Wrapping Up a Full Year Supervising: Final 3 Lessons Learned

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

In a couple of weeks, two of my team members will have worked in my department for a full year. It was a year of discovery, mostly, as we pieced together a department that was full of newly hired staff. Many lessons were learned on the way, including the ones I shared earlier this year.

I shared the importance of onboarding your staff, gaining trust in your team, and saying thank you as often as you can. We’ve learned that these lessons were also important with the students we hired and asked to volunteer in our department. And together we’ve identified a few more lessons to share about supervising (and being supervised).

Lesson One: Be Flexible in the Ambiguity

Of the four people working in my department, including me, none of us were here before 2022. And while we received many files about the previous operations of the office, none of the previous staff really told us how they made the operations work. Or more importantly, how they created buy-in from our stakeholders.

So this meant we were making things up as we did them.

And directing a staff that was also as clueless, at first, was a challenge. I had to remind myself that I was just as new to the organization as they were and while the director needs to know…