I spend a lot of time supporting leaders develop the skills to become good managers or supervisors. And through these conversations I’ve come to some insights that I wasn’t necessarily expecting:
- More often than not, people’s experience of being managed is predominantly ‘non-positive’. In fact I have held at least two workshops where not one of the participants was able to name a single positive role model as a supervisor through their careers. This is shocking. Because if we are not having good management modeled to us, particularly early on in our professional lives, we are likely to, not only have negative experiences ourselves, but assume that is the way management has to be.
- Typically we think someone needs more management when they are more junior, or entering a new role. The seniority of someone’s position is often inversely correlated with how much supervision they are getting. Increasingly I think this is the wrong approach. We don’t need less management as we become more senior, we may need different management. But I often feel in coaching that some of my clients are looking not only for a coach but for someone to compensate and fill in some of the management roles that are missing for them (help prioritizing, thought partnership, mentoring on strategies for tough decisions, backup where needed)
- The past couple of decades have created a tension and a valuing of leadership skills over management skills. I often hear people boast that they are a leader more than a manager. I would argue that the two roles should not be conflated. Leaders (almost but not always) have a role in managing others among other responsibilities and demands. Managers may or may not need to be leaders as well. We should look at each as a role in its own right.
- The reasons for poor management are many – and often multifactored: lack of awareness in the manager; lack of skills, lack of expectations at an organizational level; internal politics; personality clashes; overwhelm at all levels; personality clashes. If we can tease out what is going on then we stand a better chance of addressing it.
However I think there is a question which supervisees (and we are all managed by someone – even the CEO reports to their board) rarely ask. Actually I think there are two questions: What do I WANT from my supervisor? And what do I NEED from them? (these may or may not be the same question).
When we ask these questions then we start to create some agency for ourselves, which may take us in a number of directions:
- We can assess the gap between what we are looking for and what our manager is currently giving us?
- We can then determine if we can initiate a conversation with them to articulate our needs (we can’t assume that they can guess what is in our heads) and to have a conversation about how we might co-create a relationship that supports this.
- And finally we can start to understand that, assuming our manager is human, it is unlikely they will be a perfect match for what we need and so we can proactively figure out strategies to help ourselves to supplement what we aren’t getting from a reporting relationship.
Here are some questions that can help us get clarity on what we are looking for and what we are missing?
- In previous supervisors I have had that I have enjoyed working with, what were the factors that contributed to a good relationship? Why were they important to me? Do I still need them/have them?
- What is working well in my current relationship and what are the factors that allow for this?
- Where do I find challenges in my relationship with my supervisor and what might be going on? Is this a challenge with me? With them? With our communication? With unexpressed needs on either sides? What are steps that I might take to address this?
- Are there things I am looking for that I could or should look for in a different part of my life?
- How receptive am I to feedback on what I could do to manage the relationship better?
I’m sure I might get pushback from some, saying it’s unfair to put responsibility for being managed well onto us, the ‘people’, and a manager should just be able to do their job – that’s what they are paid for after all. This may or may not have truth in it. But at the end of the day, as with any relationship it is all about the connection and the only person I can change is myself. And I believe increasingly that it is going to take all of us working from all parts of the system to break cycles of poor management.
