Proactive Supervisors

As a new supervisor in today’s workplace, you don’t need to sprint toward people with fire in your eyes and a club in your hand to convince them you mean business.

But it is also true that supervisors, especially line supervisors, are the equivalent of early responders. They’re the ones whose response to problems and opportunities, good and bad, can deeply affect what happens at work – in the near term obviously – but the ripples can travel a long way down the road.

The best managers have a capacity to anticipate many of the problems likely to occur – from hard-won experience as well as the accumulated knowledge of how their workplace works.

How did they develop that “proactive” capacity? They wanted to, and saw the obvious benefits of prevention. They walked around and asked, they listened, then followed up with more questions – they were serious about the work, and getting it right. Ironically, they’ve also learned, (if they didn’t know already,) that there are times when “I don’t know” is exactly the right answer to someone’s question.

What can sometimes make it hard is that a manager also needs to avoid becoming a control freak. Some managers have learned the wrong lessons, and go from feeling responsible (which is good,) into emphasizing their own accountability to their own bosses for the work product, and take the path of directing things early and often – way too early, and way too often.

They want to know that you know what’s going on, and that means you’re always going to be coming around to check in, stay on top of things, and be helpful when possible.

Getting it right also means that, because you’re working with actual humans, mistakes will occur – which is where too many workplaces can go wrong. Instead of having everything that happens be an experiment in figuring out what does work, unhealthy workplaces succumb to turning mistakes and miscues into crises and occasions to embarrass someone, or put him or her in their place.

So, being proactive doesn’t mean you never have to say you’re sorry, but it certainly minimizes the number of times anyone might have to. Many problems just get headed off at the pass.

Then, the problems that do occur get taken up sooner rather than later, before they metastasize and have more dire consequences.

A proactive manager discourages passivity, avoidance, kicking the can down the road, etc. The habit of being proactive becomes contagious within the workgroup. The workplace culture is energized and less risk averse.

By the way, this all gets easier and easier once it gets rolling. You won’t go back.