If I Were A Supervisor Essay

1. If I were the supervisor, I would tell Sally that I will have a meeting with her the next day, when she is calmer. I would tell her that I understand her frustration and to achieve a better result it is better to wait until the next day. Meanwhile, I will prepare myself for the meeting; since she is the only leader that has been complaining, I would compare her workload to the other leaders. I also compare number of employees that she has to lead to the other leaders. Additionally, I would compare her team’s productivity to the other teams. If everything is the same or almost the same, then I would have a valid document to back up why I did not put her complaints as a priority. If in the comparison, I find out a great deviation, then I would …show more content…
For example, if she states that her “group’s backlog was growing,” she should be specific and give the reasons why. For instance, maybe the scanner was broken and took a while to get fixed and caused the backlog, or maybe an employee is on a leave of absence and has caused an increase in the workload. Whatever the reasons are, she should specify them and based on the situation we will come up with a plan and a resolution. The advantage of this approach is that she learns that rather than complaining, which is not going to take her anywhere, she must look into the causes of the problems and document and report them promptly. The disadvantage of this approach is that she might pass all the problems to me before even trying to solve them …show more content…
I should not get myself trapped in Sally’s trick that she will quit if I do not hire someone to help. If I hire a person right away, she will use this trick whenever an issue arises. Therefore, I must consider all the angles of the issue. If she is the source of the problem, I would tell her that I cannot hire a new employee, but I do not want to lose her either. I would suggest her to step down, if she feels that things get out of control and another option is to take leadership classes. With this approach, I give her options to choose from, and she does not feel that a decision is forced on her. However, If her complaints are legitimate, I would contact my supervisor and ask whether I can hire a new employee, or not. If the answer is no, I would tell her that I cannot provide her with extra help, but I can transfer part of her responsibility to another team leader. This way, I show her that I am trying to do my best to work with her, but we have to meet half way. If my supervisor approves of a hiring, then I will let her know that I will hire a new employee, but it will not happen in a week because we have to post the job and do the interviews, which will take a while. With this approach, I indicate that I did not ignore her ultimatum, but I would not expedite the hiring either and let it take its normal process. With this tactic, I preserve my position as a supervisor and indicate that I have to make the final decision based on the valid