Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Supervisors. This is an educational presentation provided by Dear Oaks EAP services, now part of the all one health family for our client organizations. We're glad that you joined us today. Before we get started, I want to make sure our technology is working for us. I apologize, I'm having a little bit of technical difficulty with the screen share. I'm going to keep working on that as we go, but I wanted to get us started.

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All right, folks, let's go ahead and get started. And I am still again, I wanted to let you know I'm still having some difficulty with the screen share, but I'll keep working on it as we go. All right, folks, let me talk a little bit today about some best practices in being an effective supervisor. I've personally been a supervisor now for about 30 years, and one of the things I've really recognized in my career is when we have a good boss, when we have a supervisor that's supportive, that works with us, gives us a voice, we know they care about us as a person, not just as an individual or an employee and what we can do for them, then everything works better. Right? We enjoy our jobs more. We'll typically be more motivated to do our best work and typically want to stay with the organization longer. Right?

So being a great supervisor really makes a difference for your work team. And I know we all know that. A lot of you probably are already supervisors or in supervisory roles. And all of us, all of us have a boss, right? And so I just feel like this conversation is so important, especially here in 2025, with our workforce becoming younger. Most of the research now shows that in the next five years, 70% of the American workforce is either going to be from the millennial generation or from Generation Z.

And these folks and these younger generations, everybody has always wanted to have a great boss, right, have a great supervisor. But individuals from this generation, what they've shown just from in terms of the track record of how the younger workers change jobs a little bit more frequently than older generations did, if individual workers, especially the younger generations, are not in a relationship with their really good boss, someone again that gives them a voice, that is respectful to them, that is very supportive, that values their contributions, they generally don't stay along very well-- or excuse me, stay around very well and would be more and more prone to leaving our organization more quickly.

Of course, we want to-- we absolutely want to keep our good people, right? We want to keep them as long as we can. And so again, being a great supervisor, being an effective supervisor is one of the best ways we can do that. And so that's what I really want to talk to you about today. I apologize, I'm having difficulty still with the screen share. So you see you're, you're sort of in the PowerPoint prep mode. I have not been able to go to a full screen share here and scroll down with the slides. I apologize. It's just not working on my end today. But I'm going to do my best to still go through the seven habits with you today. And hopefully, you'll still get a lot out of our conversation.

All right, so let me start today with habit number one, which is being a positive leader. And of course, what I mean by being a positive leader is being someone who sets a positive tone, who's encouraging, who's supportive, who isn't overly critical, provides a lot of recognition and just is there for their people, right? I talked to someone who had been a manager for about 20 years and she gave me some great advice. She said that basically she's come to realize that one of the most important things that she can do for her team is set a positive tone.

And she said, what I mean by that is when I go to work every day, she said, I really-- I want to remember that I signed up for this. And so even though I'm a human being and some days I won't have a good night's sleep and I'll be kind of tired, other days I'll be dealing with a personal issue like everyone does at one time or another. What she was sharing was she said, when I get to work, she says, I say to myself, walking in the front door at work, she says, I say to myself, I need to check my baggage at the door and put a smile on my face and go in and be there for my people. And I really enjoy-- I mean, I really appreciated and enjoyed her perspective, right? Because all of us that are supervisors, we're still human beings. We're not going to be our best every day.

Again, like she said, some days we're going to be tired, some days we're going to be preoccupied by something that's going on in our world. And so it's just so important that we recognize when we go to work every day, we got to check our baggage at the door. We got to leave that stuff at home. And it's not easy to do sometimes, right? And when we come to work, we really need to intentionally be the best version of ourselves, so that we can be there for our people. I just think we got to remember that. That's so important.

So the first habit I want to talk about today is intentionally setting a positive tone. And again, being positive, it's not necessarily always, you know, being pie in the sky, like denying that there are problems or pretending that things aren't difficult when they are. No. Being positive is having an upbeat attitude, even if things are difficult, you know, saying to the team, hey, guys, we'll get through this together. It's going to be OK. Yeah, I know this is difficult. It's hard for me too, but let's hang in there together. We'll get through this. This too shall pass. It's not going to last forever. And just having a really good attitude and encouraging the team to persevere, to hang in there as they work through those challenges.

And so again, that positivity is so important to people nowadays in the workforce. It truly is. And so that's the first thing I want to talk about is I want to talk about the importance of maintaining a positive attitude and being there for our people every day at the office, really, really important. Number two, habit number two-- again, I-- forgive me again, folks, the screen share isn't working right now. I've got a frozen screen. Habit number two is getting to know your employees. And I think this is a really important thing to kind of dwell on for a few moments.

What I mean by getting to know your people is to spend time with them not just talking about work, not just talking about problems that need to be solved, talking about-- giving assignments to your people, but actually getting to know them, spending time with them. One of the research studies from Gallup, the polling company, showed that individual employees that have structured one on one meetings with their staff on a day to day basis tend to-- I thought this was really interesting-- tend to be 651 times more motivated to get fully engaged on the job, give 100% on the job, really go above and beyond and do their best work just because they've got a better connection with their supervisor.

And so one of the things I started doing about 9 or 10 years ago is I started meeting on a regular basis, one on one with my team. Now, I had always-- I've been-- again, I've been a supervisor for 30 years I've always spent time with people, of course and showed-- and tried to show them as much as that I care about them not just as an employee, but as a human being. And so I've always cared about that. But I didn't have structured one on one meetings where, like, for example, I would meet with one of my staff members every Thursday at 5:15. And I and I've been doing that for quite a few years here at Deer Oaks, been at Deer Oaks now for 13 years.

And so I just want to share the importance of and the value of having structured one on one meetings with your team. Again, the research shows that when we have structured one on one meetings with their team, we bond better, we take more time typically to get to know people, find out what's going on in their world, how their family is, following up to find out about things that are going on. I'll give you an example is-- one of my colleagues here at here at Deer Oaks, all one health. He and his wife have been getting ready to have a baby. And I took the time today just to kind of reach out to him just to say, hey, how's that going? I mean, has the baby arrived yet? How is everything? I hope everything's going well. Don't worry about me us at work. After you have the baby and you get back to the office next week, we'll catch up on all the rest of that stuff, but I just I wish you the best with the birth of the baby.

And again, just showing people that we care about them as, again, human beings, not just as employees. I think that's so important. There was another colleague that I've worked with for a long time that during the pandemic, back in 2020, 2021, she was going through a difficult situation with her daughter's private school, where they were asking the parents when the kids were sent home for the pandemic, as so many children were back then. The parents of this private school were asked to do to do lessons, to do homeschooling and to do lessons with their kids. And this was stressful for my colleague, because she's a busy, professional woman. And one thing to have her child home, doing her homework or being online doing work, but having her child home and being responsible during the day for providing a lesson while she is in the middle of her workday.

So she was stressed about that, and she was sharing her frustration with me. And I took an interest. And so for the next month or so, when we would do our weekly one on one meetings, I'd catch up with her and say, how's that going with the lessons with your daughter? And she would tell me, and I could tell she really appreciated that I took an interest that I cared. And of course, I offered, please let me know if you need to do anything with your schedule, or if I can support you in any way. I mean, you're valuable to us. And I know this situation with needing to provide these lessons every day for your daughter is causing stress for you. And I just wanted you to know that we're here for you. And we'll be flexible if you need us to.

And I could just tell that the fact that I took an interest in her during those weekly one on one meetings really was a good thing for her. It really strengthened our relationship. I saw her being even more motivated on the job. And so I want to remind us that as, as supervisors, we shouldn't just be focused on making sure people get their work done. That's an important part of it, absolutely. But we should also be showing them taking an interest in their lives and showing them that we care about them as people.

And I guess-- and again, one of the best ways I found to do that is during those one on one meetings is to spend time just catching up with people and showing that you're interested in their world and following up with people to let them know that you care. And so again, get to know your employees as best you can, not just as employees. Get to know them as people. I truly believe those one on one meetings have really improved the quality of the relationships and connection that I have with the people on my team.

All right. The next thing I want to talk about, habit number three, I want to talk about engaging your team. And again, I know I've apologized multiple times, but I feel bad. I can't advance the slides. My screen is frozen. I'll figure that out after the session today. But habit number three is engaging your team. And what I mean by that is creating an environment where your employees feel supported, valued, cared about. And we've started talking about that, right?

When you get to know your employees and you demonstrate that you care about them, that's a part of this, right? That's a part of creating an environment where people are going to get engaged and want to do their best work. So that's the first thing I wanted to reinforce is what we talked about in habit number two, make sure that when you're spending time with people over time that they do know you care about them again, as human beings, not just as what they can do for you as an employee.

One research study was very clear and said that employees tend to get more engaged when they know their boss cares about them as a person. And so absolutely, make sure you're getting to know your people and taking an interest in them. But additional ways to engage our team is to make sure that you really know what kind of work, what kind of tasks and projects your employees are really interested in. There's more research that talks about when you can make assignments of work to people and areas of their strength and areas that they're interested in. That's going to, of course, create a motivating environment. It would for anybody, right?

I mean, all of us are going to be more motivated, of course, on tasks and projects in an area that we're interested in, then rote work or doing tasks that we're not particularly interested that we do because it's part of our job description, but they're not very motivating to us. And so I think it really behooves us as supervisors again, as we're spending time with our team, whether it's in our weekly one on one meetings or biweekly one on one meetings. By the way, the research from Gallup says that regular one on one meetings don't necessarily have to be every week. It could be every other week, it could be once a month. But the benefit again, of having those regularly scheduled meetings with every everyone that reports to you, again, creates that bonding opportunity. And then it also gives you an opportunity just to get to know people again. And part of getting to know them is finding out what kind of work they enjoy, what they're interested in, what they'd like to do to advance in their careers.

Again, take a little bit more if you want to create an engaging environment, take an interest in someone's career path and someone's professional development. And if there's any classes they'd be interested in taking. Are there any new skills that you can assist them in developing that can help them grow as a professional? Those again, are great as you're spending time with people. Those are great ways to get people feeling cared about and feeling supported. And when we do that, again, people are going to be typically be more motivated when they come to work every day to do to do their best work.

And so habit number four, I know we can't see it anymore because we've gone beyond my frozen screen. But habit number four is to be a collaborative communicator. This was an absolute game changer for me, folks. What I mean by being a collaborative communicator, many supervisors tend to be kind of directive in their communication. And this was a problem of mine for a long time. Early on in my leadership career. When I was first managing teams, and you can tell just being on a call like this with me, I talk a lot, right? I'm definitely an extrovert. And what I found was when I would be giving assignments at work, for example, I would be very quick to tell someone what to do and how to do it.

So instead of having a good conversation and giving that person a voice and giving them input into how the work would get done right, asking someone, what do you think we should do to get this done? What do you think the work plan should be? Or what do you think the project plan should be? I would end up saying, here's what I need you to do, and here are the steps I need you to follow. Step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4. I was trying to assign the work and give instruction, so it got done correctly.

But back then I didn't realize that could be perceived by micromanagement from people. I think a lot of people felt like I was, two hands on. I was micromanaging. I was getting down into the weeds where, if you think about it, I've since met a guy that gave me a great perspective on how to truly partner with employees. He says, treat your employees not like underlings. He said treat them like subject matter experts. I mean, you hired them to do the job, right? I mean, they were hired to do their job, and we as supervisors, it's not our job to do their job for them, right? Sure, we can provide some training. We can provide support. We can assist, but we shouldn't be the people dictating how the work is going to be done, at least not completely.

Sure, we can weigh in and we can give some advice and provide some training again. But we shouldn't be feeling like we have to look over their shoulder to make sure the job is getting done exactly the way we want to get it done. We need to be respectful and treat our employees like subject matter experts. And when we're assigning work, ask them what they think we should do to get this job done, what they think the project plan ought to encompass or ought to include.

And so again, the more we can create an environment where employees feel respected, they feel valued, when you ask an employee, what do you think we should do to get this work done, you're showing that employee that you respect their opinion, that you appreciate their expertise. And you want to partner with them. And so and that took me a while to figure out. It really did. And I was kind of directive early in my career. And I'm talking 20, 25 years ago. But I was really directive and oftentimes I was just dictating too much.

And I found that I was creating-- I wasn't creating the most motivating environment. And so as I got better training, I realized that what employees want from their supervisors, they want a voice. They want to know the supervisor respects their opinion, that the supervisor values their capabilities and what they bring to the table and appreciates them. And so, again, to if you truly want to have a motivated work team, that is going to be motivated to do their best work every day when they come to work is you have to end that relationship with the employee.

You've got to really demonstrate to that employee that you really respect them, and that you're very interested in their input, and that if there's a problem to be solved, you're not just going to dictate what they should do to fix it, but you're going to include the employee in coming up with the solution. If there's an assignment that's going to be made, you're not just going to tell them what to do and how to do it. You're going to include that employee as a partner in developing that work plan or that project plan. And when we do that, that again, creates a more motivating and engaging environment for the employees.

All right. Habit number five is becoming a good coach. And I know a lot about coaching. Coaching, if you think about it, it's-- certainly coaching has different connotations, right? In the world of sports coaching, you can see a coach on the sidelines. If you watch the football playoffs this weekend. Coaching on the sidelines is coach is basically encouraging the players and critiquing them, constructively critiquing them if they make a mistake and all that. That's a part of coaching.

Coaching on the job for supervisors is really collaborating or partnering with, with an individual employee or your team. Collaborating with them to develop a work plan, to come up with solutions to problems, to work with an individual employee who's performance may be subpar for whatever reason, and partner together to correct that performance, to improve the performance or again, deploy a project plan or come up with a solution to a problem. And so I want us to remember, again, that employees are most motivated when they feel like they're valued and cared about and that their supervisors, they really appreciate their opinion and their input. And they're working together.

They want to be-- employees want to be partnered with. They don't want to be told what to do all day. They want to be respected for their capabilities and input and, and work for people-- work for supervisors that want to partner with them. And so that's why I try to see it now. I used to-- and I really missed that boat the first probably 10 years of my supervisory career. I was seeing myself mentally as more of a boss than a coach. And so again, like I mentioned earlier, I was kind of directive. I would tell people when I assigned to work what to do and how to do it a lot. If people were underperforming, I would pull them aside and tell them what they needed to do to correct their performance.

Again, very directive in my approach. And it wasn't received very well at times from employees. And after getting better training and changing my approach, nowadays I try to partner with people. Whether I'm assigning work, I try to partner with the employee to come up with the work plan or the project plan because we're doing this together. It's a partnership. And they're the subject matter expert. And if there's a problem, instead of me dictating again the solution, I try to partner with them. We brainstorm, what are some potential solutions, and we work together to come up with the best solution.

And even with the performance management, if someone's subpar in their performance in an area, let's say they turn in some work, and it's subpar. I'll bring them in now and rather than like I used to do, 20 years ago, rather than saying, this is what you've done wrong and this is what you need to do to fix it or to get it back up to par, I'll bring them in and say, hey, I liked your report. Let's hypothetically say they handed in a report. I like to report. I like this part and I like that part. I always start with something positive, as I know most of you do, and then say, now here's one part of the report. The middle part of the report, I thought was it was lacking some supporting charts and graphs to really reinforce your suggestion here or your recommendation.

And if I give you a couple more days, what could you do? This is how I do it more nowadays as a coach and a partner. What could you do if I give you a couple more days to maybe add some supporting documentation, like charts and graphs to support your, you know, to support your recommendation here, which would make your report and your recommendation a lot stronger. And give the employee an opportunity to take that step back and to go back and work on it a little bit more but to give them empower them to come up with the fix again instead of telling them.

You can tell an employee how to fix a problem or how to improve performance, or you can partner with them and ask them to help come up with the solution. I find when we partner with them and ask them to come up with the solution, they'll feel more supported. They'll feel more valued and typically be more motivated to take ownership in correcting that performance. And so again, we want to partner, we want to collaborate and partner. And when you do that, you're coaching.

Coaching really is collaborating together with an employee for a specific goal, so you can collaborate with someone to come up with a performance improvement plan that gives the employee input into that, like I just mentioned in that example. Or you can collaborate with someone on assigning work where instead of you just assigning the work, you're working with the employee and you're working together to come up with the work plan. And so-- or you're partnering together to, let's say, solve a very complex problem. So again, instead of you dictating the problem and the employee being passive and just kind of carrying out your direction, you're partnering with the employee and making them feel a part of it and giving them a voice in what kind of solution that you're, that you're going to move forward with. So again, we really want to be a partner. And when you're a partner, that's a coaching approach.

All right. Habit number six is to remember our communication skills. And so as we've been talking today, there's been a theme, right? We've been as we went we've gone through being a positive leader, getting to know your employees, engaging your team, collaborating. We've been talking a lot about communication. I want to go a little deeper with communication. Again, 25 years ago when I was a newer supervisor, my goal every day was to get as much done. I'm a task oriented person. My goal every day was, is to get was to get as much done as I could on a day to day basis.

And so I wasn't necessarily thinking about the quality of my interactions with the staff. I was more focused on getting stuff off my to do list and just getting stuff done. And so that's why one of the reasons I was so directive with people telling them what to do and giving recommendations and dictating solutions to problems and that kind of stuff. It was that was my way to try to get as much done as I could during the day. But I didn't realize by being overly directive like that was off putting to the staff that made people feel like, they were being told what to do all the time. They were being bossed around. They weren't necessarily being partnered with.

And so nowadays I'm very careful when I communicate, whether I'm sending an email, whether I'm sending a text, whether I'm meeting with someone face to face or on a Zoom call or a Teams call, I'm very careful to be very respectful. I reprioritized instead of task first, I reprioritized people first. And I find that if I treat people well, if I'm really respectful as I communicate with the team and with individual employees, and that's whether it's one on one and team meetings, the more collaborative I am, the more respectful I am and how I communicate, I find people are more motivated to do a better job with the tasks. And so I just want us to remember that the quality of [inaudible] communicate with staff.

Gallup, the polling company again, it's really interesting. There's a book out there called First Break All the Rules by the Gallup authors, which-- who include-- there's several authors that-- Curt Buckingham-- or I'm sorry, Curt Kaufman. It's Buckingham and Kaufman are two of the authors. Let me say again, Buckingham and Kaufman are two of the authors of the book. The book is called First Break All the Rules, and it's a book that was written by these Gallup research authors that talked to over a million US employees.

And what they found was, regardless of why an individual employee went to work for an organization, how long they stayed, and how productive they would be while they were there had most to do with their relationship with their boss. So the quality of our communication with our employees is really paramount. It really is. It's really, really important. And so if we have quality conversations with our employees every day, our employees, stop when they're done reading our emails, when they come out of a meeting or a call with us, if they feel like they were treated respectfully, if they feel like we showed an interest in them, if they feel like we listen to them well, that we valued their input, those employees, again, are going to be more motivated to do their best work and have more job satisfaction, which, of course, leads to more productivity and less people wanting to go find a job someplace else. And so again, I just want us to really remember the quality of our communication is probably one of the most important parts of our job as a supervisor.

Last but not least, habit number seven. Then I'll open it up for questions. Habit number seven is, I guess, in a nutshell it's if you do have any disagreement with an employee, it's to-- I call it disagree agreeably. It's remember, whenever you're doing or whenever you're having a difficult conversation with someone, it's not necessarily what we're doing. It's how we're doing it. Right? It's not necessarily what we're saying, but how we're saying it.

And I've learned the hard way, through trial and error over the years, and getting more training that what employees want from, you know, from supervisors during conversations is respect. And so naturally, there's times when you and an employee are not going to agree about everything. We're all different people. We all have our own opinion. But if we have a disagreement, if employee thinks we ought to solve a problem in a certain way, and you think it should be done a different way.

As long as during the conversation, you have with the employee about that disagreement, you treat each other respectfully. You hear the employee out. You're respectful about their opinion, even if you have a differing opinion, even if you don't agree. If you're at least listening to the employee respectfully at the end of that conversation, even if you and the employee don't get on the same page together, the employee is going to go away from that conversation, at least feeling-- may not be happy about the outcome. Maybe you said that here's the way we're going to have to do it. And that was different than what the employee was recommending. But because you treated that employee respectfully, gave them a voice, seriously considered their ideas, and talked it through with them before coming up with the decision, the employee typically is going to go away from that conversation feeling that they were treated respectfully and that their opinion counted.

And so that's what I want us to remember, folks, again. And we're going to have disagreements with people on the job, even with our employees. We're going to have disagreements at home in the evening with our family members sometimes. We're all different human beings. We all see the world differently and have differing opinions. And so again, there's nothing wrong with disagreeing. The important thing is in resolving disagreements throughout the day, whether it's personally or professionally. It's treating each other as respectfully as possible in that process, which means hearing the other person out and being respectful of their ideas, their suggestions, their recommendations, even if you don't agree.

Again, at the end of that conversation, the most important part is, is that each individual feels like they were treated respectfully as we were working through those disagreements, even if we can't get on the same page together. All right, folks, I know we covered a lot in a very short period of time today. Again, my apologies for the frozen screen. I'll have to figure this out when we're done here.

But thank you for your patience and just hearing kind of the audio version of this conversation today without the video use of the slides, at least without the use of many of the slides. Folks, do you have any questions? If you have any questions, I'm going to see what I can do with this here.

Yeah, I'm having problems with the audio as well too. And so I apologize, folks. This is-- my technology has not worked well for us today. And I apologize again. And so it looks like I'm not even going to be able to take your questions. Folks, when you open-- just to double check with you before we sign off for the day-- when you open up your-- do you do you have do you have a do you have access to the chat? Are you able to chat with me, or are you limited only to raising your hand? OK.

Yeah. Caitlyn said, no, we're not able to. OK. You're all letting me know you're not able to chat. OK. I, I apologize for that again. I'm sorry. Well, folks, again, I apologize for the technical difficulties, but I am really grateful that you spent time out of your busy schedule today to be with us. This is the first topic in the 2025 Deer Oaks, all one health supervisor excellence program.

So I hope still, even with the limited technology, I hope you all got something out of this today. And again, thanks for being with me and I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day. And I'm looking forward to hopefully being with you on the next [inaudible] later on in the program or in the year. Thank you folks again. Have a great rest of the day. Take care, everyone. Bye bye.