Students are a core part of our mission at the University of Minnesota. For many students, the University is their first employer. Supervising undergraduate students requires balancing the need to support and develop them while ensuring that essential tasks are completed. Creating and implementing an onboarding plan will help sustain student enthusiasm and engagement, while also ensuring they can start contributing to the team’s work faster.
When you have to give negative or critical feedback or information to others about their performance, you may be anticipating difficult conversations. Difficult conversations involve you giving, receiving, or discussing critical performance feedback.
The resources were recommended by University of Minnesota student supervisors that participated in the Supervisory Development programming. This list is not comprehensive- there are many, many more resources available at the University of Minnesota geared towards specific student needs. Use this as a starting point to complement other services you know of that support students. For more information on supervisory best practices, visit supervising.umn.edu.
Managing work stress is all about building your capacity to adapt well and bounce back from difficult circumstances. As a supervisor, you can serve as a role model to your team in becoming more resilient and preventing burnout. How? You have the ability to lessen many of work’s greatest stressors for the individuals you supervise.
Supporting staff, faculty and student employees in their professional and career development is part of the responsibility of a supervisor and faculty advising graduate or professional students at the University of Minnesota. Career conversations help supervisors gain insight into an employee’s motivation to guide and support their career development.
A lot of factors must align to enable a person to learn from coaching or any learning or professional development experience.
This page contains questions asked on the topic of Onboarding New Employees both during the webinar and via the Have a Question feature.
Employee engagement drivers are specific conditions that create engagement. Improving these conditions will create a higher level of engagement which leads to increased recruitment andretention, increased job performance, and employees going above and beyond for the good of their colleagues and the organization.
As a supervisor, you know the work of your team best and are well-positioned to make informed decisions about flexible work in consultation and alignment with local campus, college, or unit guidance. This quick guide will help you apply best practices for engaging and managing flexible teams which will help the people you supervise do their best work.
As a supervisor, you should let the nature of your team’s work drive decisions around flexible work arrangements. Then, think about what parts of each individual position’s responsibilities can be flexible. After identifying what flexibility you can offer each employee, use this discussion guide to communicate your flexible work decisions, gather input, set expectations, and address challenges and opportunities together.
University of Minnesota Behavioral Competencies - Foundational Level
As a supervisor, it is important to connect employee engagement with your organizational/unit priorities.
Guide detailing various challenges managers and supervisors may experience.
Managing work stress is all about building your capacity to adapt well and bounce back from difficult circumstances. As a supervisor, you can serve as a role model to your team in becoming more resilient and preventing burnout. How? You have the ability to lessen many of work’s greatest stressors for the individuals you supervise.
Accountability means that there is a consequence (positive or negative) if a person takes or does not take an action.
Delegation is when you empower and entrust your employee to take responsibility for a task or activity. Effective delegation takes commitment and a well thought through approach. You may choose to delegate to improve overall results and/or to help develop an employee’s skills.
These four skills are the most effective, especially when the audience is highly interested in the outcome. Combining these skills increases your chance of success.
Planning for results involves identifying all relevant steps, actions, and considerations needed in order to achieve meaningful, high-quality results.
Groundbreaking discoveries and research, educated students, successful alumni, quality clinical care, better community - these are the results of fulfilling the University’s mission of research, teaching and outreach. The steps described in this guide will allow you approach the work you supervise in a way that most meaningfully contributes to the University’s mission.
Conflict can feel like a competition in which you either win or you lose. However, most of the time, there are solutions that will give everyone something they need. A key to managing conflict is to begin by understanding everyone’s interests, needs, and priorities and then think creatively about mutually beneficial solutions.
When facing a conflict, it is normal to feel angry, frustrated, and stressed out. Managing these negative fee ings allows you to focus on the situation in a productive way and to avoid doing and saying things that make the conflict worse. Reacting out of anger and frustration is not likely to resolve anything.
When a member of your team or department is involved in a conflict at work, your role as a supervisor
is to provide feedback and coaching to help them develop and use effective conflict management
skills. In many cases, you may not be directly involved, but your support will be important in helping
the person manage the situation effectively.
Performance evaluation includes measuring effectiveness in meeting expectations for achieving results as well as how those results are achieved (i.e., behaviors).
Check-ins are regular discussions that happen throughout the year to:
Ongoing check-ins promote progress toward goals by providing opportunities for feedback and support.
Being intentional and clear about how decisions are made helps teams avoid conflict and wasted effort, and improves the quality of team decisions.
Designing the roles and assigning the responsibilities for team members in a way that aligns their individual skills, knowledge and abilities with the work is one of the key steps of building an effective team. Having clear roles and responsibilities and communicating these with one another will help alleviate conflict and improve teamwork and decision-making.
Employee engagement drivers are specific conditions that create engagement. Improving these conditions will create a higher level of engagement which leads to increased recruitment and retention, increased job performance, and employees going above and beyond for the good of their colleagues and the organization.
Coaching is “the process of equipping people with the tools, knowledge, and opportunities they need to develop themselves and become more effective” (David Peterson, PhD, Psychology, University of Minnesota).
Feedback is information communicated for the purpose of helping another person modify their behavior to improve learning and performance.
Even if you are starting with little trust or even some hostility, the foundation for effectively managing a conflict is to build whatever trust you can with the others involved. This may not be easy, especially when you are dealing with difficult behavior from another person, but it is your best path to success.
Conflict at work often stems from multiple sources. Understanding the root causes of a conflict will help you figure out how to manage it more effectively which may lead to solutions that resolve the conflict.
Establishing norms and expectations that foster psychological safety, which is a shared belief that the
team is safe for interpersonal risk taking, allows team members to communicate and coordinate their
efforts effectively, resulting in stronger performance and better decisions.
Effective teams combine skills, knowledge and abilities in ways that result in good decisions and strong performance. Defining a clear purpose and describing team success is critical for building an effective team.
Goals are the most important way to set expectations for an employee that include both key RESULTS of what needs to be accomplished and behaviors, or how the results are accomplished over the next year.
Employee engagement is an ongoing process that consists of three stages: input, discussion, and
action.
Employee Engagement is an ongoing process that consists of three stages: input, discussion and
action.
Employee engagement is the extent to which individuals devote time, energy and effort at work. The highest levels of engagement result from facing meaningful challenges while also having the support, resources, and confidence needed to address those challenges.
When hiring don’t be tempted to rush the final decision. This may save time in the short term, but can lead to problems later if you end up hiring the wrong person. A sense of being rushed can lead to making a decision without fully considering the candidate’s development needs or not allotting time to address concerns that the hiring team has about the candidate.
Every candidate has a unique set of knowledge, skills and abilities, also known as behavioral competencies. Every position requires a specific set of these behavioral competencies. An effective interview allows you to match the candidate’s skill set with the behavioral competencies that the position needs.
Preparing for an interview helps you avoid leaning on your impressions of a candidate, which is commonly known as a “gut decision.” An objective and thorough interview process can help you make a solid hiring decision, which will help decrease unwanted turnover, improve engagement in department priorities and save time and money in the long run.
When in the process of selection and hiring, taking a step back to analyze the needs of the position is an
opportunity for a refreshed, clear view of how the open position can support your department or unit. It will
also help you increase your chances of finding someone who can contribute to your department’s needs and
priorities and will result in increased effectiveness for you, your hire, and your department.
As a supervisor of student employees, you play a big role in developing and supporting them as they grow professionally, personally, socially, and academically. This quick guide outlines steps you can take to make the experience more meaningful for you and your student employee.
Students are a core part of our mission at the University of Minnesota. For many students, the University is their first employer. Supervising undergraduate students requires balancing the need to support and develop them while ensuring that essential tasks are completed. Creating and implementing an onboarding plan will help sustain student enthusiasm and engagement, while also ensuring they can start contributing to the team’s work faster.
After an employee accepts the job and prior to them starting, create a plan to transition them into the role and onto the team. An onboarding plan needs to be built for the specific level and position of the new employee and reflect the unique work environment of the department/college/unit.
Onboarding is a two way street - as a supervisor, you play a primary role in the process. However, the new employee must take responsibility for learning the details of their role and begin to perform their job duties. In addition, encourage new employees to ask questions to learn about their role, co-workers, organizational culture and leverage their strengths.
Even the most detailed and thought-out onboarding plans can fail during the implementation stage if not enough attention and effort is put into connecting the new employee to the organizational culture.
Your success as a supervisor depends on your ability to provide feedback and coaching in ways that support current performance, develop potential, and ensure that people are ready for the roles and assignments you give them. Your approach will be different, depending on where the employee is on the Performance-Potential-Readiness grid.