Supervision

Sor some years now, management methods that have proven their worth in the business world have increasingly found their way into non-profit organizations. Something similar is happening in the opposite direction. Due to the changes in working relationships, companies are increasingly using methods that were originally at home in the non-profit sector. One of these is supervision. Over the last 30 to 40 years, it has developed into the method used by social pedagogues and therapists to reflect on their professional activities and to try to ensure the quality of their work.

Supervision as an offer

The possibility of supervision is becoming attractive - for the following reason: For a long time, in the business world, companies were largely equated with their organisational charts or the hierarchical structures they reflected. It was overlooked that the

School of self-reflection

energy of a company rests neither in its structures nor in its individual employees. Rather, it lies in the working and communication relationships that connect the employees with each other and the company system with its external world.

In the past decade, most companies have recognized this. For this reason, they have promoted, among other things, team and project work that transcends departmental boundaries and hierarchical levels. The function of managers has also been redefined. Today, their core task is widely understood to be to manage the relations

• to their employees, 
• between their employees and
• to the other divisions

in such a way that cooperation is as effective as possible. In addition, they should ensure that the competence of their employees develops in such a way that they (can) still make their contribution to achieving the division's and company's goals when the requirements change massively.

People "tick" differently than machines

Many managers in business enterprises find this difficult. Among other things, because they often have a different view of people than those who work in the social sector. Educators and therapists take it for granted that every person's thoughts and actions reflect their history and experiences. Therefore, it is "normal" for them that people respond differently to the same challenges and stimuli. Many managers lack such a view of human nature. Therefore, they often do not understand why employees react differently to the same behavior from them. In addition, many managers do not understand their own thoughts and actions as a result of their history and the social context in which they are embedded. As a result, they are often unaware that they consistently exhibit the same patterns of behavior when dealing with people. And they understand even less why this is so. So they don't see any starting point to change certain behavioral patterns of their own - for example, to improve communication with their employees.

Managers also develop

Closely related to this is the fact that many managers transfer their understanding of development, which is influenced by technology or business administration, to people. The German language already signals that there is a difference here: machines are developed; people, on the other hand, develop.

Because they are not aware of this difference, some managers sometimes appear to outsiders like gardeners pulling at blades of grass to make it grow faster. That is, they design support measures for their employees and overlook the fact that their efforts are in vain if

• the persons concerned are not ready to develop, and
• they do not give them enough time to "grow".

Or they decide to restructure and overlook the fact that they are changing something but not developing anything - neither people nor relationships.

Many managers lack not only the know-how but also the necessary skills to develop people and the relationships between them.

This is why they are overwhelmed when companies demand that they be coaches for their employees. Although this requirement for managers is often formulated today, it is rarely implemented in everyday business and management - for many reasons.

And only very rarely are managers offered the opportunity to reflect on their leadership behaviour in the course of their work, for example in the context of supervision, in order to develop alternative courses of action.

Leadership problems are mostly taboo

But this would make sense. Also because in many companies there is still a culture in which it is possible for a manager to doubt among colleagues whether a technical or business decision was the right one. However, it is almost taboo for a manager to think about whether, for example, a conflict in the cooperation could be due to the fact that he or she misinterprets his or her leadership role because of his or her biography. For most companies, it is not possible to question oneself in this way without losing face.

But this would be necessary. How are managers supposed to change their self-image and their leadership behaviour if this cannot be addressed in everyday business? And how are they supposed to (be able to) motivate their employees to question and change their thinking or behavioural habits if they themselves are not willing and able to do so? Accordingly, it would be important to create forums in the companies where the managers reflect together on their leadership behavior, based on concrete challenges that they face in their daily work.

This is exactly what happens in supervision. The managers of a company meet at regular intervals, for example every six to eight weeks, for a supervision day. Together with their colleagues, they analyse their approach and behaviour in relation to specific tasks and challenges that they have faced in the past weeks in their everyday management work. Among other things, "What went well, what not so well?", "What were the causes of this?" and "What do we learn from this?" are worked out before it is finally agreed: What will we do differently in the future? This is all done under the guidance of an external consultant - i.e. a person who is not integrated into the company system.

This is important because not only every person, but also every system has blind spots. That is, its (fellow) members have common patterns of thought and behavior that they do not perceive. Therefore, from time to time

Everyone has blind spots

an external party holds up a mirror to the corporate system so that it recognizes its blind spots. Only then can they be worked on

Create forums for exchange of experience

The advantage of such regular supervision sessions for a company is: its executives have a forum where they can promptly discuss current problems in everyday management and learn from and with colleagues. And a culture gradually develops in the company in which (individual) leadership problems can also be discussed and are not tabooed, so that the leadership competence of the management team continues to increase.

Regular supervision meetings are particularly fruitful and useful when the members of an organization are faced with the challenge of showing different patterns of thinking and behavior in the future - for example, because the market has changed. Or because the company has restructured and formulated a new strategy. Or because the introduction of new technologies has changed working relationships and content. In all these cases, a partial re-learning or new learning is necessary not only for the employees but also for the managers. In other words, they have to abandon familiar patterns of thought and behavior and instead develop new routines of thought and behavior. Almost everyone finds this difficult - not only because they are often unaware of their thinking and behavioral routines, but also because these routines give them a sense of security. So they need process-accompanying support

Help for young managers

The same applies when young employees of a company take on a management function for the first time. Even then, it is advisable to create a forum where they can promptly exchange ideas with colleagues who are in a similar situation about current problems in day-to-day management - not only because of their still existing behavioral insecurity. In addition: Due to their inexperience, young managers are often not yet able to assess when problems arise, for example in employee management: What are the causes? Is it because of my behavior that the employees are "rebelling"? Or are the problems situational? That is, are the employees opposing, for example, because they are losing certain privileges as part of a restructuring? The consequence: The young managers misinterpret the situation and draw the wrong conclusions.

Increasingly, however, high-performance organisations are using supervision not only as a temporary development tool. They offer their management

Talking openly among colleagues

Instead, we give our managers the opportunity to reflect on their leadership behavior in regular supervision sessions - among other things, because they have recognized that their leadership behavior is not the same as that of their colleagues: Our corporate environment is changing so rapidly that our managers are actually constantly faced with the challenge of rethinking their leadership behavior. They have also recognized: If our managers regularly talk about and reflect on their leadership behavior among their colleagues, this also contributes to the development of a common leadership culture in our organization.