Supervisory Courses

Unlock your leadership potential with our comprehensive supervisory training courses, based on ICMA's book, "Effective Supervisory Practice." From foundational skills to advanced techniques, our courses are crafted to equip you with the tools needed to lead with confidence and effectiveness.

If you are interested in any of these courses or creating a customized training session for your organization, please reach out to Riley Center Director, Kendra Stewart, at stewartk@cofc.edu

 

Role of the Supervisor

Purpose: To increase understanding of the broad role of the supervisor in today's environment

Learning Objectives: 

  1. Understand the major responsibilities of a supervisor and how those responsibilities relate to your job. 
  2. Be comfortable with the challenge of transitioning from peer to boss, if you are a new supervisor. 
  3. Know the value of delegation to your supervisory success and how to be an effective delegator. 
  4. Be familiar with the characteristics of a successful supervisor. 

Supervisory Leadership

Purpose: To provide new ideas and practical advice on how to become a more successful leader. 

Learning Objectives: 

  1. Be familiar with current thinking about leadership and why it matters to you as a manager or supervisor. 
  2. Know the primary sources of influence in your job and how they affect your leadership success. 
  3. Have a broader view of practices that will improve your leadership capacity. 

Strategic Planning and Evaluation

Purpose: To introduce strategic planning and operations planning as essential skills for the getting the right things done well. 

Learning Objectives: 

  1. Be familiar with your organization's vision and strategic plan. 
  2. Understand the important role planning plays in your effectiveness. 
  3. Know how to set goals and objectives for your work group. 
  4. Understand the plan-do-check-act cycle as a tool for improving both team and individual employee performance. 
  5. Be able to distinguish between strategic questions and operational questions to monitor progress and results. 

Organizing Your Work and Time

Purpose: To provide tools and resources for becoming a well-organized supervisor

Learning Objectives:

  1. Understand the importance of planning to help you manage multiple responsibilities
  2. Be better equipped to set priorities and manage assignments, paperwork, and email. 
  3. Have some new ideas about how to conquer procrastination. 

Team Building

Purpose: To provide tools, resources, and ideas for building a high-performing team. 

Objectives: 

  1. Be familiar with the characteristics of teams, stages in becoming a team, and steps for building a team.
  2. Understand the value of teamwork in the workplace. 
  3. See yourself as a team building and team leader. 
  4. Know what it means to empower a team. 
  5. Be ready to focus on strengthening and sustaining your team's performance. 

Communication Skills

Purpose: To provide a framework for and guidance on improving communication skills. 

Learning Objectives: 

  1. Understand the importance of communication for successful supervision. 
  2. Be familiar with the components of the communication process. 
  3. Be able to recognize and deal with barriers to effective communication. 
  4. Have some idea about how electronic communication and social media fit into your communication repertoire. 
  5. Understand how diversity in the workplace creates communication challenges. 

Selecting and Developing Employees

Purpose: To explore supervisory roles in selecting, orienting, and developing employees. 

Learning Objectives: 

  1. Be familiar with your organization's recruitment process and your role in it. 
  2. Understand the legal requirements in selecting employees. 
  3. Learn the techniques for effective interviewing. 
  4. Understand what onboarding is and how it contributes to team effectiveness. 
  5. Know how to create a successful employee development program. 

Workplace Accountability

Purpose: To introduce the concept of accountability and why it is important to successful supervision. 

Learning Objectives: 

  1. Understand the continuum of accountability. 
  2. Know your role in ensuring that team members are accountable to you, each other, and the public. 
  3. Recognize the connection between accountability and feedback. 
  4. Be familiar with your organization's approach to performance improvement and disciplinary action. 
  5. Know how to carry out a successful disciplinary process that leads to improved performance. 

Evaluating Performance

Purpose: To provide information, resources, and tools for carrying out positive and successful performance evaluations. 

Learning Objectives: 

  1. Have a positive approach, attitude, and commitment to performance evaluation. 
  2. Be familiar with your organization's approach to performance evaluation. 
  3. Understand your role in carrying out the evaluation cycle. 
  4. Know how to establish performance criteria. 
  5. Be better able to conduct a successful evaluation interview. 

Employee Motivation

Purpose: To enhance skills in energizing, inspiring, and motivating employees.

Learning Objectives: 

  1. Be familiar with theories of motivation.
  2. Provide tools for tailoring motivational approaches to meet different employee needs and temperaments. 
  3. Be better equipped to motivate employees to carry out their responsibilities. 

Leading Change

Purpose: To maximize knowledge of and supervisory skill in leading change processes to improve effectiveness. 

Learning Objectives: 

  1. Understand why an openness to change in politics, procedures, and practices is important to work unit success. 
  2. Be familiar with strategies for assessing the potential benefits of work improvements and changes. 
  3. Know your tole in introducing and leading necessary changes. 
  4. Be aware of the potential challenges of and obstacles to introducing changes in your workplace. 
  5. Know the three-step process for building commitment to change. 

Customer Service

Purpose: To increase attention to and skill in ensuring the best possible service to both internal and external customers. 

Learning Objectives: 

  1. Know who your customers are. 
  2. Be committed to ensuring exceptional customer service. 
  3. Understand your role in motivating, guiding, and supporting your employees in delivering exceptional customer service. 
  4. Know the factors that are essential to providing high-quality customer service. 

Ensuring a Harassment-Free and Respectful Workplace

Purpose: To address the important role supervisors play in promoting a healthy and inclusive work environment where employees value and respect each other. 

Learning Objectives:

  1. Provide a legal foundation for the supervisor's role in ensuring a harassment-free and respectful workplace. 
  2. Broaden understanding of the importance of your organization's harassment policy as the key resource on prohibited behaviors, supervisor and employee responsibilities, and the complaint process. 
  3. Offer practical advice, action steps, and tools recognizing and responding appropriately to discrimination and harassment situations and complaints. 
  4. Increase awareness of the opportunities and challenges of increasingly diverse workplaces.