Essay Sample on Supervising in Organizations: A Challenging Role for Managers

Introduction

Supervision is a critical activity in every organization. Their role is to ensure that the employees work or perform as per the expectations. In some organizations, supervision is highly regarded as a management role that gives one responsibility over others to ensure that the organizational policies are adhered to, while at the same time fulfilling the task of achieving the corporate objectives. From personal experience, being tasked with a role to supervise others, it seemed quite a challenge at first. However, opinions from close friends and acquaintances encouraged me to accept and keep the job since they argued that being a supervisor was quite exciting. As such, this paper discusses the two mixed reactions regarding supervision from personal experience as well as other people's opinions to provide a clear understanding of the concept of supervision from the two standpoints.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Why Supervision is Challenging

Personally, supervision is quite challenging. The opinion is not from assumptions, but rather from past experiences. Many articles reveal that supervision is associated with stress, where such stress results from balancing one's issues with managing a team of employees (Supervision Today, 42). Similarly, the failure of employees to accomplish delegated duties reflects the incompetence of supervision. As such, the entire blame is leveled towards the supervisor. Thus, this makes the mission of taking responsibility for a whole group entirely stressful. Consequently, the transition period from being a worker to being a supervisor is quite challenging because one is presented with new duties. The pressure to ensure high performance and the responsibility of making sure that every employee remains on top form it tends to be quite challenging.

Supervision is also challenging when it comes to team building (Supervision Today,42). From experience, many employees tend to have rifts and grudges amongst themselves. Personal interests and feelings are additionally quite common. The supervisor has to ensure that the organization runs smoothly by promoting teamwork. However, building a team from such cases is often difficult, and some may regard the supervisor as 'picking sides,' which might not be the case. The team may, therefore, struggle to work, thus affecting the supervisor's professionalism.

Why Supervision is Interesting

On the other hand, supervision can also be quite interesting. From other people's opinions as well as a personal take, it is because it gives one a sense of pride, self-belief, and respect. The role of the supervisor implies that one has been elevated on a higher management rank from the rest. Thus, it comes with a degree of recognition that the top management has acknowledged one's ability to lead others. Even though it builds one's resume, the respect and pride it drags along make it interesting at the end. Consequently, supervision becomes interesting when it comes to authority (Nienaber et al.,49). It means one not only has the responsibility of a particular group but also the power to assign them duties and control them at the workplace. Observing people heed one's authority elicits a lot of enjoyment, making supervision more intriguing. Table 1 below presents a list of the two summarized opinions between why supervision is challenging and interesting.

Conclusion

Supervision depends on the feelings and opinions of the individual, assuming the role. From causing stress and difficulties in team building to eliciting pride and respect, supervision, therefore, has mixed reactions. Personally, it is quite more challenging than interesting, an opinion that is based on my experience.

Works Cited

Nienaber, Ann-Marie, et al. "A Qualitative Meta-Analysis of Trust in Supervisor-Subordinate Relationships." Journal of Managerial Psychology, vol. 30, no. 5 June 2015, pp. 507-534., doi:10.1108/jmp-06-2013-0187.

Supervision Today 9th Edition, Chapter Two. Cited from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tK6g9yPVhgMrWE6mBFm0TWJghkKod6iN/view?usp=sharing