Making the Right Choice for Your Next Supervisor

Commit to supervisory and leadership training.

• Send him to classes if available.
• Hire a “coach” for your new supervisor.
• Assign a mentor for your new supervisor.

Schedule your new supervisor to “shadow” another supervisor.

• Schedule this one to two weeks before the promotion.
• Have the new supervisor briefly describe what he learned at the end of each week of shadowing.

Communicate clearly to your field crew who the new supervisor is.

• Ask the crew to support the new supervisor.
• Meet with any crew member who has any “baggage” with the new supervisor; get differences discussed and settled quickly.

Not all “thoroughbred” workers want to be a supervisor. In fact, if you have any really hard-working employees who are making good money, without the pressures of being the boss, don’t be surprised if these workers are not interested. We need good workers at all levels and besides, hard-working employees are informally leaders among their peers, so don’t be too quick to push them to formally lead.

Finally, don’t take the selection and more importantly, training, of the next supervisor lightly. No matter whom you choose, they will make mistakes and will have conflicts on the field level with employees, vendors and customers. Your objective should be to educate your leaders to be professional in all situations, not giving way to anger or foolish talk.

Brad Humphrey is president of Pinnacle Development Group. He works with construction companies across the United States and Canada assisting them in their training and development of leaders at all levels. If you are interested in learning more about PDG’s Leadership Boot-Camp, you may visit www.pinnacledg.com or e-mail Brad at brad@pinnacledg.com.