Effective supervision is extremely important to achieve job satisfaction and the development of the staff. The primary goal of a supervisor is to balance surveillance and reflection to stimulate, empower, and motivate the employees. In my practice, I met examples of both effective and ineffective supervision. Ineffective supervision was usually associated with being overly demanding or irresponsive. However, there were also cases when supervisors were permissive. For instance, when I worked as a residential counselor, our supervisor, Jill, was very attentive to all my mistakes and tried to provide feedback for all my activities when she thought it was appropriate. While I enjoyed receiving the feedback, I felt unmotivated to change my way of working, as I did not feel that Jill demanded the change. It resulted in my slow development and limited job satisfaction.
When I started working as an assistant school teacher, my direct supervisor, Anna, was an example of an excellent supervisor. She knew the primary goals and objectives for every day and shared them effectively with me every day. Moreover, she had a clear vision of how the students should progress and what our future steps will be to help them achieve success. She was very demanding, as she wanted everything to be done exactly her way. However, Anna also spent just enough time to help me understand that her methods were the best for the children. As a result, I felt motivated and empowered every day due to Anna’s ability to find a balance between demand and responsiveness. In my future career as an advanced human service practitioner, I want to utilize Anna’s supervision method to become an effective leader.
