Supervisor: A person who monitors and regulates employees in the performance of assigned or delegated tasks.
A manager might have direct responsibilities for, for example, huge amounts of money or buildings and/or other assets, yet supervise no one. His work is his own.
A supervisor might or might not have direct responsibilities for money or buildings or other assets, but his work is not his own. He gets work done through other people.
Of course, this isn't always black and white. A manager might also supervise a staff; a supervisor might manage a budget or a hiring process. But this is not necessarily the case and the two terms should not be confused. Nor should the two individuals who perform this work be confused with one other. The jobs require very different skills and priorities, and god help the organization that doesn't get this, because for all the cash and property and airplanes and furniture and tech goodies that an organization owns, its most expensive asset is its employees. Always was, still is. Even now.
A manager might never receive a letter like the one above. A bad supervisor assuredly will. And such a letter can hurt the organization far more - and far more chronically - than most decisions made by mere managers.
Good supervision is a skill, a royal pain in the ass, a constant headache, and a source of enormous satisfaction, pride and gratitude. It has not the most direct but certainly the most lasting effect on the organization's effectiveness and even its existence.
The Enron and Arthur Andersen failures were due primarily the shameless activities of a gang of runaway brumby managers, but if you suspect that these idiots might not have been able to spread irresponsibility and misery up and down the corporate structure, across several states, down Wall Street and through the pocketbooks and bank accounts of thousands of investors and employees had they been properly supervised, you're onto something. Hold that thought.
Good supervision is critical. Good management? Yeah, whatever.
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In any kind of business - shop, bank, factory, office, farm - the biggest step any employee will ever make is the one in which he moves from doing the work himself to getting the work done through other people.
Yes, that's right. On the way from the depths of the mail room to Bill Gates, the first, biggest, hardest step is the first time a person supervises the work of another person. And that first step on the long climb from mail to Bill is the one step that trips up the most people. So it is a big deal. A very, very big deal.
Because suddenly you don't have one boss to satisfy: you have two or twelve or five hundred bosses to satisfy. And if you don't understand that, god help you.
How are you prepared for this sudden, complex responsibility over your former peers? Your own boss tells you something like, "Good job. You're now the supervisor. You need to go buy a better tie."
Most never get over that. Most never GET it. Nevertheless, most who were productive, effective mail deliverers do continue to crawl - not stride - up that staircase dragging some kind of success - however they define it - along behind them, but also dragging stress, uncertainty, frustration, misunderstanding and misery, too, for the rest of their careers.
Many of them do have careers that, from a distance, one could envy. But too many (ONE is too many) of those careers were built on the mistreatment, resentment and unhappiness of others for whom there was never any accounting demanded or given. And most of all those careers could have been superior in every way had they been built on a better foundation.
If only these struggling, stressed, intentionally or unintentionally abusive supervisors had known this: supervision is not an art. It is a skill. It is not luck, instinct, insight, abstract concepts, psychology, sociology, or philosophy; it is action and implementation. It is not a secret, not magic, not the innate or inborn gift of a fortunate, talented few. Anyone can learn it.
At the end of a long, seemingly successful career that involves supervising other people, a person can look back at one of two things:
- Personal achievement despite other people.
- Personal achievement through helping other people attain personal achievement.
And yes, the difference is significant.
As the wonderful cartoonist Hugh MacLeod puts it:
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