As a supervisor, you are aware that much is demanded of you. You must guide, support, and assist your staff to do the best job they can. You must motivate them, manage any conflicts, resolve problems and emergencies, and do your best to meet your performance objectives and help your employees to meet theirs so that your program will meet its goals. How can you accomplish all this?

Every program or department needs a supervisory system, that is, a set of principles and rules to follow. A supervisory system guides supervisors appropriately in planning, directing, and controlling the performance of their employees. The system describes how the supervisors tasks will be carried out, whether through supervisory sessions with one or more employees or through written or telephone communication. It can include:

• A supervisory schedule
• A supervisory plan
• A system for performance appraisal

By allowing you, the supervisor, to schedule future supervisory sessions and plan the details of these sessions, such a system will help you to keep track of all the activities and employees for which you are responsible. You should hold supervisory sessions with all the employees that you supervise, whether they are working in the same location as you are or in another site to which you must travel to see them.

If the staff you supervise are working in the same clinic or office as you, or if they work near enough that you see them almost every day, you will get regular feedback on the technical and interpersonal capabilities of your staff. Issues or problems, particularly any personal issues, can be dealt with as soon as they arise. You can vary the time you spend with individual members of your staff as their needs require and the work situation allows.

When supervising people you see frequently, some supervisory functions are performed easily, such as monitoring the volume and quality of the work which has been done, reaffirming the mission of the organization (by personal example), and being able to represent the organization and support the staff members on personal issues. Because you see these staff members every day, it may be more difficult to look at their training and staff development needs from a long-range perspective. To overcome this problem, the supervisor must set up regular meetings for longer-term reviews of the work and for discussing the guidance, assistance, and support that staff members should have.

If the staff you supervise are located at some distance from your office, then you will not see them very often. Supervising staff who work a distance away is different from supervising staff you see every day because these sessions are usually less frequent, longer, cover a longer time frame, have a sense of occasion, and are scheduled around constraints of geography, distance, and the availability of transportation. With these staff you have only a short time, perhaps a few hours each month or each quarter, to cover the basic areas of supervision which have been mentioned earlier. To make sure your visit has the greatest impact, you must think very carefully about what you are going to do and plan how you are going to do it.

The main challenges for the supervisor in any supervisory session are:

• To identify all the problems and issues to be addressed with staff members;
• To use the available time with staff members effectively.

A supervisory system is especially necessary when the circumstances of a supervisors's job are complex. As a supervisor, you may have a number of employees to supervise in a variety of locations and in addition you may be responsible yourself to more than one supervisor. A supervisory system will help you to keep track of all the things you have to do so that no important tasks are neglected and so that tasks are accomplished within this allotted time.

Example from Lesotho - The Complexities of Supervision

Every supervisor should draw up a schedule for periodic supervisory sessions that specifies the dates, times, places, and people involved. The schedule should also include the subjects to be discussed during the session. This schedule lets the supervisor give advance notice of the meeting to the staff involved. A supervisory schedule like the one that follows is very important because it:

• Provides advance notice of the supervisory session to staff at all locations, and allows them time to prepare;
• Makes it possible for supervisors to coordinate their visits in a convenient and economical manner when resources are limited;
• Helps to ensure that all supervisory sessions will have a definite purpose and not be a waste of time;
• Helps the supervisor to review in advance the necessary materials for the supervisory session. In this way, each new supervisory session effectively builds on previous ones.

The supervision of staff with whom you are in day-to-day, or even weekly contact is simple in many ways. You can monitor how much and how well staff members perform on a continuous basis, and in the course of the day's normal activities. However, because it is so easy to carry out that kind of informal supervision, it is important not to neglect the scheduling of more formal supervisory sessions on a regular basis with each staff member. Such sessions should concentrate on reviewing a staff member's work over a longer period and offering them the guidance, assistance, and support they need to do their job well.

The challenge of supervising people you see only occasionally is to use the time available for the supervisory session in the most effective manner. These sessions must include not only reviews of the work, plans for upcoming work, and any necessary guidance and support, but must also encompass problem-solving and monitoring the quality of work, as well as other functions that take place on a daily basis in an office where the supervisor is always present. The supervisor Informs the staff of these sessions in advance by developing and distributing the schedule of supervisory sessions or by sending them a letter or memorandum. This advance notice allows the staff to prepare for sessions so that no time is wasted.

Example from Liberia - Supervisory Schedule for Community-Based Distribution Program Officer

Supervisors have the choice of supervising people on an individual basis or in groups. Most of the functions that are carried out in individual supervisory settings can be done effectively in a group setting, such as:

• Evaluation
• Feedback
• Motivation
• Teaching
• Problem Solving
• Resupply of commodities
• Data collection

If you are visiting a project with a small staff, you can hold individual meetings with each staff member. If the staff is large, a group supervisory meeting would be best. Individual conferences or mini-teaching sessions are needed only when one person's performance is far behind the others' in the group or at the time of the annual review.

In a supervisory session, the supervisor should:

• Review the work itself and how it is being carried out;
• Discuss the work in the context of a time frame that gives a sense of perspective to the job being done (for example, three to six months);
• Look ahead to future plans;
• Provide a positive atmosphere for discussion.

The aim here is not a detailed review of each work activity undertaken in the last period nor a detailed work plan for the next period; these occur during the scheduled performance appraisal sessions. Rather, the supervisory session offers the opportunity for:

• An overview of recent progress and problems;
• Learning from specific recent work experiences (both successes and failures);
• Foreseeing potential difficulties and preventing them;
• Helping employees to gain a sense of perspective of the job as a whole;
• Getting their commitment to meeting the program's targets;
• Identifying what support or help they may need to get the job done properly.

Failure to meet a target should be discussed only from the viewpoint of why the failure occurred and how it can be prevented in the future; no judgement or blame should be given.

Often distance, transportation difficulties, or constraints of weather and travel conditions will limit the contact between a supervisor and her or his employee. The frequency of supervisory visits will vary with the situation:

• Routine and clerical functions, such as contraceptive resupply and inspection of records, will depend on how often supplies need to be replenished and information needs to be collected.
• Problem solving and motivating staff will demand frequent supervision if they are to result in improved performance.
• New programs or changes in existing programs need extremely frequent visits. As the program becomes more firmly established and the staff gain experience and confidence, supervision can be cut back.

To prepare the supervisor's session plan, you must develop a list of core activities, selected activities, and program support activities, including notes from your previous supervisory sessions. The core and selected activities that you develop will be drawn from job descriptions, work plans, program targets, and objectives that may exist, as well as from the list of Items for Selective Supervision.

You will need to decide what items are important to your program and whether they should be supervised routinely or selectively.

"A Supervisor's Session Plan" shows a plan, composed of core tasks, selected tasks, and program support activities. Note that it contains a space for the supervisor to record observations from previous visits that need follow-up attention.

Tools and Techniques - Supervisor's Session Plan