What Makes A Good Supervisor In Kenya?

By Perminus Wainaina

A few weeks ago, I got a call from a client whom we had recently recruited for a finance manager asking for a meeting outside the office.

While the MD sounded friendly I sensed trouble because it’s unlike him to propose a meeting out of office. Being an old client, he prefers making requests over the phone if he’s looking for additional staff. Similarly, if he has a HR problem he prefers discussing it over the phone.

The candidates we have recruited so far have been excellent and we’ve never had a conversation where he was planning to fire an employee. I silently hoped that the agenda was not to terminate someone.

To cut a long story short, I met the MD and from our conversation he was not happy with our recent hire for the finance manager post.

While the employee had excellent technical skills to run a finance department, she was lacking in interpersonal skills. In a span of three months, two of her assistants had resigned.

The relationship with suppliers was starting to deteriorate with some opting to withhold their services and goods, citing a major complaint that the employee was rude and unsupportive when it came to the issue of payments.

The bank manager had specifically asked that another person be assigned the responsibility of communicating with the bank.

The employee lacked in what is commonly referred to as soft skills

It is the desire of every employee to climb the career ladder. At one time you’d like to be a supervisor or a manager. Being a supervisor comes with a lot of perks which is why many of us will accept a promotion that entails managing others without evaluating whether we have the soft skills needed for the job or not, and if so, what areas we need to develop. Companies make the mistake of promoting individuals to supervisory roles solely based on their good performance, forgetting to look into the way they relate with others.

In this article, I will highlight some of the top soft skills needed to be a supervisor. And the greatest challenge with majority of us is that, unlike the technical or hard skills where we gladly choose to go back to class, very few of us take the initiative to enroll for training on soft skills.

What Are Soft Skills?

Soft skills are personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people. Wikipedia defines soft skills as a term often associated with a person’s “EQ” (Emotional Intelligence Quotient), the cluster of personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal habits, interpersonal skills, managing people, leadership, etc. that characterize relationships with other people. Soft skills contrast to hard skills, which are generally easily quantifiable and measurable (e.g. software knowledge, accounting skills, performance management etc).

The first skill you need when managing people is emotional intelligence (EI). And while there are many definitions of emotional intelligence, it simply means becoming aware of your emotions and others too. We all have different personalities, different wants and needs, and different ways of showing our emotions. Navigating through this all will take tact and cleverness – especially if we hope to succeed in life. This is where EI becomes important.

EI is the ability to recognize your emotions, understand what they’re telling you, and realize how your emotions affect the people around you. It also involves your perception of others: when you understand how they feel, this allows you to manage relationships more effectively.

Develop Good Communication Skills

How you communicate as a supervisor is also an important soft skill. Whether you prefer emails or a one-on-one session, you should ensure that the other person gets to understand your expectations clearly. A lot of the conflicts that arise at the workplace is because things were not made clear from the beginning. When it comes to communication, how you do it is as important as the message.

You might have the best intentions but if you come out as rough, unreasonable or difficult, the other person will go into a flight mode and your message will be lost in the confusion. People are not perfect and subordinates will anger you through their actions. It’s better to remain calm. Shouting, yelling and rude remarks do not work when it comes to adults (and children). Follow laid down HR procedures to deal with the matter objectively.

Difference between a Manager and a Leader

To be a manager requires one to be a leader but not all managers are leaders. All excellent managers share one trait and that is leadership. To be a leader means to guide other individuals, teams and entire organizations. According to the idea of transformational leadership, an effective leader is a person who does the following: Creates an inspiring vision of the future, Motivates and inspires people to engage with that vision, Manages delivery of the vision, Coaches and builds a team so that it is more effective at achieving the vision. Leadership brings together the skills needed to do these things.

If you want to become a manager and especially if you are looking for a promotion you must demonstrate a deeper understanding of the business. What value do you offer and who are your customers? What are the statutory requirements? How does the business make money? What are the business strengths and weaknesses? How do we compare with competition? Where is the industry headed in the long term? As you can tell from my list above, this will only happen if you are genuinely interested in your job.

It is from interest that we desire to learn more. At managerial level, job interviews are all about your ability to see the bigger picture and how things interrelate. From today, make it a point to learn how your organization operates. Go beyond the job description.

Why Soft Skills Matter

It is important to develop your soft skills at an early stage. It is the soft skills that will help you maximize your technical/hard skills. A good starting point is identifying your strengths and weakness when it comes to relating with others and striving to be better. And remember no one is perfect and you’ll never achieve perfection. It’s all about making an improvement every time. If you get angry very easily, identify the triggers and learn how to control your anger.

You can enroll for an anger management class. If you have problems being understood, make it a point to go through each important point with your subordinate. Learn how to communicate clearly by taking online classes. Unlike the old days, there is a lot of information on the internet on any given subject. Whether you want to learn on leadership, communication, time keeping or developing others, this information is available online and for free. And the beauty of it is that skills are learnable at whatever stage you are. A good time to start is today.

Perminus Wainaina is the Managing Partner & Head of Recruitment at Corporate Staffing Services Ltd.