Why Supervisors Need Skills, Not Just Theories
Leading without proficiency will lead to frustration and failure.
By Patrick Graupp 

A colleague of mine in Texas, Mark Sessumes, made an insightful comment early in our Training Within Industry (TWI) reintroduction into the U.S.:  “TWI puts the professionalism back into the supervisory position.”

Everywhere I go (outside of Japan, of course) the most common complaint I hear is that first-line supervisors are merely firefighters dealing with each “crisis of the moment.” This tells me that in spite of all of our efforts to rationalize work and create sustainable quality and improvement strategies, we are not achieving our goals and, more often than not, making decisions and taking actions that do not support our goals.

What’s missing?

In one of the first TWI classes I taught outside of Sanyo in Fargo, N.D., one supervisor stood up at the end of a session, held his 4-Step pocket card high above his head, and declared loudly, “THIS, I can use!” He told me later what he meant was that he had attended many seminars on lean and continuous improvement but did not know how to apply the theories to his actual work. The TWI method, on the other hand, was something that could help him right away.

Theories, like strategies, are important. But if we don’t possess the skills to execute them, we’re only creating frustration and disappointment for others and ourselves. In our zeal to fix everything, we try to let our brains do all the work when in fact we must rely on our hands to really get things done. But skills take time and practice to learn. No one became a great athlete, a talented musician, or a skillful surgeon overnight. Yet we expect our supervisors to do just that.

We commonly promote our most skillful operator to the supervisor of his or her area. Their knowledge of the work is needed to be truly successful leading the team, so this is not necessarily a mistake. Where we go wrong is in not recognizing that a different set of skills will be needed in the supervisory role. Or we assume that our good operators will somehow have these supervisory skills even though they have never supervised before. Even when supervisors have been at it for some time, many years perhaps, they can still lack these skills.

Doctors, lawyers, engineers, actors, journalists, and all sorts of other professionals get good training on how to ply their crafts. Who would want an untrained mechanic to work on their car or just any person off the street to operate on them? We should feel the same way about the supervisors who are vital parts of our management teams. They are “professionals” and must learn to be proficient at certain skills that define their important role and contribute to making our businesses successful.

Many years ago I had a young man come into one of my classes who had just been made the supervisor of the warehouse. He had been told that in order to control the unruly and much older workers there, he would have to be a mean “you know what.” But that didn’t feel right to him, and he cringed at having to behave in such an angry and unpleasant manner.

When the course was over, he told me how relieved he was to find out that, after all, his gut instinct had been right: You should treat people with dignity, and there are better leadership methods we can learn and use to get good results. But knowing there is a better way isn’t enough. These proven skills still have to be learned. In fact, one of the most common remarks we hear at our TWI classes is, “Why didn’t you teach me this 20 years ago?”

By definition, skills are things that we are proficient at. What is it, then, that supervisors need to be proficient at? The Five Needs Model from the original TWI sessions written in the 1940s still holds true today and pinpoints three skills all good supervisors possess: instructing, leading, and improving methods. These are not passive theories but real actions that supervisors can use to achieve consistently good results from the work being done. Knowledge is important, too. The other two needs are “knowledge of work” and “knowledge of responsibilities.”

And how can we best learn a skill? Through practice and repetition. By defining a 4-Step Method for each of these skills, we can practice and become proficient in each. That is what TWI is all about.

A commonly heard saying is: “Actions speak louder than words.” While words may do a very good job of conveying the ideas and theories in our heads, when we apply our skills toward actions that move us positively toward our goals, then we are truly fulfilling our responsibilities as supervisors. When we do that, we have indeed become “professionals” in the field of supervision.

Patrick Graupp worked for Sanyo Electric Co. for 20 years, where he taught TWI around the globe. Since 2002, working in conjunction with the TWI Institute, he has been reintroducing TWI into the United States in its original format as maintained by the Japanese for more than five decades. He is a regular contributor to TWI News.