Supervision Skills
Lesson 2: Skills
Introduction
Lesson 1 focused on understanding healthy supervision and knowing what that looks like. Lesson 2 will focus on developing some practical skills as a supervisor to help you create healthy rhythms in your supervisee relationships. In this lesson, you will learn how to make an annual supervision plan, what should be included in regular supervision meetings, and some situational leadership skills for those you lead.
Lesson Objectives
- Develop an annual supervision plan for those you supervise.
- Construct regular rhythms to support those you supervise.
- Develop an Annual Evaluation
Supervision Meetings
Annual Plan
In Lesson 1 you learned the importance of setting clear expectations and mutual goals with your supervisees to be goal-oriented and accomplish the mission of Young Life. This section will expand upon that idea to help you create a year-long supervision plan to help you know when you need to talk about what with your supervisee and create space for the conversations you need to have with your supervisee - vision, budgeting, evaluation, supporting them, etc.
Creating an annual plan for supervision helps you determine when you need to talk about what with your supervisee. While the majority of your meetings will be regular check-ins, checking in on how they are personally doing and how you can help them in their current session, there are some other essentials to a good annual plan you do not want to miss.
Key elements to an annual supervision plan:
- Annual Goal Setting
- Annual Projected budget setting
- Annual or semi-annual Evaluation - performance evaluation
- Self-evaluation process for the supervisee
- Regular check-ins with the person
Oftentimes, the regular check-ins are all that a supervisor does. However having a plan for annual goal setting, evaluation, and performance evaluations, will help guide conversations for the year. Read the Sample Annual Plan below.
Pause and Reflect
- Which of the elements do you already do with those you supervise?
- Would it be helpful to make it into one plan for the year?
- Which elements have you NOT done in the past, and what would need to change to implement these elements?
- How do you track what you discuss in your supervision conversations?
This reflection will help you create an annual plan from the Action Steps at the end of this lesson.
Distance Supervision
If the people you lead and supervise are geographically far away from you, your annual plan is even more important. Creating an annual plan of rhythms of when to see your supervisees in person is vital to developing trust and leading well.
Dan Jessup has done lots of research in this area and wrote a paper on the topic. If you lead from a distance, please read the below articles and create an annual plan.
Preparing for a supervision meeting
Before any supervision meeting, it is helpful to prepare ahead of time a few key things to discuss with your supervisee. Keeping a written record of your supervisee's annual goals, budgets, and other notes, will help you prepare for these meetings.
When you prepare for each meeting you will want to know what you discussed last time with your supervisee to follow up on hanging loose ends. The more people you supervise, the more important this is. Keeping written track of your meetings will help you think holistically about your meetings, help you follow up, and have a strategic plan with your supervisees.
During a supervision meeting
A supervision meeting is the intersection of family and professional with your supervisee. You want to care and love them well, while also helping them with their goals and visions. It's best to always start a supervision checking in with the person and how they are doing personally and spiritually. Create space for your supervisees to share what's going on in their life. This helps you know what emotions they are carrying with them daily.
Once you know they feel cared for you, you can move on to asking them how they need help. This is a great place to use your coaching skills! Rather than coming up with a list of things to tell your supervisees, you can come up with things you want to ask them about and coach them through to help them grow. But by asking them what they need help with and keep asking questions, you can help them discover the answer for themselves.
Once you know they have what they need, you can bring up any other additional items you want to discuss with them. If you wait for your list at the end, your list will likely become shorter as your supervisee brings up things to discuss. You serve your supervisees well by helping them direct your conversation to what they need.
End your time by praying for your supervisee.
AFter a supervision meeting
After a supervision meeting, you will want to plan on how to follow up on any items you may have asked for them to do. Written follow-up allows for you and your supervisee to keep track of action items and work to be done.
If you do this already, keep going!! If you do not do this already, you could use the above sample plan as a template and add notes to that each month. OR ask your supervisor what they do and have them teach you!
Bringing life to your supervision meetings
Annual Evaluation
Lastly, the annual evaluation is an essential tool in your supervision relationship. An annual evaluation can be a formal time for you and your supervisor to meet and discuss the year. This can be a time for celebration and praise the Lord for what he has done. It can also be helpful in looking forward to the next year and what goals and expectations you have for the next year.
Below is a sample annual evaluation that is given to the supervisee ahead of time for him or her to first do a self-evaluation and then for you, the supervisor, to do an evaluation. You will be able to see where you answered similarly and differently. When you have your meeting you will most likely spend time discussing where you all differ on your evaluation.
Read the below sample:
The above sample is helpful because it:
- Creates space for both supervisee and supervisor to evaluate
- Uses the Next Kid Framework to make sure you are evaluating the whole of a leader
- Creates space for celebration
- Creates space to discuss areas of growth
- Creates space for the supervisee to give feedback on how the supervisor is doing
Action Items
- Choose one of the people you supervise. Develop a year-long supervision plan for this person. Share this plan with your supervisor and begin to execute the plan. Make sure to include the following categories:
-Annual or semi-annual Evaluation - performance evaluation
-Annual Goal Setting
-Annual Projected budget setting
-Regular check-ins with the person - If you do not have a way to track your supervision conversations yet, create one. Share the idea with your supervisor and get feedback.
- Review the Annual Evaluation Sample. Adapt the sample to use with at least one of your supervisees this year.
- (optional) - If you lead people from a distance, use Dan Jessup's annual planning tool to create your annual plan with your supervisees.
