Why Most Supervisory Requirements Are Complete Rubbish (And the Three That Actually Matter)

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I was sitting in my fourth mandatory "supervisor certification" session this year when it hit me like a tradesman's ute doing a U-turn on the Pacific Highway: we've got this whole supervisory requirements thing completely backwards.

The bloke next to me - let's call him Dave because that's actually his name - was furiously scribbling notes about "active listening techniques" and "performance management frameworks." Meanwhile, his own team back at the depot was probably wondering where the hell their supervisor had disappeared to for two days. Again.

See, here's what nobody wants to tell you about supervisory requirements: 87% of them are designed by people who've never actually supervised anyone more challenging than their neighbour's cat.

The Problem With Box-Ticking Requirements

Most organisations treat supervisory requirements like they're collecting Pokemon cards. Gotta catch 'em all! Communication skills workshop? Tick. Conflict resolution seminar? Tick. Leadership fundamentals course? Double tick with a gold star.

But here's the thing that keeps me awake at night (apart from my neighbour's bloody leaf blower): none of these requirements actually prepare you for the moment when Johnno from accounts decides he's not coming back from lunch because his missus found out about the Christmas party incident.

Real supervision isn't about having the right certificates hanging on your wall. It's about being the person your team calls when the proverbial hits the fan. And trust me, after fifteen years of watching supervisors rise and fall faster than house prices in Sydney, I can tell you exactly what separates the legends from the liability claims.

I remember back in '08 when the GFC hit and everyone was running around like headless chooks. The supervisors who survived weren't the ones with the most impressive training records. They were the ones who could look their teams in the eye and say, "Right, here's what we're going to do" without breaking out in hives.

The Three Requirements That Actually Matter

Forget everything you've been told about supervisory requirements. Here are the only three that matter:

First: You need to genuinely give a damn about your people. Not in a corporate-mandated, team-building-exercise kind of way. In a real, "I'm going to fight for your pay rise even though HR thinks you're a pain in the arse" kind of way.

This isn't something you can learn from a comprehensive training program - though good programs certainly help reinforce it. It's either in you or it isn't. And if it isn't, do everyone a favour and stay in your current role.

Second: You need the ability to make decisions when you don't have all the information. Most supervisory training courses will tell you to "gather all relevant data before proceeding." Absolute bollocks. In real life, you've got about thirty seconds to decide whether to evacuate the building or call the fire department when someone smells smoke.

The best supervisors I've worked with - and I'm thinking particularly of Sarah who ran the Brisbane office before she moved to Canberra - they had this knack for making the right call based on 40% information and 60% gut instinct. You can't train gut instinct. You can only recognise it and trust it.

Third: You need to be comfortable being disliked by approximately 23% of people at any given time. This one really separates the wheat from the chaff. Too many new supervisors want to be everyone's mate. They'll bend over backwards to avoid conflict, even when conflict is exactly what's needed.

I learned this the hard way when I first started supervising. Spent six months trying to be the "cool boss" who never said no to anything. Result? Productivity dropped, standards slipped, and the good workers started looking for other jobs because they were sick of carrying the deadweight.

The Training Industrial Complex

Now, I'm not saying all supervisory training is useless. Some of it's bloody brilliant. The problem is distinguishing between training that actually helps and training that just looks good on paper.

Most workplace training events these days are designed by committee. You get a bit of psychology, a dash of management theory, some role-playing exercises that make everyone feel awkward, and a certificate at the end that proves... what exactly?

Meanwhile, the best supervisory education I ever received was watching old Frank run the warehouse for twenty-three years. Never did a leadership course in his life, but he could spot a problem employee from across the loading dock and knew exactly how to handle them. His secret? He treated everyone like adults until they proved otherwise.

Frank's approach wouldn't pass any modern HR audit, but his team had the lowest turnover rate in the company and consistently hit their targets. When he retired, they replaced him with someone who had all the right qualifications and half the effectiveness.

What Companies Should Actually Require

If I were designing supervisory requirements from scratch - and several Melbourne companies have actually asked me to do exactly that - here's what I'd focus on:

Scenario-based learning: Forget theoretical frameworks. Put potential supervisors in realistic situations with real consequences. Make them handle a sexual harassment complaint. Make them fire someone. Make them deal with a workplace injury when the safety officer is on holiday.

Mentorship programs: Pair new supervisors with experienced ones who've actually done the job successfully. Not the ones with the best training records, but the ones whose teams would follow them into a burning building. There's a difference.

Regular reality checks: Most supervisory requirements are front-loaded. You do the training, get the qualification, and off you go. But supervision is like learning to drive - the real education starts after you get your licence.

Smart companies - and I'm thinking of places like Bunnings and Flight Centre - they invest in ongoing development that's based on actual performance, not just course completion certificates.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Natural Ability

Here's something that'll make the training providers uncomfortable: some people are just naturally good at supervising, and others aren't. All the requirements in the world won't turn someone who fundamentally doesn't understand people into an effective supervisor.

I've seen brilliant individual contributors get promoted to supervisory roles because they ticked all the right boxes, only to make everyone's life miserable. Meanwhile, some of the best supervisors I know barely scraped through high school but have this intuitive understanding of how to motivate people.

This doesn't mean we should abandon training altogether. But it does mean we need to be more honest about what training can and can't achieve.

The most effective supervisory development advice I've encountered focuses on enhancing natural abilities rather than trying to create them from scratch. It's the difference between teaching someone to swim faster versus teaching them to swim at all.

The Future of Supervisory Requirements

The workplace is changing faster than a Tasmanian weather pattern. Remote work, gig economy workers, multi-generational teams - the old supervisory playbook is about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

Yet most supervisory requirements are still based on models developed when everyone worked in the same building and retirement meant a gold watch at sixty-five. We're training supervisors for a world that no longer exists.

The future belongs to supervisors who can adapt quickly, communicate across multiple platforms, and manage teams they might never meet in person. But you won't learn that from a traditional supervision course.

The companies that get this right are already pulling ahead. They're focusing on flexibility, emotional intelligence, and digital literacy as core supervisory requirements. They're less concerned with whether someone can recite the five stages of team development and more interested in whether they can keep a remote team engaged and productive.

My Final Word

After all these years, here's what I've learned: the best supervisors aren't the ones who meet all the requirements on paper. They're the ones who understand that supervision is fundamentally about human relationships, and relationships can't be reduced to a checklist.

So yes, by all means, get your supervisory qualifications. Attend the workshops. Collect your certificates. But don't mistake the map for the territory.

The real requirement for effective supervision? Give a damn about your people and have the courage to make tough decisions. Everything else is just paperwork.

And if you think that's too simplistic, you've probably never had to tell someone their job's being made redundant two weeks before Christmas. Trust me, all those theoretical frameworks go out the window pretty bloody quickly.

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