Supervisor Skill 1: Mastering Constructive Confrontation

Speak with clarity and purpose for maximum results. Many supervisors dread confronting employees. It's often easier to drop hints and make indirect threats rather than initiate a face-to-face, fish-or-cut-bait conversation with an individual who must shape up, pronto.

Supervisor Skill 2: Documenting Poor Performance

Treat documentation as a communication tool to preserve facts and remove ambiguities.

Experienced supervisors know that the first question their boss will ask when they propose terminating a problem employee is, "Do you have all the documentation you need?"

The best answer: "Sure. I've built a file that documents everything completely. We're on solid ground."

The wrong answer: "No, but I'll put some documentation together so we're safe."

Supervisor Skill 3 : Resolving Coworker Conflicts

Pick your battles and focus on shared goals to referee disputes effectively.

As much as you want to supervise people who get along well all the time, the harsh truth is conflicts will erupt. And when they do, it's not necessarily your job to intervene.

Supervisor Skill  4: Evaluating Performance

Give employees ongoing feedback on their performance so that they
always know what they're doing right—and what they need to improve.

Effective supervisors shower employees with frequent feedback.
Assessing performance is a central part of their daily interaction with
their staff. They praise superior work and provide constructive
suggestions on how employees can elevate mediocre or substandard work
into something truly excellent.

Supervisor Skill 5: Managing Unfit-for-Duty Employees

Your top priority is protecting employees and providing a safe workplace. Even if 99% of your employees are fit for duty, the remaining 1% can prove a handful. The out-of-control behavior of drug or alcohol abusers may endanger you and your staff, so it's your responsibility to identify such behavior quickly and address it decisively. Follow your organization's fitness for duty policy and its procedures, but have a comprehensive list of signs and symptoms that represent behavioral problems that you can refer to year round.

Supervisor Skill  6: Building Your Team

By choosing the right people and getting them to believe in a shared goal, you lay the groundwork for a winning team.

Building successful teams revolves around trust. People work together more effectively when they share a desire to achieve group goals without egos or rivalries getting in the way.

Supervisor Skill 7: Communicating Effectively With Upper Management

One of my favorite skills. Relate to the top brass on their terms and present your ideas as solutions to problems they face. Relating to upper management boils down to one critical skill: analyzing issues from theiryours. perspective, not

Use empathy to deepen your understanding of the bosses' outlook. Step into their shoes. Ask yourself: What aspects of your operation does management care about most? What do they like to measure? What pressures do they face? How do they define success?

Supervisor Skill 8: Observing Performance

Look for evidence to support your impression of how employees do their jobs.

There's no substitute for observing employees' performance. It's an invaluable tool to assess workers' skills, abilities, motivations and attitudes about their job.

Some supervisors prefer to study activity reports, spreadsheets and work-flow charts. But that's a mistake. Sitting at a desk behind closed doors poring over paperwork prevents you from seeing with your own eyes how workers behave and what they actually do during their shift.

Supervisor Skill 9: Giving Feedback

Express both good and bad input with judgment-free specificity so that it has a more positive, lasting impact on the employee.

Old-school managers fold their arms across their chest, bark orders and tell workers what they're doing wrong. With a perpetual scowl on their face, these managers point out every mistake but rarely dish out praise.

Today's more enlightened supervisors, by contrast, give feedback with an eye toward motivating employees. They treat feedback as a way to help fuel good performance, teach new skills and provide guidance that leads to improvement.

Supervisor Skill 10: Delegating Work and Following Up

To boost your efficiency—and your team's morale—hand off assignments to the right people.

Delegating is a win-win proposition for you and your employees. You free yourself to focus on what matters most, while you train and motivate your workers by entrusting key assignments to them.

Supervisors often harbor misconceptions about delegation. They equate delegating with doling out tasks to people. But it's actually the process of having employees address meaningful projects—including ongoing duties--that go beyond short-term, to-do items.

Supervisor Skill 11: Investigating Complaints and Incidents Properly

Take an unbiased, fact-based approach when investigating employee complaints.

A litigation explosion has occurred in the past 20 years. Employers face mounting legal exposure on many fronts, from harassment to discrimination.

By investigating employee complaints properly, you can keep your employer out of court and help all parties reach a fast, fair resolution. As soon as you learn of a problem that merits investigation, speed and responsiveness are critical. Your prompt attention to the matter sends a message that you take the employee's complaint seriously. Procrastination or putting off an investigation is viewed as negligence and apathy, even if you were just too busy at the time.

Supervisor Skill 12: Dispensing Discipline

Treat disciplining as a way to educate employees and elevate their behavior, not as a form of punishment.

Effective discipline flows from clear communication. If you and your employer provide clear, written guidelines to employees on your standards and expectations for acceptable behavior, then discipline becomes a simple, straightforward educational and enforcement tool.

Your employee handbook should state your policy for responding to improper conduct or poor performance. As long as you dispense discipline in a uniform manner, you can address inappropriate or unacceptable behavior using a fair, consistent approach.

SKILL 13: Inspiring and Praising Employees to Build Morale

Energize employees by taking every opportunity to recognize their contributions and urging them to excel.

Every conversation with your employees produces one of three results: positive impact, no impact or negative impact. You want to create as many positive encounters as possible.

To inspire people, set their sights on a faraway goal that's so exciting and potentially rewarding that they cannot help but covet it. Help them visualize what it'll feel like to reach the mountaintop—to know that they gave every ounce of their effort to deliver superior performance.

Supervisor Skill 14: Acting to Prevent Violence

Awareness of the red flags that can signal violent behavior can save lives. Know the conditions that breed violence and protect your workplace from toxic conflicts.

Much of the violence we read or hear about in the news occurs in faraway places. But when it erupts at work, it's an entirely different type of tragedy because we may feel more control over the circumstances surrounding the situation.

It's impossible to prevent all workplace violence. But we can become more astute at predicting when and where violence can occur—and take sensible steps to lower its odds.