Taming the Hamster: A Practical Guide to Supervision/Management

Copyright © 2024 by Kevin Yeates.

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Rev. date: 06/26/2024

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CONTENTS

1     Taming the Hamster

2     The Purpose of a Supervisor

3     What to Manage

4     The Foundation for Positive Human Relations

5     Motivation versus Engagement

6     How to Manage Your Behavior

7     Strategic Planning Outline

8     Developing Learning Plans

9     Encourage Actions and Decisions

10   Addressing Performance Issues

11   Preparing for the Conversation

12   Sample Conversations

13   Dealing with Aggressive Employees

14   Questions

15   Afterword

1

Taming the Hamster

My neighbors had a hamster that was most entertaining to watch. The hamster had a cage that consisted of the usual hamster cage things. The cage bottom was covered in cedar shavings, and there was a small cardboard box turned upside down to serve as a shelter for the hamster. There was the water bottle hung on the side of the cage, and of course, the exercise wheel. The hamster loved to run on that exercise wheel. He would get it going so fast that, once his speed was up, he would hold onto the wheel and ride it. He would spin with the wheel and actually go through a complete rotation with the wheel before his body weight was greater than the inertia of the wheel, and it would stop rotating. He would then start running again to get his speed up before repeating the process.

It was humorous to watch the hamster playing his game and seeing the pleasure he was getting from the ride. He worked hard each time to get his speed up, and then he hung on and enjoyed the ride. He was clearly having fun and was getting great exercise. He was working very hard on the exercise wheel but wasn’t really accomplishing anything other than getting some exercise. His game on the exercise wheel had no impact on anything other than himself, running the wheel changed nothing in his world. But the exercise wheel game was fun for him, and that is all it was, and all it was supposed to be. It was also very entertaining to watch. For him, it was nothing more than having a good time. There were no rules to his game and no winner or loser. It was simply fun.

Unfortunately, what I have described above—work that the worker enjoys done at times that aren’t based on any sort of intelligence or plan and resulting in a feeling of accomplishment for the worker but no impact anywhere else—takes place too many times in too many workplaces. Staff work very hard but the actual impact their efforts have is minimal.

A good example of this was demonstrated in an office where I had worked. There was extra funding provided by the provincial motor vehicle insurer (Insurance Corporation of British Columbia [ICBC]) for extra traffic enforcement as part of a safe driving campaign. ICBC provided intelligence from their crash data as to where the crashes occurred; what time they occurred; and what type of crash it was, e.g., rear-ender, car turning left, etc. We had all of this information available to us at all times. The police officers would then be scheduled to work overtime shifts to do enhanced traffic enforcement at these sites and times.

One Saturday, I stopped at the police station and got chatting with a young constable. The constable had been using radar for speed enforcement on a straight stretch of the highway where there had been no crashes over the past years.

Why did you choose that location? I asked. What was the problem there?

Speeders, the constable replied, producing a large pile of speeding tickets to support this.

When asked what the problem was with people speeding and there not being any crashes occurring, the irritated constable said, They’re doing speeds up to 120 km/h in an 80 km/h zone. When once again asked what the problem was, as the speeding was clearly not creating any crashes or injuries, the constable became more upset. Clearly, he did not know/understand the purpose nor the end goal of the traffic section (reducing injuries and property damage associated with car crashes), how traffic law enforcement plays a role in achieving this goal, and what constitutes a problem in the analysis of traffic offenses.

It was also painfully evident that the supervisor of the traffic section had not embraced the concept of utilizing his resources effectively. I recognized that the misplaced speed enforcement was simply a symptom of a supervisor who did not understand what the goal was and, therefore, was not properly educating his staff and not effectively deploying resources.

A kilometer down the road from the constable’s radar location had been the highest crash location in the area. The vast majority of the crashes there occurred due to left turns and low-speed rear-end accidents. The low-speed rear-end crashes occurred from Monday to Friday during peak traffic periods. Saturday afternoon speed-related crashes were nonexistent. In fact, there was no indication of any speed-related concerns in the area.

The constable’s reaction to the questions was completely understandable. He had been working hard, issued a large number of tickets, and felt he had done what he was supposed to have done. In his mind, I obviously didn’t get it, as the constable was a hard-working police officer who had the tickets to prove it.

I wondered why the constable didn’t see the pointlessness of issuing tickets for an offense that is not an issue at that location. The constable seemed to be addressing a non-issue with great enthusiasm but didn’t seem concerned about the effectiveness of his work.

This takes me back to the hamster. The hamster works very hard and appears to be having a great time running on the exercise wheel. This is good as the job of the hamster is to entertain himself and get exercise at the same time. However, when our actions are supposed to result in something other than our own entertainment and self-edification, we need a work process that will lead us toward our goals.

It starts with knowing the purpose (end goal) of our organization. The constable issuing speeding tickets is a perfect example of the hamster on the exercise wheel. To harness that energy and enthusiasm in the right direction, we must learn to tame the hamster. That is the job of a supervisor.

Taming the hamster can be quite a chore for the supervisor. If you try to change the approach your staff takes to the work, you may be trying to change something that the staff have known and have been comfortable with for years. They typically feel that nothing is broken, so any effort to take things in a different direction may be seen as trying to fix something that isn’t broken.

The Impact of a Supervisor

It’s important to understand that supervisors have a massive impact on the people they work with. Dr. Linda Duxbury, a professor at the Carleton University School of Business and specialist in issues associated with managing a changing workforce, has done much research into the management of businesses. Her research has shown that the number one reason for people leaving a job is their supervisor. It is very clear that your actions as a supervisor have a massive impact not only on the lives of the staff you work with but also on the organization, as you can be the number one cause of employee turnover.

Some people find it hard to believe that a supervisor can have such a massive impact on the employee’s lives, productivity, and the general working environment. I think the best analogy to demonstrate the impact is found in sailboat racing in the Olympics. The sailboats compete against one another in certain classes. In each class, the boats are, in essence, the same as each other. They all must be a certain weight and length, have a certain sail size, etc. They all race together at the same time, so they are all facing the same waves, currents, and the same winds. Therefore, one would expect that since all the boats are the same and they have the same winds and seas, every race will be a tie. Obviously, that is not the case. The only variable in the sailing package is the person sailing the boat. That one person has such an impact based on their ability to read the seas, understand the winds and currents, and utilize their resources accordingly that there is always a first, second, and third place in the races.

Where you go, what route you take, and how fast you get there is up to you. It is determined by how you handle your resources and how you read the situation. The winning sailor best knows how to manage the boat and read the environment. The sailor manages the boat; the supervisor manages the staff.

Knowledge of how to manage people is the key to being an effective supervisor. Learning how to manage people can be a very difficult and sometimes painful process. This is because a lot of your closely held beliefs, things that you know for sure, will be challenged and, for many people, will have to be let go.

You may have believed that all a non-productive employee needed was someone to smarten them up, tune them in, or give them a wake-up call. Unfortunately, it is rarely that simple to address a performance issue. Learning how to adopt a different approach to the non-productive employee can be frustrating. Issues that seem to have such simple solutions will typically be found to have rather complex backgrounds to them. You will find that an emotional response will rarely get what you are looking for. You cannot be guided by frustration, anger, or vengeance. Such emotional responses will only get you into trouble and will not achieve the desired result. Many people find that one of the most difficult steps in developing their supervisory skills is learning to respond rationally rather than emotionally.

There is no question that as a supervisor you will have to deal with the performance issues. The question is how you will deal with them. You need to be able to measure your performance in dealing with your staff against some set expectations. Take note that the measurements are of your performance, your actions, and the processes. The results will come based on your performance. Looking back at the constable who gave out all those speeding tickets, if we measured how many tickets he wrote, he would appear to be very successful. Yet if we measured his actions and the analysis/processes he followed, we would see that he wrote a lot of tickets for an offense that had not been identified as a problem, at a location that had not been identified as a problem, and at a time of day that had not been identified as a problem.

Management versus Leadership

This book is about supervision and management, specifically in a police environment. It is not about leadership, yet leadership is a part of supervision and management. There is much training available on leadership today, and leadership is very much in vogue. To say you are taking leadership training has much more cachet than does saying that you are on a supervisor’s course. Yet supervisory skills are a basic requirement for good leadership. It is conversely true that supervision involves leadership. The leader sets the direction while the managers make it happen. While everyone in essence leads people by being a role model, the truth of the matter is that there are very few leader positions in an organization. It is the highly skilled manager who also has leadership skills that is the most effective manager. Combining the ability to move a group of people toward another’s vision while encouraging things, such as risk-taking (typically the role of a leader) is very difficult to do. The two may seem to be counterintuitive but actually go very much hand in hand.

2

The Purpose of a Supervisor

The first thing one must do in understanding supervision is to identify the job description of a supervisor/manager. You can look up online job descriptions of supervisory roles, and you will find several points listed as to what a supervisor does. These job descriptions do exactly what they are supposed to do. They lay out the issues the supervisor is responsible for. Typically, the list will include things, such as being responsible for staff scheduling, training, holding staff meetings, etc.

An example of a typical job description for a supervisor is along the lines of the following:

Summary

Coordinate department activities and special projects. Supervise the staff in accordance with company policies and procedures.

Primary Responsibilities

Coordinate department activities and special projects to ensure quality and meet timetables. Evaluate department processes. Recommend and coordinate needed changes based on process analysis.

• Direct the staff in the development, analysis, and preparation of reports.

• Supervise the staff in accordance with company policies and procedures.

• Assist the staff in resolving complex or out-of-policy operation problems.

• Conduct interviews, hire new staff, and provide employee orientation.

• Coach and provide career development advice to the staff.

• Establish employee goals and conduct employee performance reviews.

• Responsible for the staff scheduling to include: work assignments/rotations, employee training, employee vacations, employee breaks, overtime assignments, backup for absent employees, and shift rotations.

• Coordinate with human resources for appropriate staffing levels.

• Schedule and conduct staff meetings.

• Responsible for meeting department productivity and quality goals.

• Communicate with other supervisors and managers.

• Serve on committees and teams as a department representative.

• Complete human resource paperwork.

• Other duties as assigned.

The first few sentences of the job description above—Coordinate department activities and special projects to ensure quality and meet timetables, Evaluate department processes, Recommend and coordinate needed changes based on process analysis—speak to the role of coordinating the department’s activities, as well as the need for evaluation.

This provides the supervisor with the what of their job expectations, what they are expected to do, and followed by the how, which is the list of tasks. Until a supervisor knows the why of their job, they can never properly coordinate the departmental activities, etc. The most important thing the supervisor needs to know is the why of the supervisory position. Why did the company create such a position in the first place? Why is it that the supervisor is doing all of these things listed in their job description? What is the actual purpose or end goal of the supervisor?

While job descriptions lay out the issues that a supervisor is supposed to be addressing, I have rarely met a supervisor who could articulate why they were doing these things, i.e., what their purpose was or what they were trying to accomplish. How will the supervisor know if they have been successful at achieving their purpose if they don’t know what their purpose is? Unfortunately, the purpose of the supervisor is not very obvious to most people and needs to be outlined.

In the past, when I have asked people why the supervisor is expected to take the actions noted in the job description, I have been typically told that it is to keep things running or keep things running smoothly. I disagree completely with this. The job description for a supervisor should be laid out along the following lines.

Purpose: Why Is There a Supervisory Position?

The purpose of the supervisor is to coordinate the actions of the group being supervised to ensure it is working toward the achievement of/in support of the organization’s goals/objectives.

Process: How Will the Supervisor Do It?

The supervisor will develop and implement an operational plan for the unit that is aligned with and is supportive of the company’s goals and areas of focus. The plan is to be developed and executed in ways that empower employees and foster their engagement in their work.

Action: What Will the Supervisor Do?

Lay out the typical job description here with the addition of the creation of an operational plan for the unit.

If the above was presented as the expectations of a supervisor, how many supervisors do you know who would be doing their job? The supervisor is not there to maintain the status quo. Nor is a supervisor there to keep things running smoothly and act solely as an overseer of the operations. The supervisor must know what the organization’s goal is and how their department fits into that goal. The supervisor must lead the team in a direction that is in line with the organization’s goal.

Understanding and adopting the above is the first step in the process of becoming an effective supervisor. This will undoubtedly be difficult for some, as it is quite different from most people’s perception of the role of a supervisor and necessitates a very different approach.

Thinking back to the constable who had issued so many speeding tickets at a no-crash location, on a no-crash day, the supervisor who assigned the constable to that location clearly did not understand the goal of the traffic section or perhaps the supervisor simply thought the goal was to issue X number of tickets.

In order to effectively lead the team, the supervisor must know and understand what encourages employees to be engaged in their work. The supervisor must also know how to interact with people. Supervision is all about interpersonal skills. Interpersonal skills start with the one person you have complete control over—yourself.

3

What to Manage

This chapter will explore what you are to manage. You may think the answer is obviously the staff or the office. While those responses are clearly valid, the truth is that you also have to learn to manage yourself, especially your emotional responses to situations and what words to use and not use at certain times. By learning to manage yourself, you can manage your interaction with your employees, thereby improving your ability to influence them to perform as you want.

The words results based or something similar, are often used when referring to a management style, a process, a training course, etc. The term is used to identify what the person or process is geared toward. It is a great way of thinking. This book looks at techniques that ultimately focus on results in support of the organization’s goal.

We all want to achieve the desired results, but too many times, we forget the results come from actions. (When I say actions, I am including the decision to take no action.) Salespeople must sell in order to meet targets. Roads may have to be reengineered in order to improve traffic flow and, thus, reduce the number of car crashes. It always takes an action to get a result. Put even simpler, actions bring results.

As obvious as the following may seem to be, it needs to be said: the only asset in any organization that can produce an action is a person. A machine will take action only when told to do so by a person whether through a hands-on action or through software programming. It is the employees who take the actions that lead to a certain result. As a supervisor, you want the staff to take certain actions and avoid other actions to accomplish the desired results. The desired result in the scenario of the first chapter should have been fewer crashes, not more speeding tickets.

The supervisor’s challenge is to foster a situation where the staff’s actions are preceded by a specific way of thinking. Thinking a certain way leads to the desired actions, which in turn lead to the desired results.

It is important to understand that your staff have been influenced throughout their lives, and continue to be influenced, by an extraordinary number of things. Their experiences, habits, attitude, values, beliefs, etc., all influence how they think. Your staff come to you already with a certain way of thinking that predisposes them to take certain actions. As you attempt to get them to work toward the company goal, you will encounter some obstacles stemming from their thinking a certain way due to past and present influences.

Your job as a supervisor is to get your staff to influence your staff to be thinking a certain way, which will lead to them taking certain actions that will produce the desired results. This is achieved through your interaction with them. You can talk about the purpose of management and different styles of management, but the bottom line is that your interaction with your staff is the how of supervision and management.

You have a minimal amount of time to influence the staff to get them to think a certain way. You can’t be micromanaging people or hanging over them all day. You have to influence the staff during your interactions with them. Your influence on the staff is the only component over which you have any direct control or influence. Your interaction with the employees is your only contact with the process in figure 3.2 that leads to the desired results. No matter what type of supervisory style you use, consultative or a dictatorial, the bottom line is that your interaction with your staff is what leads to the results.

As you interact with your staff, you are competing with all those other influences in their lives. So in spite of you telling them what you want them to do and the logic being perfectly clear to you, they may not respond as you expect because they have had different life experiences from you.

As a supervisor, your job principally involves human interaction skills. Your interpersonal skills are a key factor in influencing your staff to think the way you want them to think in order for them to take the action you want them to take, so they will produce the results the organization wants. These interpersonal skills are the make-it or break-it aspect of your job. We have seen how changing the coach of a professional sports organization can result in a turnaround for the team. The players on the team remained the same, but the coach changed. Therefore, with a different coach, the way the players were interacted with changed, and the team got different results.

We too often fail to appreciate that we need to learn to manage people by learning to manage our own behavior. You must learn to manage yourself. We can see a similarity in child-rearing courses that focus not on the child but on the parent’s behavior. Such courses look at the parent’s response to things the kids may do. They teach the parents how to control their own behavior, control their reactions to their child’s actions, and what words to use in interacting with their child. They show the parents how to set up expectations and how to enforce them. They help parents understand what their children need and how their minds work (or don’t work). It is all about the parent understanding the child, what motivates them, and how to interact with the child. In short, the course is teaching the parents relationship skills.

So bear in mind that you are not managing a section or a department; you are managing people, especially yourself. You are not managing their actions; you are trying to impact how they are thinking. How you get them thinking will determine the actions they take and the results you get. If you don’t know how to work with people, understand them, and how to influence them all in a sustainable manner, you will not be an effective manager.

So as you can see, management is not an intellectual challenge; it is a behavioral challenge. It is first a challenge of your own behaviors. You must learn to act in a manner that will positively influence the staff to act in a desired manner. Secondly, you must focus on people’s behaviors (their actions) as you attempt to get the desired results. If you are focused solely on the results and point out that we are coming up short in a certain area or telling people to get at it or pull up their socks, you are not recognizing any aspect of human behavior. You are not focusing on what brought about the undesired result (the employee’s behaviors) but are, instead, focusing on the result itself.

Humans find it easy to see the errors in someone else’s ways, yet it is so hard to see them in themselves. We fully understand our own actions, knowing what we did and why we did it. We may have violated policy or procedures, but we may rationalize that it was necessary due to some circumstance. When we learn of an error or see someone else doing something that appears to be foolish or violating policy, we more quickly criticize their actions and may conclude they simply weren’t thinking or are quite stupid. The reason we are harder on others than ourselves is that we don’t know the circumstances that led that person to act that way. We don’t know all that the other person is experiencing and seeing (or not seeing), so we often simply jump to the conclusion that they are inept.

My wife is a musician. Along with performing and composing, she also teaches. Typically, if a student is not progressing at the expected rate, one might guess they are not practicing. She has certain processes to assist her in determining if, in fact, that is the problem or if it is an understanding problem or if there is a physical issue the person is struggling with. It is amazing how many times she has diagnosed a struggling student as having vision issues. Once they got glasses, their ability to read the music skyrocketed (they could see it clearly!) and the problems were eliminated.

As I have already noted, supervision is all about interpersonal skills. A major part of that is communications. Whenever two people are interacting, there are several levels of communication taking place. Because we communicate in so many ways other than simply through words, we have to ensure that our body language, tone of voice, inflections, timing, etc., are all in accord. Even if they are in accord, we can still have a miscommunication.

In any conversation, there are a minimum of two people there, but at least four different takes on the communication taking place.

1. What I believe I am saying.

2. What you perceive me to be saying.

3. What you believe you are saying.

4. What I perceive you to be saying.

You can easily see how we can have at least four, sometimes different, takes with only two people present. Now comes the hard question. Of those four takes, which is the most important for you as a supervisor? It’s one thing to know what you believed you were saying. It’s another thing to know what the other person understood. But what is most important in a conversation? I believe it is the perception of the person hearing you. No matter how well you worded it, no matter how well you empathized and did everything else correctly, if the person perceives it contrary to how you intended, it is up to you to change and take the necessary steps to correct the misunderstanding. Although both parties in a conversation are responsible for clear communication, the main responsibility lies with the person with the power.

When a police officer is dealing with an aggressive and insulting person, it is the police who must demonstrate self-restraint and control. It is the police who must be professional since the police hold the power in that interaction. Similarly, when a teacher is dealing with a student, the teacher holds the power and must therefore exercise self-restraint. In a supervisory situation, it is the supervisor who has the higher standard imposed upon them since they