The leadership role of the supervisor

1
The leadership role of the supervisor

• The primary role of the supervisor is to ensure
  that a group of people work together to achieve
  the goals set by the business.
• With a tourist information centre, for example,
  this means ensuring that physical resources (such
  as brochures) are available, correct and up to
  date. Since service is so important, staff
  training is one of the supervisors most critical
  roles.
• Managing physical and human resources to achieve
  customer service goals requires planning,
  organising, staffing, directing and controlling.
• Each of these terms will be described in detail.
  The frontline manager or supervisor plays a key
  role in the interface between frontline staff and
  more senior management. For this reason,
  effective communication flow is essential in
  both directions. Here the supervisor plays a
  pivotal role.

2
Functions of ManagementAnyone in a leadership
position performs the five functions of Management
3

• Planning
• In order to achieve the goals of your work team,
  you need to plan a pathway and decide what is
  needed and how things should be done. Lack of
  planning will inevitably lead to chaos. In
  restaurants, the term mis-en-place means
  preparing for service.
• If all the tables have been set and the crockery
  and cutlery stocks have been cleaned and
  polished, if the garnishes have been prepared and
  other requirements have been set out carefully on
  the sideboard, then the staff will find that
  service will flow smoothly.
• This is an example of short-term planning.
• But supervisors also need to plan long-term by
  looking, for example, at staff requirements for
  that long weekend several weeks away to make sure
  that enough trained staff will be on duty.
  Rostering is just one aspect of long-term
  planning for the supervisor in a restaurant and
  they would need to take into account such things
  as the level of business anticipated, staff
  requests and labour costs.

4
Organising As a supervisor, you need to allocate
duties to individuals. Organisation means
ensuring that every task is performed effectively
and efficiently. This can involve delegating
tasks to people who do not generally do them and
taking on some of them yourself. By organising
duties in this way, situations in which everyone
turns around and says, I thought you were going
to do it! will be avoided. Organising also
involves allocating physical resources. In the
case of the teaspoon shortage, you would have to
ration them carefully since planning procedures
had clearly failed.
5
Staffing A supervisor needs to make sure that
there are enough trained staff on duty to provide
adequate (or superior) levels of service.
Sometimes this involves advertising for staff,
interviewing them and selecting the most suitable
candidates. The supervisor must also ensure that
these people are trained and motivated to achieve
team goals.
6

• Directing (Leading)
• This involves giving instructions, or telling and
  showing people what to do. Supervisors are very
  important role models and staff will copy their
  behaviour. Your dealings with customers, in
  particular, will be closely watched by staff and
  imitated by them. The way in which instructions
  are given is important and this will be one of
  the topics of discussion in the following
  chapters on motivation and leadership. In the
  current environment staff expect a coaching style
  of directing, whereas in earlier times bosses
  were far more autocratic.

7

• Controlling (Monitoring)
• Supervisors need to check that things are on
  track. If physical resources are constantly
  running low, then regular orders need to be
  updated. If staff are not performing to the
  required standard, the reasons for this need to
  be investigated and resolved.

8
As you can see, a supervisor needs to carefully
balance these functions. Too much time spent on
planning and too little on checking means that
the supervisor will never know if the A plans are
working. Too little time spent on planning will
lead to chaos in the directing phase. Checks
conducted in the controlling phase can produce
ideas for improving planning, staffing and
organising.