The Real ABCs of Supervising: What They Don't Teach You in Management School

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Three weeks ago, I watched a newly promoted supervisor tell his team that "constructive feedback is a gift." The collective eye-roll was so intense I'm surprised it didn't register on the Richter scale. That's when it hit me - we're teaching supervision all wrong.

After seventeen years of watching brilliant technical people get promoted into management roles and promptly flounder like fish on a jetty, I've come to one inescapable conclusion: the ABCs of supervising aren't what you think they are. They're not "Always Be Coaching" or "Accountability, Boundaries, Communication."

They're much simpler. And much harder.

A is for Actually Caring (Not Just Pretending To)

Here's the thing nobody wants to admit: 67% of new supervisors fake caring about their team members for the first six months. They've been told it's important, so they go through the motions. Ask about weekend plans. Remember birthdays. Send the occasional "how are you holding up?" message.

But people can smell fake concern from a kilometre away.

Real caring means being genuinely interested in what makes your people tick. Not because some leadership guru told you to, but because you understand that their success is literally your success. When Sarah from accounts mentions she's struggling with work-life balance, you don't just nod sympathetically and move on. You actually think about solutions.

I learned this the hard way back in 2019 when I was running a team in Brisbane. Had this brilliant analyst who kept making careless errors. Instead of addressing it properly, I kept having those surface-level "everything okay?" conversations. Turned out his mum had been diagnosed with dementia and he was too proud to ask for flexible arrangements. Three months of declining performance could've been avoided with one honest conversation.

The best supervisors I know are genuinely curious about their people. They ask follow-up questions. They remember details from previous conversations. They create space for real discussions, not just status updates disguised as check-ins.

B is for Being Brutally Honest (At the Right Time)

Australian workplaces love to pride themselves on "straight talking," but somehow when it comes to supervision, we all turn into diplomatic peacekeepers. We sandwich feedback between compliments. We use phrases like "moving forward" and "opportunities for improvement."

Bollocks.

The kindest thing you can do for someone is tell them the truth about their performance. Not in a harsh, ego-crushing way, but in a clear, actionable manner that actually helps them improve.

I once had a supervisor who told me, "Your presentations are informative but boring as watching paint dry." Harsh? Maybe. But it was exactly what I needed to hear. Compare that to the manager who spent twenty minutes telling me my presentations were "comprehensive and well-researched" before gently suggesting I might "consider ways to increase engagement." Useless.

The trick is timing and relationship. You can't be brutally honest with someone you barely know or someone who's already fragile. But when you've built trust and shown you genuinely care about their success, direct feedback becomes a gift, not an attack.

Mind you, this doesn't mean becoming a feedback machine gun, shooting criticism at everything that moves. I made that mistake early in my career. Poor Dave from marketing probably still has PTSD from my "continuous improvement" phase.

C is for Cutting Through the Corporate Nonsense

Here's where I'm going to lose some people: most corporate supervision training is designed to protect the company, not develop people.

Think about it. How much of your supervisor training focused on documentation, policies, and risk management versus actually understanding human motivation and performance?

The best supervisors I know have learned to navigate the corporate requirements while focusing on what actually matters: helping people do their best work. They know when to follow the process to the letter and when to bend the rules for better outcomes.

Take performance reviews. Most organisations treat them like legal documents, focusing on ratings and justifications. Great supervisors treat them like roadmaps, using the formal process as an excuse for meaningful career conversations.

Same with team meetings. Everyone knows the weekly status update meeting that could've been an email. Smart supervisors either eliminate these entirely or transform them into actual problem-solving sessions.

The Melbourne Mindset Mistake

I spent three years working with teams in Melbourne, and there's this peculiar phenomenon I noticed - what I call the "consensus paralysis." Everything has to be discussed, workshopped, and agreed upon by committee. While collaboration is valuable, sometimes supervision requires making quick, decisive calls that not everyone will love.

The best supervisor I ever worked under made this clear from day one: "I'll consult you on decisions that affect you, but ultimately, I'm responsible for this team's performance. Sometimes I'll make calls you disagree with. That's okay - your job is to make those calls work, and mine is to make sure they're the right calls."

This isn't about being autocratic. It's about understanding that supervision means taking responsibility for outcomes, not just facilitating group discussions until everyone feels heard.

What About the Difficult Conversations?

Nobody talks about this enough: supervision is emotionally exhausting. You're constantly managing not just tasks and deadlines, but personalities, egos, and interpersonal dynamics.

I remember one particularly challenging period where I had to manage a team conflict between two brilliant people who absolutely could not stand each other. HR wanted mediation sessions and conflict resolution workshops. What actually worked? Sitting them down separately and having honest conversations about their career goals, then restructuring their roles so they rarely had to collaborate directly.

Sometimes the solution isn't fixing the relationship. Sometimes it's acknowledging that not everyone needs to be best mates to work effectively together.

The Technology Trap

Here's something that drives me mental: supervisors who think technology will solve their people problems. I've seen managers spend thousands on project management software, communication platforms, and performance tracking tools, then wonder why their team still feels disconnected and unmotivated.

Technology amplifies good supervision; it doesn't replace it. If you're a poor communicator in person, you'll be a poor communicator via Slack. If you don't understand what motivates your team face-to-face, dashboards and metrics won't enlighten you.

The most effective supervisors I know use technology strategically but never let it substitute for genuine human connection. They know when to pick up the phone instead of sending another email. They understand that sometimes the most productive meeting is the impromptu coffee conversation.

The Real Secret

After all these years, here's what I've learned: good supervision isn't about having all the answers. It's about asking better questions and creating an environment where people can succeed.

The supervisors who struggle are usually the ones trying to be perfect leaders, implementing every strategy they've learned in training courses. The ones who excel are typically just decent humans who've figured out how to bring out the best in others.

It's messier than the textbooks suggest. It requires more emotional intelligence and less process management. And it's absolutely worth mastering.

Because at the end of the day, people don't leave bad jobs. They leave bad supervisors. And the difference between good and bad supervision usually comes down to those three simple things: actually caring, being honest, and cutting through the corporate nonsense to focus on what really matters.

The rest is just details.