How To Be A Super Front Line Supervisor of 4 to 10 Human Beings

By Frederick DeLisle

I conceived this book over a number of years incorporating my experiences as a military officer, VP of a Japanese manufacturing company, Head Instructor at a famous Japanese business school and as a University Lecturer. You will find numerous stories such as Fantastically Wonderful Chuck a retired Air Force Pilot, Indian Annie and Peppie a world class leader who is paid $8.00 per hour.
There are included 30 Cardinal Rules for small unit managers and a sample counciling form. See what Dick has to say about his supervisor and how you can avoid such and go to the work site of a Road Crew and wittness how this leader handles the situation.
Learn how to assign work and how to figure out almost any problem. See how to welcome problems rather than sweeping them under the rug.
This is a great book and it will surely help you to be a Super Supervisor of 4 to 10 people or even a thousand.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frederick DeLisle
• Release date: Jul 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476304571

Frederick DeLisle

I am a retired US Army Colonel with 36 years of service. I have worked for two different Japanese companies, in my retirement, at high levels of management. Currently I am enjoying traveling around the US and Asia.

Book preview

HOW TO BE A SUPER FRONT LINE SUPERVISOR OF 4 TO 10 HUMAN BEINGS

By

Col (R) Fred DeLisle

-

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2002 by Fred DeLisle

Published by Fred DeLisle

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Table of Contents

CONCEPT

INTRODUCTION: What this book is about. What this book is not about.

Chapter 1 HOW TO DISCOVER YOURSELF:

Chuck and his story, What it means to be supervisor, Professionalism, Indian Annie, 16 x 4 self-evaluations, The Dick and Fujimori story’s.

Chapter 2 HOW TO HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD:

Application, Principles of Leadership, The road crew Story and whistle while you work.

Chapter 3 HOW TO FIGURE THINGS OUT:

Figuring out people, John's story, Nipping it in the bud, Awards, Assigning work, Important and Urgent work, Walter tells all, Negotiations and Drugs, alcohol and sex.

Chapter 4 HOW TO TALK TURKEY:

Weddings, wakes and funerals, Talking turkey, Counseling, Evaluations and the newly promoted supervisor.

Chapter 5 HOW TO LAY IT ON THE LINE:

Communications 101, the meeting on Sunday stories, How to Conduct a meeting, Penetration, get to know Smith and Reporting.

Chapter 6 HOW TO USE OBJECTIVES TO BE THE GREATEST COACH IN HE WORLD.

Setting objectives and the New York story.

CHAPTER 7 HOW TO USE AUTHORITY AND MAKE DECISIONS:

Authority, Decision making (1) matrix (2) Formal Study, (3) Six step problem solving and (4) Sengi sei.

CHAPTER 8 HOW TO DEVELOP A RELATIONSHIP OF TRUST:

Relationship of trust, Points of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, The squeeze play stories one and two

CHAPTER 9 HOW TO DISCOVER THE PROBLEM:

Asking the right question, The postage stamp story and Mr. Smith's businesses trip.

CHAPTER 10 HOW TO CONDUCT TRAINING:

Collective, Individual and Concurrent training, Jeff's Story and Peppi says.

CHAPTER 11 HOW TO PLAY WIN-WIN:

Playing win-win, The tool box, Expectations, Peppi's Story, Confidence, Bobs story, King AND QUEEN of business (customer) And the work force of the future.

Appendix A Cardinal Rules

Appendix B Sample Counseling Record

CONCEPT

The concept for this book evolved over a period of several years. As a Soldier, I always found it interesting that our training rarely got beyond Squad level - a Squad being composed of two five-man teams. Also because of the high turnover rates in the military nearly all the training effort was directed at the individual or targeted at the Squad.

After leaving the service I worked as an instructor for a renowned Japanese Leadership and Management School, which is known affectionately by the Japanese as Hell Camp. At that school great emphasis was placed on training of the individual and the small work unit. This was quite similar to my military experience; however, the rationale was somewhat different due to the fact that the Japanese usually have a low turnover rate. In their case,it was rapid growth of industry and bringing on board new employees that dictated the level of training.

This was followed by eight or nine years working in industry at the Vice Presidents level. Here I observed that more than 50% or perhaps as much as 80% of our training funds were being spent on Executive Training, yet our weaknesses were at the work crew level.

Currently, I am teaching at a local University and my students have substantiated that the person needing the most help in both training and problem solving techniques is the Front Line Supervisor, who is in charge of the small work unit.

Consequently, I have incorporated my military, Japanese, industrial and teaching experiences into this manuscript which is specifically for the Front Line Supervisor. I have borrowed some format ideas from Col (R) Dandridge(Mike) Malone's book, Small Unit Leadership, Presidio Press 1983 and statistical data from an excellent book by T. J. Larkin, Communicating Change,

McGraw Hill, 1994. I have credited them and others where their ideas or concepts were useful.

I read two or three books a week as my normal literary diet and I may have filched some ideas from other, if I did so it was accidental and I apologize.

INTRODUCTION

WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT. This little book is about how to be a SUPER Supervisor of from four to ten people (human beings not machines). Why this number? Why not write a book about how to run a company with thousands of employees? The simple answer is that this is where the need exists and this is the number of people most supervisors have under their wing. In fact there is significant research proving that ten people are the maximum number that anybody can effectively supervise. Some say that ten is too many and that the proper number is eight, but I am prepared to stick with ten. The U.S. Military called this the span of control or just as far as anyone can control anything, be it people or organizations (branches, divisions, etc.) One researcher has established what he calls the rule of ten. This rule says that if you have more than ten people in a group, ten groups in a division and ten divisions in a company you must then rely on very formal rules.

This is not what our supervisor is about. Our supervisor is about face to face, down and dirty, day to day work with a small group of people. You won't find any references to touchy/felly or the basic goodness of people in these pages.You will meet Chuck a WWII Fighter Pilot, Indian Annie, murdered someone when she was 16, in and out of prison ever sense, Peppi a hard working Mexican immigrant who could help our politicians decide on policy, and other less colorful personalities. What you will find are real people doing real things. Originally, I tried to work in some new concepts (they are not really new only new words) such as paradigm swings, but some of the people whose stories are in these chapters told me that the only thing that swings around here is the shovel. I also want to include empowering people a new term for delegating, but was once again told that if I wanted power, I should go to the gym (It sneaks in now and then in spite of the warnings I received).

If there are 95,000,000 workers in America then this book is about 80,000,000,who are the heart and soul of America. These people smoke, chew, use snuff and drink beer. They love Johnny Cash and Garth, apple pie, and the American Flag. When necessary, they are the ones who will defend the Flag. This is a take no prisoners book for them.

This book is about how to handle a variety of situations that pop up almost daily for the Front Line Supervisor.Problems which he or she may be the only one who knows anything about and the only one who can offer a solution. Upper and middle management may have visions or bold policy statements which they believe illuminate problems and in truth they are helpful at a certain level in the organization, but only the Front Line Supervisor can get at the problem on the shop floor. This is the guy or gal who has the Bear by the tail day in and day out.

I want to help this person, whom I am calling a Front Line Supervisor, to get the Bear to eat out of a dish rather than eat him or her.

To assist the Front Line Supervisor, there are numerous HOW TOs throughout these pages and more than three dozen specific examples of ways to get the job done better. There is a chapter on self-evaluation and a chapter on using the ten Principles of Leadership at work and at home. Woven in the fabric of this manuscript are more than thirty CARDINAL RULES, which if the Front Line Supervisor obeys will insure success.

There are clues in this book for just about everyone, because just about everyone has in their life this group of four to ten human beings that they must deal with if they want to survive and not go crazy. Even I would suggest the President of the United States has a small personal staff for which he is the Front Line Supervisor.

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT TRUTH. When I mention truth I suppose most people will say, but isn't that what all books are about? The answer is NO.

At least the NO answer applies to most books about management because these books assume the employee is neutral. That workers have no feelings, no emotions and no problems. They are just little angles (some are) or simply pegs to be stuck in holes or discarded if you are reading about Re-engineering the company. Nothing could be further from the truth and as we will see it is these workers and their Front Line Supervisors who make or break any enterprise.

WHAT THIS BOOK IS NOT ABOUT. This little book is not about self-directed teams although at times it will appear that such is the case and it is not about Managing in 60 seconds or 60 minutes. Being a Front Line Supervisor is a life sentence! You will not find the key to stock market manipulation nor how to conduct big mergers, but you may find the key to the bottom line. If you believe, as I do, that every penny a company makes, they make at the loading dock then you will know where the key to Wall Street is located and want to read this book. If you happen to be a CEO/COO of a large corporation this book will not tell you about playing the margin, but it will tell you about what is going on just outside your office door (somebody out there hates you).

Finally, this little book offers an opportunity for all Front Line Supervisors to . . . GO SUPER . . . just like Olympic Champions . . . GO GOLD . . . if you employ the techniques in this book you will become a Super (read Gold) Front Line Supervisor. Go for it!

CHAPTER ONE

HOW TO KNOW YOURSELF

"There is so much the learn,

But I have nothing to teach you."

Yasuei Sensei - Japanese Leadership School

HOW TO: Improve your morale, make others feel good, take a complete inventory of your leadership traits and learn what it means to be a SUPER Front Line Supervisor.

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BECAUSE YOU ARE HUMAN

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Are you one of those humans who skip over the introduction to a book, jumping straight into the first chapter? If you are, please go back and read them before continuing - you will not be able to comprehend this book unless you do.

The World is loaded with smelly, grubby, mean animal behaving in rat like fashion. They are always clinging to each other in crowded places. They are mean tempered, biting, and scratching each other as well as anything that gets in their way. This nastiness has been their key to survival. They are all called humans! This is the raw cloth from which we must make the SUPER Front Line Supervisor.

In our daily lives there are many opportunities for learning, but most of us do not grasp them, rather we continue our mindless journey bumping, kicking and scratching. In fact, if the experience happens to be negative, we prefer to get it out of our memory bank immediately and in so doing miss many great opportunities to further our knowledge. This is because we are human - the survivors. We have many faults, one of which is that we don't want to admit that we have any faults.

The next time that someone does something you don't like or indicates that they don't like something that you have done, instead of hissing at them and saying to yourself screw em why don't you look at the situation critically and see if there is something to be learned. It is only by improving ourselves on a daily basis that we can become more than simple survivors. If we try, we can become that SUPER Front Line Supervisor that we want to be and that the Company wants us to be.

This may sound familiar if you have been exposed to Mr. Deming's ideas regarding Quality Management. Mr. Deming says it nicer as he implores us to improve the process daily (Now largely expressed as a Lean Six sigma idea). I'm saying improve yourself and the process will follow.

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FANTASTICALLY WONDERFUL

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I am going to provide you with an idea, right up front, so that you don't have to read this entire book before you start to become that SUPER Front Line Supervisor. I guarantee this will change you and it will change the people around you. The beauty of this technique is that it is so simple anyone can do it, starting now.

How are you doing? or How are you feeling today? are two of the most common greetings in America. On the telephone they immediately follow, Hello.

This is one side of what is really a throw away standard expression which has an expected response. It is the response that I want to tell you about. What exactly is it that the person who asks How are you feeling? expects to hear from you? I guarantee you they expect to hear something bad. Oh, Christ I forgot to pay the water bill and they turned the dammed water off or something similar. Even better, they would like to hear that you have cancer and the doctor has given you two weeks to live. Please think about this for just a moment. When you ask this same question the cheeriest answer you are likely to receive is, Oh, everything is O.K. or can't complain." It doesn't get any better. I want you to change this in a very positive way. Here is what I want you to try.

The next time and every time after you read this, when someone asks you How are you doing? I want you to respond I am fantastically wonderful.

This response is going to take them by surprise because they are expecting something negative and to tell the truth, we are trying to tell the truth in this book, they may not like this kind of an answer - at least at first. One lady I encouraged to do this said that she lost some friends because they didn't want to hear this response. I urged her to continue because she didn't really lose any friends she just lost some negative people. Soon she had more positive friends than she ever imagined was possible when she was in her negative mode. Try it now, I am fantastically wonderful. Doesn't that feel good? I promise you, if you keep this up you will soon begin to believe it yourself and you will feel fantastically wonderful.

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CHUCK'S STORY

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Confession it is said is good for the soul; therefore, I need to share with you where and from whom I stole this idea. It was a friend, a retired Air Force Fighter Pilot, who lived in Arizona and was dying from cancer. The important thing is that he knew he was dying and in the end pulled the plug himself. No matter how bad he felt, he was always cheerful and when you asked him. Chuck, how are you feeling? he always answered fantastically wonderful. When I first encountered this guy and learned that he was dying and that he knew he was dying I couldn't believe his response fantastically wonderful." One day I