So you just got that promotion and now you are supervising colleagues who are supervisors themselves. What changes do you need to make in order to be successful? I believe there are indeed changes to make, and in my experience they fall into the following categories:

Letting go

Staying in touch

Raising your focus

Lets discuss each of these points in turn.

Letting Go

When you are supervising supervisors, you need to recognize that they need space to make their own decisions and learn from their own mistakes. Of course you need to ensure that they dont make disastrous or damaging mistakes that will hurt your company or division, so the challenge here is to review those critical issues and decisions while still empowering your team to get on with day to day work.

It is helpful to let your team know the types of areas that you want to be informed about promptly, and those areas where you dont need to get involved. You may want to start by reviewing the official delegation of authority guidelines that exist in your organization and ensuring you and your team members are on the same page as to how these will work.

In addition to any formal requirements that may exist, you probably want to be informed of the following right away: recordable injuries, reportable environmental incidents, new lawsuits or significant developments in an ongoing legal issue; significant customer, product or quality issues; significant supply delays; or high-impact employee issues (such as a sexual harassment incident).

If and when you are informed by one of your team of such an incident, you need to resist the temptation to take control of it; however, you should ensure that the person who is managing it is consulting with the proper resources and treating the issue with appropriate consideration of the risks involved. You may want to offer additional resources, whether budgetary or personnel, to help. You should agree with your team member as to when and how the issue will be communicated upward to higher level management and to other parts of the organization. Overall, though, you want to get out of the way of those supervisors who work for you – your role is to let them learn and grow and prepare them for higher level positions.

Staying In Touch

You do need to stay in touch on many fronts though, and the techniques you may want to employ are different than those you used when you were managing at a lower level. Note, however, that while much of your information is going to come to you from your direct reports, you dont want to rely exclusively on that information. Here are some techniques you may want to consider:

Scorecards – Consider setting up monthly scorecards for key performance indicators for which your team is accountable. You may also want to set up a schedule for regular updates on longer term projects and goals.

Colleague communication sessions – You may want to take the opportunity to periodically address the organization for providing updates on overall company or functional results or direction. Pay close attention to the questions asked, as these may provide insight into hot spots or general sentiment. If your culture is such that people wont ask questions in an open forum, consider some process by which anonymous questions can be submitted.

Obtain performance feedback on supervisors from people in their teams – Again, you may need to have a process for this so that you can get honest feedback. In addition, you need to recognize that even great supervisors may garner some negative comments, especially where they have had to handle disgruntled employees. However, you will gain a more complete picture of the environment that exists, and this is crucial for your understanding of your team members performance.

Get out there and talk to people – Find those opportunities to get out into the field and see what colleagues want to talk about. Good vehicles for impromptu conversations include safety tours, periodic visits to locations outside your home location, downtime during trips or customer visits, functional events such as celebration dinners, and any other occasions where a wider than usual swath of people will be present.

Surveys – Consider doing some kind of anonymous colleague satisfaction survey. These can be especially useful if done on an annual basis so that trends can be observed.

Raising Your Focus

At the new higher level, you need to increase your focus on what is going on across the organization and with the management team in your company. These developments will ultimately affect you and your organization, and your team will be looking to you to interpret and anticipate such developments.

You need to manage your calendar in order to devote more time to meeting with peers and the management team so that you are in the know on what is coming, and so that you can communicate to them about higher level developments in your own organization. You may want to attend some outside conferences on topics of longer range or broader interest. I suggest you reassess your reading list to ensure it is consistent with your higher level focus. Make sure you are on the distribution list for key documents both inside and outside your organization.

Regardless of which function you are in, get educated on your companys key customers, products, raw materials, manufacturing locations and competitors. Make sure you are familiar with company results, strategies and goals and can link them with those of your own function or group. Familiarize yourself with the key people in the organization whom you may not already know, and proactively seek to meet thought leaders and talent prospects throughout the organization.

Assess your external focus: Are you spending enough time with customers, suppliers, OEMs, financiers or the community? Even if so, you may need to establish some new contacts at higher levels with these stakeholders.

By letting go of the details yet staying in touch with the overall organization, and raising your focus to the bigger picture, you will position yourself for success as a manager of managers!

Sara Lefcourt of Lefcourt Consulting LLC specializes in helping companies to improve profits, reduce risk and step up their operations. Her experience includes many years in marketing, sales and procurement, first for Exxon and then at Infineum, where she was vice president, supply. E-mail her atsaralefcourt@gmail.com or phone (908) 400-5210.