Advice

The Art of Supervision: Why Most Training Gets It Wrong

Three months ago, I watched a newly-promoted supervisor reduce a 20-year veteran electrician to tears in front of his entire crew. The supervisor had just completed a $2,800 leadership course the week before. Money well spent, clearly.

This is the problem with most supervisor training these days – it's designed by people who've never actually supervised anyone doing real work. They focus on theory instead of the messy, complicated reality of managing humans who have mortgages, bad days, and opinions about how things should be done.

What They Don't Teach You

The first thing they never tell you in supervision training is that 60% of your job isn't supervising at all. It's being a counsellor, mediator, and occasionally a mind reader. Sarah from accounts isn't performing poorly because she doesn't understand the process – she's distracted because her mum's in hospital and she can't concentrate.

Most training programs spend weeks teaching you how to conduct performance reviews but completely skip the art of reading people. They'll show you frameworks and matrices until your eyes bleed, but they won't teach you how to spot when someone's struggling before it becomes a problem.

Here's what I learned the hard way: supervision is 30% process, 70% psychology.

The process bit is easy. Anyone can learn the paperwork, the procedures, the compliance requirements. It's the psychology that separates good supervisors from the disasters I see wandering around construction sites and office buildings across Australia.

The Real Skills Nobody Talks About

Timing. Knowing when to have difficult conversations. Pro tip: never on Friday afternoons, never when someone's just walked in late, and definitely never in front of other people unless it's absolutely unavoidable.

Translation. Taking what management wants and explaining it in a way that doesn't make your team want to revolt. When head office says "we need to optimise operational efficiency," what they mean is "do more work with the same people." Your job is to figure out how to make that happen without everyone hating you.

Selective blindness. Sometimes you need to not see certain things. Like when your best performer takes an extra ten minutes at lunch because they stayed back unpaid for two hours yesterday. The rulebook says one thing, but good supervision requires flexibility.

Most business supervisory training completely ignores these realities. They want everything documented, every conversation recorded, every decision justified by policy. That's not supervision – that's bureaucracy.

The Australian Way

We do things differently here, and that's not always a bad thing. The tall poppy syndrome works both ways in supervision. You can't be too matey with your team, but you also can't be the corporate robot who quotes policy manual sections at people.

I've worked with supervisors from the UK and US, and they often struggle with the Australian approach to authority. We don't do hierarchy the same way. A good Australian supervisor earns respect through competence, not title.

Take BHP, for example. Their best site supervisors aren't the ones with the fanciest qualifications – they're the ones who started on the tools and worked their way up. They understand the work, they understand the people, and they understand that sometimes the best leadership decision is to grab a shovel and help dig.

Where Training Goes Wrong

The biggest mistake in supervisor training is treating it like a one-size-fits-all solution. Supervising a team of software developers is completely different from supervising a road crew. The principles might be similar, but the application is worlds apart.

I see this constantly in Melbourne and Sydney training rooms – groups of supervisors from wildly different industries being taught identical techniques. The facilitator will use examples from retail to explain concepts to people who manage mining operations. It's mental.

Good supervision training should be context-specific. If you're supervising tradies, you need to understand their culture, their priorities, their communication style. If you're supervising professionals, that's a different skill set entirely.

The Things That Actually Work

Consistency beats perfection every time. Your team would rather have a supervisor who's consistently fair than one who's occasionally brilliant but unpredictable.

Clear expectations save everyone's sanity. Not just what needs to be done, but how, when, and to what standard. Most workplace conflicts I've mediated could have been avoided if someone had just been clearer about expectations from the start.

Regular check-ins work better than formal reviews. Five minutes every few days beats an hour every three months. People appreciate knowing where they stand, and small course corrections are easier than major interventions.

Recognition matters more than money (up to a point). A genuine "well done" in front of peers is worth more than a $50 gift card. But don't take the piss – if someone's going above and beyond consistently, they deserve more than just words.

The Hard Truths

Some people aren't cut out for supervision, and that's okay. Not everyone needs to climb the ladder. Some of the best technicians, salespeople, and specialists I know would be terrible supervisors. There's no shame in that.

The Peter Principle is real. People get promoted to their level of incompetence all the time, especially in supervision. Just because someone's good at their job doesn't mean they'll be good at supervising others doing that job.

What Good Looks Like

The best supervisors I've worked with share certain characteristics. They're decisive without being dictatorial. They protect their team from unnecessary corporate rubbish. They give credit generously and take blame readily. They know when to bend rules and when to enforce them strictly.

They also understand that supervision is a service role. You're there to help your team do their best work, not to lord your authority over them. The moment you start supervising for your own ego instead of for results, you've lost the plot.

Good supervisors create other good supervisors. They develop their people, share knowledge, and aren't threatened by subordinates who might one day replace them. They understand that their success is measured by their team's success, not by how indispensable they make themselves.

Moving Forward

If you're looking at supervisor training, ask hard questions. Who's delivering it? What's their background? Are they teaching theory or sharing experience? Can they adapt their content to your industry, your culture, your specific challenges?

The best training combines classroom learning with mentoring, observation, and gradual responsibility increase. Nobody becomes a good supervisor after a two-day course. It's a skill that develops over time with practice, feedback, and reflection.

Most importantly, remember that every person you supervise is someone's child, partner, parent. They have hopes, fears, and lives outside work. Your job isn't just to get tasks completed – it's to help people succeed while treating them with dignity and respect.

That might not be in the training manual, but it's the foundation of everything else that matters.

Further Resources: Workplace Abuse Training | Professional Development Skills