Moving up (continued)

Hy Resnick

Last month I identified some skills that child care workers need to master as they take on supervisory responsibilities. In this months” column I introduce and discuss another important skill that also must be acquired for successful supervisory performance i.e. the skill of dealing with staff and management problems/differences.

Reconciling the sometimes contradictory demands of these two social units is a complex skillset to acquire, but it must be acquired by new supervisors for successful supervisory performance. Playing the role of a supervisor is sometimes like a person walking on the middle of the road. They can be hit by cars coming from both sides “making it difficult to avoid being struck. So if the new supervisor wants to reduce the frequency of getting hit from both sides i.e. from both staff and upper management, I suggest new supervisors should recognize and come to accept the following reality:

Both staff and upper management have legitimate perceptions of what the priority tasks of the agency are¹. Both of these tasks must be performed effectively for the agency to offer quality services. For example management has to seek, acquire and provide sufficient funds to run the agency and staff has to provide quality services to the agencies troubled young clients so that funding sources are assured and their funds are effectively and responsibly utilized. With this reality in mind there are three models which a new supervisor can utilize in managing the more than occasional conflicting demands of staff and management.

1. The influencing-up model
In this model the supervisor (mostly) sees herself as attending to the needs and “voices” of the service delivery staff and conveying their attempts to change a policy or procedure to upper management. The contribution of this model has at least two payoffs:

1. Upper management is getting good information upon which their policy and financial decisions are made. Without this information top management can make policy and managerial decisions that are minimally based on the reality on the ground.

2. Staff morale is increasingly improved as some of their recommendations are heard and even utilized. A sense of real partnership between staff and management can emerge from this role

2. The conduit model
In this model the supervisor sees herself (mostly) as an agent of management and from whom, staff obtains information and directives about what management wants to see happening in the agency. Although this top-down model has well known limitations its contribution has a powerful payoff for top management i.e. they can feel that their management team are presenting a united front to staff thus increasing managements sense of control over what happens in the agency “a highly desirable achievement in people changing organizations.

3. The grandma (it depends) model²
Everyone should have a grandma who understands that there are no easy answers in life and when asked for advice on which pathway to make or what decision to make “the wise grandma says “It depends”. And so says the supervisor when faced with choosing whether to support management or staff on a given situation. The “Grandma (it depends) model” helps the supervisor decide whether and when to shift her “allegiance” from management or staff. For example when the situation suggests that staff is right then she fights to get staff’s point of view heard and when management is right on a situation, then she can advocate with conviction for management’s point of view with her staff.

The “Grandma model” thus allows the supervisor to professionally decide which of the first two models to use in a given situation “knowing the “Grandma model” helps her avoid getting hit too often from both sides of the road i.e. from staff and management.

NOTES

1. However, over time, staff priorities tend to be overridden by management priorities as the agency becomes more and more stratified “making the job of the supervisor attempting to balance the interests of staff and management more difficult.

2. Henry Maier suggested this image to me in a management workshop we were doing some years ago.