Supervisory Leadership Assessment - Paper Example

Managers and the supervisors are the links between employees and management. They are responsible for increasing organizational performance, employee expectation and most importantly communicating expectations of the organization to its employees. A supervisor is required to possess both leadership and technical skills. Therefore, it is essential for all the supervisors to invest in supervisory development and to learn so that they can improve work quality and acquire job satisfaction in future. The world is dynamic, and our environment keeps changing which means that supervisors should continuously develop and learn professional skills for them to be flexible to changing situations. There are a lot of leadership assessment tools that a supervisor can use to develop his/her professional skills. A good example is the Supervisor and team lead self-assessment. This is the process by which a supervisor compare his/her skills to thirty well-researched best leadership practices. After the completion of self-assessment process, the supervisor is the given a self-assessment report together with development resources list and a development guide to assist him/her form development objectives and to identify he will achieve his objectives. There is no cost involved in the self-assessment process, and it will take about ten minutes. The results of the process are confidential and can only be accessed by the supervisor.

Actual Training Program

A) Lecture

Lecturing is a time-tested instructional approach where a lecturer who has knowledge on a particular field teaches the audience verbally. It is the process of delivering information verbally. This approach is essential in communicating conceptual knowledge and most importantly where there is a huge knowledge gap between instructor and the audience. A typical lecturing process involves a lecturer standing before an audience and presenting information. The audience is expected to learn from the lecturer by taking some notes while listening to the lecturer. Moreover, during a lecture, the instructor is the only person allowed to speak unless one of the individuals in the audience wants to ask a question. Several aspects can make a lecture unsuccessful or successful. They include the length of lecture, the topic of the lecture, the acoustics in the room, and amount of information in the lecture, and the dynamic quality of the instructor to hold an audiences attention. Lectures are a simple and fast way to deliver information to the audience. Some of the notable advantages of lectures are that they are cost-effective and the content can be controlled. Moreover, it uses a popular form of delivery and learners can get up to date information quickly.

When using lecture as a tool for training people, instructors are required to organize their information very well and logically deliver them (Key, 2014). There are other issues such as clothing, body language, and the voice which an instructor should mind. The body language speaks a lot about a person, for instance; an instructor is required maintain eye contact with his/her audience without focusing too much on one person. In, general lecturing is a very significant approach and can be used to train different professionals including supervisors. In fact, it is an interactive method and supervisors can not only learn from professionals with higher leadership skills but also interact with them.

B) Role play

Role play is an approach that allows learners to explore realistic scenarios by interacting with other individuals in a controlled manner to develop experience in the supported environment. It is the process of working through a process by taking roles and practicing what to do and say in a safe environment. This method allows individuals to make mistakes in non-threatening settings. Role play is one of the best methods for developing social skills since it serves many purposes such as encouraging empathy and feeding the imagination. It enables the participants to develop both intellectual and emotional attachment to the topic matter at hand. This approach can be used to diagnose and assess where learners are in their development of knowledge and skill level.

Role-play is a very straightforward training method and requires no special environments, technology, and tools. Participants are given specific responsibilities to play in an interaction. They may also be given appropriate directives on what to say or how to act. For instance, an individual may be told to act like a no non-sense supervisor. After the process, discussion about the interaction follows where learners are taught alternative methods of dealing with the same situation. In this case, learners are taught how good leaders go about their duties. This method is broadly used in different types of training such as leadership and educational skills development. It is popular approach because it is efficient, highly engaging, and most significantly it focuses on the relevant business problems. Participants are immersed in real life situations and allowed to act out the scenarios they often face daily at work. This enables instructors to determine the possible strengths and weaknesses of his participants. This process can be used as the behavioral assessment tool and builds the participants confidence. It also helps in developing communication and interpersonal skills.

C) Case study

The case study training approach is a highly flexible method of teaching that involves problem-based learning and improves the development of analytical skills. Case studies show real-life situations involving decision making by participants on a set of questions. Case studies enable instructors to simplify complex concepts. Moreover, it exposes learners to real-life scenarios which otherwise is hard. It promotes communication and analytical thinking and allows participants to develop the tolerance for different perception on the same subject. Cases come in different forms from simple scenarios to a detailed description of an event with accompanying data to analyze the situation. Most case studies require participants to develop solutions to open-ended problems.

Implementation of training program

This is when the training program comes to life. However, it is vital to understand that some procedures should be followed to ensure a successful training. First, we should establish the program objectives. The instructors and the organizers of the program must ensure that a specific milestone is achieved at the end of the process. Second, a right technology should be used. For the program to be successful, more interactive and flexible approaches should be implemented to encourage the participants and boost their morale.

Evaluation of training program

Evaluation is a planned process which provides particular information about a selected program. It is the process of measuring the impact of a training program. It answers the question was the training effective? There are three ways in which we can measure the effectiveness of our training programs. They include social ownership, visual confirmation, and skill assessment. It is essential that visual assessments of the participants skill set are recorded before and after the training program to determine the skill improvements after the process.

References

Key, S. M. (2014). John Wesley And Leadership Training. doi:10.2986/tren.006-0191