HUMAN SKILLS
The skill of handling people successfully is really the core of the supervisor’s job. Such
skill has several ingredients and it is not achieved overnight.
First in importance is your attitude toward the people who work for you. You must
be able to perceive and accept them as human beings. If you don’t—if you think of
them as cogs in the wheels of production, or if you look down on them because you
are the boss and they scrub floors for a living—they will not work well for you or
they will simply leave. They will not let you succeed.
A second ingredient of human skills is sensitivity, the ability to perceive each
person’s needs, perceptions, values, and personal quirks so that you can work with
each one in the most productive way. You need to be aware that Jose′ still has trouble
with English, and that Rita will cry for days if you speak sharply to her but Charlie
won’t do anything at all unless you almost yell. You need to realize that when Jim
comes in looking like thunder and not saying a word, he’s mad about something and
you had better find a way to defuse him before you turn him loose among the customers.
You need to be able to sense when a problem is building by noticing subtle
differences in employee behavior.
A third ingredient is self-awareness. Have you any idea how you come across to
your workers? You need to be aware of your own behavior as it appears to others. For
example, in your concern for quality, you may always be pointing out to people things
they are doing wrong. They probably experience this as criticism and see you as a
negative person who is always finding fault. If you become aware of your habits and
their reactions, you can change your manner of correcting them and balance it out
with praise for things well done.
You also need to be aware of your own perceptions, needs, values, and personal
quirks and how they affect your dealings with your associates. When you and they
perceive things differently, you will have trouble communicating. When you and they
have different needs and values in a work situation, you may be working at crosspurposes.
Human skills come with practice. You have to practice treating people as individuals,
sharpening your awareness of others and of yourself, figuring out what human
qualities and behaviors are causing problems and how these problems can be solved.
This is another instance in which the flex style of management figures: responding
to your people, yourself, and the situation. It is a continual challenge because no two
human situations are ever exactly alike. The ultimate human skill is putting it all
together to create an atmosphere in which your people feel secure, free, and open
with you and are willing to give you their best work.
CONCEPTUAL SKILLS
Conceptual skills require the ability to see the whole picture and the relationship of
each part to the whole. The skilled comes in using that ability on the job. You may
need to arrange the work of each part of your operation so that it runs smoothly with
the other parts—so that the kitchen and the dining room run in harmony, for example.
Or you may need to coordinate the work of your department with what goes
on in another part of the enterprise. For example, in a hotel the desk clerk must
originate a daily report to the housekeeper showing what rooms must be cleaned, so
that the housekeeper can tell the cleaning associates to draw their supplies and clean
and make up the rooms. When they have made up the rooms, they have to report
back to the housekeeping department so that the rooms can be inspected and okayed,
and then the housekeeping department has to issue a report back to the desk clerk
that the rooms are ready for occupancy. If you are the front office manager, you must
be able to see this process as a whole even though the front desk cares only about
the end of it—are those rooms ready? You must understand how the front desk fits
into a revolving process that affects not only housekeeping and cleaning personnel
but laundry, supplies, storage, and so on, and how important that first routine report
of the desk clerk is to the whole process, to everyone involved, to customer service,
and to the success of the enterprise. In departments where everyone is doing the same tasks, conceptual skill is seldom
called on, but the more complicated the supervisor’s responsibilities, the greater the
need for conceptual skill. A restaurant manager, for example, has a great deal of use
for conceptual ability since he or she is responsible for both the front and the back
of the house as well as the business end of the operation.
Consider what happened to this new restaurant manager. Things got very busy
one night, and a waitress came up to him and said, ‘‘We can’t get the tables bused.’’
‘‘Don’t worry about it,’’ he said, and he began to bus tables. Another waitress came
to him and said, ‘‘We can’t get the food out of the kitchen quick enough to serve
the people.’’ ‘‘Don’t worry about it,’’ he said, ‘‘I’ll go back there and help them cook
the food.’’ While he was cooking, another waitress came in and said, ‘‘We can’t get
the dishes washed to reset the tables.’’ ‘‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll wash the dishes,’’
he said. While he was washing the dishes, another waitress came in and said, ‘‘We
can’t get the tables bused.’’ And so it went: the tables, the food, the dishes, the tables,
the food. At this point the owner came in and said, ‘‘What the hell are you doing?’’
‘‘I’m washing the dishes, I’m busing the tables, I’m cooking the food, and before I
leave tonight I’m gonna empty the garbage,’’ said the manager with pride. ‘‘Look at
this place!’’ the owner shouted. ‘‘I hired you to manage, not to bus tables and cook
and wash dishes!’’
That manager had not been able to see the situation as a whole, to move people
about, to balance them out where they were needed most: to manage. He had boomeranged
back to doing the work himself because it was easier than managing, more
familiar than dealing with the whole picture. Supervisors who are promoted from
hourly positions often have this problem. When they finally learn to look at the
whole picture and deal with the whole picture, they have truly attained the management
point of view.