team to success. This session will help supervisors develop a shared vision or understanding for a high-performing team, determining the critical elements and individual contributions that comprise this vision, and guiding plans or agreements to realize this vision in their own agencies. It will promote practice on key skills needed to address the inevitable challenges that arise in teams, notably appreciating individual differences, communicating collaboratively, and managing conflict.
Topics include:
- Examining principles and behaviors to guide team performance
- Understanding the stages of team development and recognizing how to best support a team through each stage
- Creating an ideal team vision
- Discovering information about management priorities and preferences and how to connect better with people to resolve interpersonal conflicts
Module 4: Creating Clarity: Establishing Expectations and Performance Standards
Selecting performance criteria comes down to one thing: determining how you will know if a job is being done well, identifying the elements that you are looking for from a job role and describing these elements specifically. In this session, supervisors will learn a process to clarify functions of the various job classifications under their supervision. This process serves as a foundation to initiate a plan for intervention to assist and support staff in meeting job performance demands, recognize employees of good performance, encourage professional development, provide employees with recommendations for improvement, and enhance the overall operation of the agency.
Topics include:
- Learning the characteristics of job performance criteria
- Analyzing job responsibilities and tasks
- Developing a written model of job performance criteria
Module 5: Engaging Communication and Feeback
Assessing and managing employee performance is a primary responsibility of those holding positions that supervise others. It is a continuous and sometimes complex process. Done correctly, it is a tool that can enhance the operation of the agency and recognize employees for good performance, encourage professional development and provide employees with recommendations for improvement. This session is designed to provide supervisors with the skills and confidence to both give and receive feedback effectively to and from others in the agency.
Topics include:
- Inspiring employees who are already performing well to greater performance and achievement
- Guiding employees to take accountability for their results and developing solutions to their performance issues
Module 6: Coaching for Performance Development
The work environment in a human services agency requires employees to be skilled in performing very complex tasks in an efficient, customer-service based, and safe manner. It is the supervisor’s responsibility to support the growth and development of employees who are new to their team, when they identify a performance gap due to lack of knowledge or skill, or to support a change initiative within the agency. In this session, supervisors will learn to use a simple model designed to help troubleshoot performance problems and identify the appropriate intervention.
Topics include:
- Setting purpose, goals and objectives for training to promote learning transfer
- Analyzing performance gaps
- Identifying training needs and/or appropriate interventions the supervisor can take to provide support
Module 7: Putting it All Together: Performance Appraisals
The goal of a performance appraisal process is two-fold: development of strengths and collaboration. While most associate performance appraisals with evaluation, an often overlooked aspect of the process is the opportunity for development. The appraisal period is an opportunity for the supervisor and their employee to focus on their development and goals for the upcoming evaluation period. In this session, supervisors will learn strategies for an interactive exchange about the employee’s performance, as well as ways to connect with employees regularly to discuss their success and challenges so that information written in the appraisal comes with no surprise.
Topics include:
- Assessing job performance
- Communicating effectively
- Recognizing employees who meet or exceed job expectations
- Coaching and counseling
- Follow up and mutual accountability