As the month of November commences, so continues our article series, Competencies of Great Supervisors, with a focus on how and why strong leaders keep abreast of industry and departmental knowledge.

"Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future."

Technical expertise is a skill set that Ascend Training Solutions typically does not address, but functional expertise is definitely in our "sweet spot," especially in terms of teaching supervisors to be great leaders. We are often in the position of training people whose strength lies in their impressive technical expertise, such as engineers, accountants and applied researchers, but do not have a lot of background in leadership. Technical expertise and leadership expertise are, of course, two very different skill sets. I have found that people, whose technical expertise is quite sophisticated, sometimes struggle to see the value in taking the time to develop their own leadership expertise. Leadership training typically takes a back seat to product development, financial statements, validations and other responsibilities requiring their technical expertise. Unfortunately, the outcome of this lack of development can be employee frustration and high turnover, discontent within the team, and inability to achieve desired outcomes. Communication of goals, expectations, timelines and resources, which are critical components of great leadership, is so often the missing piece. In addition, taking the time to develop the team members and their ability to trust each other, collaborate, and support each other is an absolute necessity if the team is to reach a state of High Performance. There is of course, a plethora of leadership skills to be developed, Communication Skills and Trust in Your Team are just two of the most obvious ones that are frequently missing when things are going wrong. 

I believe most managers desire to lead a High Performance team, but far too many of them overlook the necessity of developing and implementing leadership skills. Problems with quality or turnaround time are typically assumed to be the result of an employee error, a process inefficiency, or a vendor problem. Digging deeper though, we may find such problems are lack of effective communication, unclear expectations or relationship problems within the team. A skilled supervisor will spot and address such issues before they affect the work of the organization. Many though, don't know the warning signs or what to do when they see them.

It is most definitely a challenge to find the time for leadership training for the highly technical members of your team, but remember that good leaders produce great product on time and within budget. Such accomplishments are typically achieved by a highly communicative, collaborative and competent team lead by a supervisor who has been intentional about developing those proficiencies.