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The Art of Supervising: Why Most Training Gets It Backwards
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My mate Dave called me last month, absolutely livid. He'd just been promoted to supervisor at his manufacturing plant in Perth, and the company had sent him to one of those cookie-cutter supervisory training courses that promise to turn you into the next Richard Branson in two days. "Mate," he said, "they spent three hours teaching us how to fill out performance review forms, but not one minute on how to actually talk to people who've been doing the job longer than I've been alive."
And that's when it hit me. We've got the whole supervision thing completely backwards in Australia.
After fifteen years in workplace training and watching hundreds of new supervisors crash and burn, I've come to a controversial conclusion: most supervision is actually about knowing when NOT to supervise. But try telling that to the corporate training industry that's built a billion-dollar empire on making it sound complicated.
The Real Art Nobody Teaches
Here's what they don't tell you in those fancy leadership training Melbourne sessions: the best supervisors I've worked with spend 70% of their time getting out of people's way. Not hovering. Not micromanaging. Not implementing the latest management fad they learned from some American business guru who's never worked a day in manufacturing.
The art of supervising is knowing when your team member who's been running that machine for twelve years doesn't need you to explain the safety protocols. Again. It's recognising when Sarah from accounts is having a rough day and needs space, not a pep talk. It's understanding that sometimes the best thing you can do is grab a coffee and let experienced people do what they do best.
But you won't hear this in corporate training. Why? Because you can't charge $2,000 for a course called "How to Leave People Alone Effectively."
The Australian Way vs The Textbook Way
In my experience working across Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne, Australian workers respond to a fundamentally different supervisory approach than what most international training materials suggest. We're not Americans. We don't get excited about morning team huddles and vision boards.
What works here is what I call "practical leadership" - supervision that's direct but respectful, solution-focused but not pushy. It's about treating people like adults who can think for themselves, whilst still maintaining clear boundaries and expectations.
Take James, a supervisor I worked with at a Brisbane construction company. Instead of implementing elaborate performance monitoring systems, he simply made himself available every morning for ten minutes, asked "What do you need?" and then followed through. His team's productivity increased by 23% in six months. Not because of complex management theory, but because he removed obstacles instead of creating them.
This approach drives traditional managers mental. They want charts and graphs and weekly team-building exercises. But James understood something that most corporate consultants miss: good supervision often looks like doing less, not more.
The Pop Culture Problem
We've been sold a myth about supervision that comes straight from Hollywood and American business schools. The charismatic leader who transforms everything with inspirational speeches and radical changes.
I blame Steve Jobs, honestly. Every supervisor now thinks they need to be this visionary genius who revolutionises everything. Mate, you're managing a team of five people in accounts payable, not launching the next iPhone.
The reality is far more mundane and actually more effective. Good supervision is about consistency, clear communication, and knowing your people well enough to adapt your approach to each individual. It's not glamorous. It doesn't make for inspiring LinkedIn posts. But it works.
What They Actually Need to Know
Instead of teaching supervisors how to conduct elaborate performance reviews, we should be teaching them how to have difficult conversations without creating enemies. Instead of complex delegation frameworks, they need to understand when someone's struggling personally and how to respond appropriately.
Real supervision skills include:
Reading the room. When to push and when to back off. When someone's genuinely struggling versus when they're taking the piss. These are human skills, not management techniques.
Practical problem-solving. Not implementing company-wide solutions, but figuring out why the morning shift always runs late and fixing it quietly without making a big drama.
Selective ignorance. Knowing which rules to enforce strictly and which ones to apply with common sense. The best supervisors I know break minor company policies regularly to keep their teams happy and productive.
Defensive management. Protecting your team from upper management's latest bright ideas and unnecessary bureaucracy. Sometimes your job is to be a buffer, not a conduit.
Now here's where I'll probably annoy some people: I think we need to admit that some people should never be supervisors, regardless of how much training you give them. It's not about intelligence or technical skills. Some personalities just aren't suited to managing people, and no amount of courses will change that.
I've seen brilliant engineers become terrible supervisors because they couldn't stop trying to solve everyone else's problems. I've watched amazing salespeople fail miserably as team leaders because they couldn't understand why not everyone was motivated by competition.
The Honesty Nobody Wants to Hear
The dirty secret of supervision training is that most companies promote people into supervisory roles for the wrong reasons. Technical expertise, loyalty, or simply being the next person in line. Then they panic and throw training at the problem, hoping it'll stick.
But here's what I've learned after years of cleaning up these messes: you can't train someone to care about their team. You can't teach emotional intelligence in a workshop. You can't turn someone who sees people as problems to be solved into someone who sees them as individuals to be supported.
What you can do is give people practical tools for the situations they'll actually face. How to handle someone who's consistently late without destroying team morale. How to deliver bad news from upper management without looking like the villain. How to support a team member going through personal issues whilst maintaining professional boundaries.
But most training programs spend their time on theoretical models and best practices that sound impressive but fall apart the moment someone has a real human problem.
Getting It Right (Finally)
The supervisors I respect most have figured out that their job isn't to be the smartest person in the room or the most popular. It's to create an environment where good people can do good work without unnecessary stress or obstacles.
This means different things for different teams. For some, it's about providing clear direction and getting out of the way. For others, it's about being available for guidance whilst still expecting independence. The key is reading your team well enough to know which approach works for whom.
I worked with a supervisor in Adelaide who had this exactly right. She managed a team of experienced tradies who didn't need or want constant supervision. Her approach was simple: clear expectations, quick decisions when they needed resources or approvals, and fierce protection from office politics. Her team would walk through fire for her, not because she was their friend, but because she made their jobs easier.
The Bottom Line
After all these years, I'm convinced that good supervision is more art than science. It's about understanding people, adapting your approach constantly, and having the confidence to trust your judgment over whatever the latest management book is selling.
Most importantly, it's about remembering that your job as a supervisor isn't to impress your boss with how much you're doing. It's to help your team succeed, even when that means stepping back and letting them get on with it.
The companies that understand this tend to have lower turnover, higher productivity, and teams that actually enjoy coming to work. The ones that don't are still sending people to those two-day courses wondering why nothing changes.
But what would I know? I'm just someone who's spent fifteen years watching people try to figure this out the hard way.