Marketing Mantra

The Functions of a Supervisor

The key to being an effective supervisor is to realise that you are the basic level of management. Therefore, you are working with people directly and are assessed on how well your team performs – and not just your own work. Of course, you are a key member of the team but your own manager will hold you accountable for the team's performances. The staff will also view you as being from the "management" and not one of them

This middling position sometimes causes a fix in the mind of the supervisor. The supervisor is expected to be

• The know-it -all of the department

• The representative of the team while dealing with the higher management

• The representative of the higher management while dealing with the team

For this he is expected to know

• the company’s disciplinary procedure

• the policy on training and development

• paperwork to complete

However, this knowledge alone will not make you an effective supervisor. It will help you to know what to do but not necessarily how to do it. This is particularly the case when looking at your role as leader.

Traits of an effective leader

The same traits of a person will be viewed differently by different people. What one person sees as assertive behaviour, another may see as unnecessarily aggressive; if you think someone is determined, you can be sure someone else sees that person as stubborn and inflexible. This is just as true when we look at accepted qualities such as fairness, consistency, etc.

Therefore we need to look at other ways of deciding effective leadership. In simple terms a leader is one who motivates his group to achieve the tasks maintaining team unity throughout the process.

ACTION CENTERED LEADERSHIP(ACL)

ACL is one of the concepts on leadership which stresses the interdependence of three factors :

• The tasks to be done

• Addressing the needs of the individual

• Maintaining group cohesion and team spirit.

 We can...