Top Skills a Supervisor Needs

In order to be a supervisor, you need to encompass a few key skills and characteristics. Luckily, not all of these skills need to come naturally, many can actually be learned and even refined. If you’re applying for a supervising position or are up for a promotion, you should be honest with yourself about if you possess the following 10 supervisor skills.

  1. Great communication skills: a supervisor should be able to information with their employees effectively and concisely. They also need to be able to listen to their employees and understand their needs. A great supervisor skill to possess is the ability to promote open communication throughout all of your employees. In order for everyone to be able to complete their tasks effectively, there needs to be clear instruction and a deep understanding.
  2. Have a technical expertise in the industry: It would be extremely hard to supervise activities that you didn’t have a clear understanding of. The supervisor should be able to perform the tasks that their employees have to perform productively and effectively. This way, employees can always ask their supervisor for help with a task and they should be able to deliver.
  3. Leadership abilities: Leadership abilities can be learned and honed through supervisor skills _training programs or reading leadership enhancing books. While some people are born as natural leaders, there are many things you can do to work on your supervisor skills including leadership. Taking on more responsibility at work is one way to advance your skills. You can also ask your employer to send you to a conference that work specifically on leadership or take pat in your company’s HR training program.
  4. Time management & organization :Supervisor skills include delegating tasks to employee that work under you. For this reason, organization and time management is key to operating a successful team. If you’re not naturally an organized person, you can always learn ways to get more organized through training programs and other learning techniques.
  5. Adapt and implement changes: The workplace can be unpredictable, and therefore the supervisor needs to be the one that can adjust to unusual situations. When things aren’t going in the company’s favor, the supervisor needs to be the leader in the situation and have the skills to make changes to their team.
  6. Promote diversity & core values: A healthy workplace needs to have a safe space for diversity inclusion and promote the company core values. Many companies don’t express their overall values with lower level employees. In order for each worker to be on the same page when it comes to what their main targets are, the supervisor needs to communicate these and understand them him or herself.
  7. Interpersonal skill:Believe it or not, there are ways to better your supervisor skills, including your people skills. Certain training programs can help with how to approach lower level employees and how to build relationships with both employees and even customers.
  8. Decision making skills: Decision making skills is something that comes with experience and confidence. Stressful situations will become easier when the supervisor learns to get comfortable outside of their comfort zone.
  9. Critical thinking & problem solving: As the overseer of other employees, the supervisor is going to be the go-to person when there’s a problem that isn’t resolving itself. The supervisor needs to be able to act quickly and thoroughly to answer back to problems. This supervisor skill is one that makes supervisors stand out amongst regular employees.
  10. Takes accountability:Like most leaders, the supervisor needs to be able to take accountability for their actions as well as soon of the workers actions that work under him or her. This shows responsibility and the willingness to take responsibility for wrongdoing done under your watch.