Supervising from Strengths: Understanding Your Own Biases

How do we lead from our staff strengths if we have biases about their strengths? Learn how you can review your implicit bias and improve your supervision. The third in a series about supervising from strengths.

I have spent the past month detailing part of my professional journey as a student affairs professional. Highlighted are some of the ways I fell short of building my skills and how I was impacted by the politics that were on-going in the places where I worked. I reflected on the lessons learned from each experience and what I would do differently the next time around.

A common theme that showed up across the decades and types of institutions: not knowing how to ask for better supervision. Sometimes I struggled to ask for help. Or I floundered for months, trying to work with a supervisor ill-equipped to help me reach OUR goals.

One thing I took away from the experience is that I was consistently judged for the work I was doing. But only so much as it was a reflection on the department and division I was working for. While the impact was allegedly important to the students I worked with, it was always more important to hold me accountable than to make sure I was fully equipped to manage the situation. In many ways, I was always being managed and supervised for my deficits rather than my…