Q: I am currently working with a small corporation and have been given the responsibility in training supervisors. The supervisors are very different in their backgrounds; some with extensive work experience in a leadership role and some very new to the responsibilities. In seeing the differences in their personalities and leadership abilities I have specialized the training sessions for each supervisor. At this point I am working on having each supervisor focus on their strengths and weaknesses, core values and short-term/ long-term goals with the company. My real challenge is keeping them all positive and motivated to improve personally and professionally, modeling this for the employees working with them. What successes have you found that would help in this situation?
1. Lining them up with a mentor in the operation to supplement the work you are doing with them.
2. Focus on growing their strengths, which will often eliminate most if not all weaknesses. For their weaknesses, use those opportunities to find ways that these managers can find those same weaknesses as strenghts in others to fill in the gaps.
3. Encouraging the new leaders to develop processes that seem natural when it comes to adapting to the culture of the organization as well as its employees. One of the things that has worked well for me in the past is to have regular informal and formal meetings with staff members to encourage free discussion.
