Advice
The Construction Site Taught Me Everything About Supervising (And I Wish I'd Known It Sooner)
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Seventeen years ago, I was standing on a building site in Surry Hills watching a foreman absolutely lose his mind at a sparkie who'd run cable through the wrong wall cavity. The sparkie just shrugged, picked up his tools, and walked off the job. That was my lightbulb moment about supervision – and it had nothing to do with the massive hole they'd both just left in our timeline.
See, everyone thinks supervisor training is about learning to give orders and tick boxes. Dead wrong. It's about understanding that people aren't machines, even when you desperately wish they were.
The construction industry teaches you supervision basics faster than any MBA program. You've got trades who know their stuff better than you ever will, deadlines that actually matter (not like those quarterly reports that get shuffled around for months), and consequences that are immediately visible. When a supervisor stuffs up on a building site, everyone knows within hours. When they stuff up in an office... well, sometimes it takes years to surface.
But here's what I learned that day watching that sparkie walk off: the foreman wasn't wrong about the cable placement, but he was catastrophically wrong about everything else.
The Three Types of People You'll Supervise (And Why University Never Prepared You)
After moving from construction into corporate consulting, I've supervised everyone from fresh graduates who think "synergy" is a real word to 25-year veterans who remember when email was optional. They fall into three categories, and traditional supervisory training courses barely scratch the surface of dealing with them.
The Competent and Confident - These are your sparkies, your senior analysts, your people who genuinely know what they're doing. They don't need supervision; they need support. The foreman's mistake was treating a skilled tradesperson like an apprentice. When you've got competent people, your job is to remove obstacles, not create them. I learned this the hard way when I micromanaged a graphic designer who'd been doing her job longer than I'd been alive. She produced brilliant work... for her next employer.
The Competent but Fragile - These people have the skills but not the confidence. Usually they're new to your organisation or coming back from a career break. They need what I call "scaffolding supervision" – enough structure to feel secure, but not so much that you suffocate their development. The trick is knowing when to step back. Too early and they panic. Too late and they never learn to trust themselves.
The Confident but Incompetent - Oh, these ones. These are the people who confidently do everything wrong. They're not malicious; they're just operating on outdated information or inflated self-assessment. The key here is documented training and clear benchmarks. Not to humiliate them, but to give them a reality check that doesn't destroy their enthusiasm.
What Nobody Tells You About Australian Workplace Culture
Here's something that drives me mad about imported supervision techniques: they assume everyone responds to authority the same way. Australians, generally speaking, have a healthy disrespect for authority that isn't earned. You can't supervise Australians the same way you'd supervise a team in hierarchical cultures.
I once worked with a manager from Singapore who couldn't understand why his Brisbane team kept questioning his decisions. Not disrespectfully, just... questioning them. In his previous role, questioning the supervisor was unthinkable. In Australia, it's Tuesday afternoon.
This isn't about being difficult; it's about engagement. Australian workers want to understand the "why" behind instructions. When you explain the reasoning, compliance actually goes up. When you just issue orders, you get malicious compliance at best.
The "Fair Dinkum" Factor
Authenticity matters more here than in many other places. Australians can spot corporate speak from kilometres away, and they'll disengage the moment they think you're bullshitting them. This doesn't mean you have to be blokey or use slang (please don't if it's not natural). It means being honest about limitations, admitting when you don't know something, and following through on commitments.
I've seen supervision relationships completely transform when a manager admitted they'd made a poor decision. Not just acknowledged it, but genuinely admitted they got it wrong and explained what they'd learned. The team's respect went through the roof.
The Psychology of Delegation (Or: How to Stop Doing Everyone Else's Job)
Most new supervisors are terrible at delegation because they're secretly convinced they can do everything better and faster themselves. Sometimes they're even right. But that's not the point.
Delegation isn't about getting work off your plate – it's about developing your team's capabilities. Every task you handle personally is a missed opportunity for someone else to grow. Yes, it might take longer initially. Yes, they might not do it exactly how you would. That's called learning, not failure.
The 70% Rule
If someone can do a task 70% as well as you can, delegate it. Immediately. The remaining 30% will come with practice, and meanwhile, you're free to focus on work that only you can do. I learned this from a site supervisor who delegated quality checks to trades who'd never done them before. Initially, they missed things. Within three months, they were catching defects he would have missed.
The construction industry is brilliant at this. Apprentices don't start by watching; they start by doing simple tasks badly, then improving. Corporate environments often reverse this – we make people sit through endless training before letting them touch anything important. Result? People who can recite procedures perfectly but fall apart under pressure.
Performance Management: Beyond the Annual Review Circus
Let's be honest: annual performance reviews are about as useful as a chocolate teapot. By the time you're sitting in that meeting, discussing something that happened eight months ago, any meaningful learning opportunity has vanished.
Real performance management happens in micro-moments. It's the two-minute conversation after a meeting where you point out what worked well. It's the text message acknowledging they stayed back to finish a report. It's the informal chat about areas for improvement before they become formal problems.
The "Real Time" Approach
I started doing what I call "performance check-ins" – five-minute conversations every week or two, focused on one specific project or interaction. Not formal sit-downs with documents, just genuine conversations about what's working and what isn't.
The difference is remarkable. People actually implement feedback when it's fresh and relevant. Problems get addressed before they fester. And – this surprised me – people appreciate the attention. Most supervision is so hands-off that workers feel ignored rather than trusted.
Technology and Supervision: Why Your Software Isn't the Solution
Every few months, someone in management discovers a new productivity app that's going to "revolutionise team supervision." Time tracking software, project management platforms, communication tools that promise to streamline everything.
Here's the thing: supervision is fundamentally about human relationships. No app can replace knowing your team well enough to notice when someone's struggling. No platform can substitute for the judgment needed to know when to push and when to step back.
That said, technology can support good supervision practices. I use simple tools to track project progress and celebrate wins. But the technology serves the relationship, not the other way around.
The Notification Trap
Modern supervision software is designed to interrupt. Constant notifications about task completions, deadline reminders, status updates. It turns supervision into a reactive role where you're always responding to pings rather than thinking strategically about your team's development.
I've started batching my supervision technology time. Two dedicated periods per day where I check project platforms and respond to updates. The rest of the time, I'm present with my team, not distracted by notifications about things that rarely need immediate attention.
Building Trust When You're Not the Expert
This is the big one that traditional supervision training completely misses: what do you do when you're supervising people who know more about their job than you do?
It happens constantly. Technical specialists, creative professionals, industry experts – people whose expertise far exceeds their supervisor's knowledge in specific areas. Yet somehow, we pretend supervision means having all the answers.
I supervise a data analyst who understands statistical modeling better than I ever will. I supervise a social media manager who knows platforms I've never heard of. My job isn't to second-guess their technical decisions; it's to ensure their work aligns with broader organisational goals.
Becoming a "Translation" Supervisor
When you can't evaluate the technical quality of work, you focus on outcomes and communication. Can they explain their approach clearly? Do their recommendations make sense in context? Are they meeting deadlines and working well with other teams?
I've found that expert team members actually appreciate supervisors who acknowledge knowledge gaps. It removes the pretense and allows for more honest conversations about challenges and resource needs.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Authority
Nobody wants to talk about this, but supervision requires accepting that sometimes people won't like your decisions. Even good decisions. Even necessary decisions.
I spent years trying to be the "cool" supervisor who everyone loved. Result? Important conversations got avoided, standards slipped, and ironically, respect decreased. People don't need their supervisor to be their mate; they need consistency, fairness, and clear expectations.
Drawing Lines Without Drawing Blood
Authority doesn't mean being aggressive or inflexible. It means being clear about non-negotiables while remaining open to discussion about methods and approaches.
When I finally learned to say "This is the standard we need to meet, but I'm open to suggestions about how we get there," everything changed. People felt heard without feeling like every rule was up for debate.
Moving Forward: What Supervision Actually Looks Like
Real supervision is messier than training courses suggest. It's having difficult conversations about performance while maintaining relationships. It's balancing individual development with team needs. It's making decisions with incomplete information and learning from the inevitable mistakes.
But here's what I've learned after seventeen years: people don't need perfect supervisors. They need present ones. Supervisors who pay attention, provide support when needed, and create space for people to do their best work.
The construction site taught me that supervision isn't about control – it's about creating conditions where good work can happen. Everything else is just paperwork.
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