Work Side by Side With Your Team

As a supervisor, you still have a hand in production. Maybe you assign 100% of your production tasks to your team, and that's fine, but you probably are also close enough to what's going on to spot quality issues, customer problems, team member performance challenges and opportunities. Part of your job is to stay close to that.

Do you work side by side with your team members? Do you give them a chance to show you what they can do while you take the opportunity to observe quietly what gets in their way? Are you close enough to customers to hear the current wave of requests and (more importantly) to sense what customers will need soon but haven't yet asked for?

High performance supervisors are comfortable working side by side with their team and still know when to step far enough away to lead.

It's not your job to do their job. But it is part of your job to know their job. Supervisors who do this earn credibility, camaraderie, insights and motivation with and from their team members.

Think of a team member you haven't worked side by side with recently. What can you do this week to spend some working time with them?

-- Douglas Brent Smith

Learn more in the workshop: Improving Performance

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"An enemy is a person whose story we have not heard." -- Gene Knudsen Hoffman Without contrary evidence it always seems like we're right. Even WITH contrary evidence we get stuck often defending our story, our view. The story may not be wrong, but it is surely incomplete. Listen. Ask questions. Understand. Learn. High performance leaders look for common ground. -- doug smith

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