1. 1 The leadership role of the supervisor The primary role of the supervisor is to ensure that a group of people work together to achieve the goals set by the business. With a tourist information centre, for example, this means ensuring that physical resources (such as brochures) are available, correct and up to date. Since service is so important, staff training is one of the supervisor’s most critical roles. Managing physical and human resources to achieve customer service goals requires planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling. Each of these terms will be described in detail. The frontline manager or supervisor plays a key role in the interface between frontline staff and more senior management. For this reason, effective communication flow is essential — in both directions. Here the supervisor plays a pivotal role.

2. 2 Functions of Management Anyone in a leadership position performs the five functions of Management

3. 3 Planning In order to achieve the goals of your work team, you need to plan a pathway and decide what is needed and how things should be done. Lack of planning will inevitably lead to chaos. In restaurants, the term mis-en-place means preparing for service. If all the tables have been set and the crockery and cutlery stocks have been cleaned and polished, if the garnishes have been prepared and other requirements have been set out carefully on the sideboard, then the staff will find that service will flow smoothly. This is an example of short-term planning. But supervisors also need to plan long-term by looking, for example, at staff requirements for that long weekend several weeks away to make sure that enough trained staff will be on duty. Rostering is just one aspect of long-term planning for the supervisor in a restaurant and they would need to take into account such things as the level of business anticipated, staff requests and labour costs.

4. 4 Organising As a supervisor, you need to allocate duties to individuals. Organisation means ensuring that every task is performed effectively and efficiently. This can involve delegating tasks to people who do not generally do them and taking on some of them yourself. By organising duties in this way, situations in which everyone turns around and says, ‘I thought you were going to do it!’ will be avoided. Organising also involves allocating physical resources. In the case of the teaspoon shortage, you would have to ration them carefully since planning procedures had clearly failed.

5. 5 Staffing A supervisor needs to make sure that there are enough trained staff on duty to provide adequate (or superior) levels of service. Sometimes this involves advertising for staff, interviewing them and selecting the most suitable candidates. The supervisor must also ensure that these people are trained and motivated to achieve team goals.

6. 6 Directing (Leading) This involves giving instructions, or telling and showing people what to do. Supervisors are very important role models and staff will copy their behaviour. Your dealings with customers, in particular, will be closely watched by staff and imitated by them. The way in which instructions are given is important and this will be one of the topics of discussion in the following chapters on motivation and leadership. In the current environment staff expect a coaching style of directing, whereas in earlier times bosses were far more autocratic.

7. 7 Controlling (Monitoring) Supervisors need to check that things are on track. If physical resources are constantly running low, then regular orders need to be updated. If staff are not performing to the required standard, the reasons for this need to be investigated and resolved.

8. 8 As you can see, a supervisor needs to carefully balance these functions. Too much time spent on planning and too little on checking means that the supervisor will never know if the A plans are working. Too little time spent on planning will lead to chaos in the directing phase. Checks conducted in the controlling phase can produce ideas for improving planning, staffing and organising.