“It felt a little strange. I am not normally a nosy person,” reported Nicholas. We had been working on the most basic communication skill, talking to one person.

“It’s not being nosy. It’s being a supervisor,” I replied. “Nicholas, you supervise four field technicians. On any given day, what is the biggest issue you have to deal with?”

“I don’t know. A difficult project?”

“No, that is the easy part of supervision. You love to help with difficult projects. The most difficult part of being a supervisor, often, is knowing whether your technicians are going to show up for work, whether they show up on time so you can get the crew started, and what kind of personal baggage they bring to the workplace that is going to influence their attitude.”

“You’re right, especially on Monday.” Nicholas lamented.

“As a supervisor, can you afford to be surprised? If you have a crew of four and two don’t show up for work, you just lost 50 percent of your workforce for the day. If you are the supervisor, you need to know your people well enough to anticipate. At the same time, you need to know what gets your guys jazzed up about things. What motivates them? What interests do they have? What does get them to work on time? What is important in their lives?

“As a supervisor, it is your job to get to know your people, their work habits, their reliability, things going on that will impact their performance on the job. It’s not being nosy. It’s being a supervisor.” -TF