 Three Myths of Supervision
Jennifer Crane, Quinnipiac University
Whether you supervise full time professionals, paraprofessionals,or student organizations you probably find yourself in situations where you need to give constructive feedback of some kind. This article focuses on giving feedback to others regarding their job performance for the purposes of their own development. All too often when we begin to prepare to deliver this feedback, we fall into the typical practices of supervision; giving good news with bad news, taking some of the ownership on ourselves, and setting very high expectations for our staff. This article will challenge these “easy” ways out of supervision and help supervisors to provide feedback from a different perspective.
Myth #1: You must give positive feedback when giving constructive criticism. When giving constructive feedback to a supervisee, most of
us have been taught to sandwich the constructive criticism with positive feedback. This means to give someone positive compliments, the constructive criticism, and again end the conversation with positive compliments. This works for first time supervisors getting their feet wet in giving feedback, or in an evaluation meeting. However, this can only work for so long if you have to continue to give the same person feedback.
We live in a society that when a person hears something good about themselves they are waiting for the “but” and negative shoe to drop. Instead of trying to sugar coat the feedback, it is best to consider a different perspective: honesty. It’s funny how this is a new perspective for many.
Most full time student affairs professionals have some kind of one-on-one meeting or regularly scheduled meeting with their supervisor. When you need to talk to your supervisee about their performance, giving the person a heads up about the situation will reduce the anxiety of having to wait
for the meeting. It also gives the staff member an opportunity to be prepared. When in an office setting, there is a power differential that is natural between a supervisor and supervisee. Having your supervisee aware of what you want to talk to them about neutralizes this differential.
Start by talking about what you told the staff member you want to talk about. Getting this out of the way allows the staff member and the supervisor to have an open conversation regarding the behavior addressed. The alternative is not telling the staff member what you want to talk about. This will cause most staff members to stress about the situation and not appreciate the positive feedback message you’re delivering. Awareness that the conversation is coming is the key to being able to start the meeting with the presenting concern.
Myth #2: "I feel (this) when you do (that)". Giving feedback to an employee is not, and should never, be about the supervisor. Supervisors are there to help guide the development of one’s success and professionalism. Using “I feel” is typically the kind of language used when there
is an attempt to put equality and ownership of the speaker into the relationship. For example, it is appropriate for one spouse to say to the other spouse, “I do not feel supported when you play Mafia Wars (Facebook game) and I am washing the dishes,” and it is appropriate for a roommate to
say to another roommate, “I feel disrespected when you ignore my request to keep your Dave Matthews music down.”
A supervisor should be cautious to not use this language unless the supervisor and supervisee are discussing their own supervision relationship. To say, “I feel you are careless when you forget to lock the bookstore door,” is a statement that would anger and put the staff member on the
defensive. Using this “I” language when providing constructive feedback in the supervisory relationship minimizes the important behavior being addressed and creates more of an unnecessary hierarchy between the staff member and their supervisor. Supervisors need to find ways to
make the situation less about the staff member and more about the behavior being discussed. This is done by viewing the situation from the third-person perspective. Of course it is comical to be verbalized in the third-person perspective (i.e. If I said to one of my staff members, “The supervisor is
concerned about your tardiness to three staff meetings,”) but not comical to view it from the third-person perspective.
This allows the supervisor to view the facts of the situation in a fairer manner. Using the bookstore example, the supervisor could say, “The door of the bookstore was left unlocked all night. Do you have any insight on how this could have happened?” This can be very difficult on behalf
of the supervisor because it means not making accusations at first and accepting that the supervisor may be wrong.
Myth #3: I need to make you the best professional ever. Supervisors will put undue pressure on themselves to produce the best professionals in the field. There is even an unspoken competition amongst schools on this very topic. Supervisors will spend money sending staff to conferences, trainings, webinars, and other development opportunities. Sometimes what the staff member misses during this “pushing” is the application of what is learned at these development opportunities. Instead of trying to “create” the best professionals in the field, we need to start with making the best professionals at a given institution. A key moment for one of my supervision relationships is when I communicated, “I am not here to make you a better professional; I am here to make you a better professional at Quinnipiac.”
I supervised a staff member who was a few years older than I was and who had about five years more experience in the field than me. In the beginning of our working relationship, I concentrated on how to make him a better professional. It seemed as if I was running in circles because I wasn't making much of a difference for him, and we continued to disagree about how to be efficient with paperwork, which battles to pick, and how to work with difficult people. After a year of supervising this person, I realized that what I could teach him was not about the field, but about the university; department policies, department direction, and the level of professionalism at this university. I partnered with him to use his strengths and make those strengths visible at the institution. It wasn't my role to tell him how to act at a conference, help him explore his career path, or to teach
him trends in higher education. It was my role to help him succeed at this university; which should ultimately be my basic role with all of my staff members.
When we simplify what our roles are with each of our staff members, supervision becomes a more manageable role. You have to give yourself permission to admit you don’t know everything and partner with your supervisee. When you can help a staff member be successful at their institution, you in turn create more opportunities for that person in and outside of the university.
Jennifer Crane is the Associate Director of Residential Education at Quinnipiac University. She is also Chair of the NEACUHO Professional
Development Committee. To contact her, please e-mail her at
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