New Breed of Supervisors: Essential Ingredient (3) Engagement Training

By Barbara Burke, March 15th, 2010


This is the fourth in a series on the crucial role that supervisors play in driving employee engagement and customer satisfaction.
Four ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS
1. Accountability for employee engagement scores.
 2. Time to spend with their reps.
 3. Specialized engagement training.
4. Creative communication tools.


“Conventional supervisors rate the person and develop the performance. The New Breed of Supervisors do just the opposite — they rate the performance and develop the person.” – Barbara Burke

Despite the fact that quality supervision is a critical success factor in delivering superior customer service and a key driver to employee engagement, supervisors are among the most under trained and ill-prepared employees in many companies.

Most supervisors are experienced service reps promoted from within the service center. New supervisors receive training in the technical and systems side of managing a service operation, but rarely receive in-depth training in coaching and mentoring — two of the basic skills for gaining employee commitment and engagement.

What makes engagement training different is that it focuses on enhancing the supervisors’ ability create positive, caring relationships with their employees.
Most supervisors I know are eager to trade their role as performance-enforcer for talent-developer but lack the know-how and/or a specific process they can follow. For some supervisors it’s not a training issue. These leaders know what to do — all they need is permission to do what comes naturally.

Top Four Lessons Learned When Training Supervisors

1. Clear the decks.
> Make sure that priorities are re-aligned to allow supervisors to spend the time necessary supporting their employees after the training.
> Managers may need to off-load some of the “administrivia” that supervisors perform.
2. Measure the engagement level of the supervisors.
> It is ludicrous to expect a supervisor who is disengaged to build commitment and engagement of their employees.
> If the supervisory team is not fully engaged, work with their manager on improving their engagement-building skills.
> Make sure that philosophy and process the manager receives mirrors the supervisor training
3. Design training to include plenty of practice situations.
> Customize the training content so that it addresses whatever gaps were identified in the initial engagement survey.
> Identify specific coaching and mentoring opportunities hidden in every day interactions.
> Introduce a step-by-step guide for each informal and formal interactions.
> Focus on coaching activities that increase employees’ sense of “self-efficacy.”
> Spend at least 70% of the training time practicing “real life” situations.
4. Training is a process — not a destination.
> Remember that the majority of learning happens after the classroom training.
> Reinforce the learning process and celebrate early success with regularly scheduled “coach-the-coach” sessions.
> Create a positive team building opportunity for supervisors by encouraging them to critique and coach one another.

NEXT MONDAY: The 4th Essential Ingredient for Supervisor Success: Creative communication tools.