What Does it Mean to be a Supervisor?
This seminar will facilitate supervisors in understanding their roles as supervisor with respect to corporate objectives and with respect to employees reporting to them. The supervisors will identify expectations of supervisors, roles required of a supervisor, characteristics of good and poor supervision. They will begin to assess their own strengths and weaknesses as a supervisor. They will set individual goals for themselves as supervisors.
Back to Information for Supervisors, Managers, and HR Personnel
Dealing with Difficult Employees
You were promoted into management because you are an excellent employee and have good technical skills. It can come as quite a shock to discover that not all employees are as easy to manage as you were. This seminar will identify common problem areas with employees and discuss ways to effectively deal with difficult employees.
Giving Feedback; Disciplinary Action
This seminar focuses on how to effectively give feedback to employees. Supervisors will learn the importance of giving regular positive feedback. They will learn and practice techniques for constructively giving positive and negative feedback. They will learn the importance of documenting performance problems and how to document them.
Stress Management for Managers
In today's workplace, managers face continual transition and change. Managers must be able to handle their own stress as well as help their employees deal with stress. Managers are most effective when they develop effective coping strategies for themselves, which allows them to be in a better position to provide support for their employees. This seminar will talk about common stressors for managers and their employees, including stressors related to work/family balance. It will discuss stress management techniques.
Understanding Employees
This seminar will help supervisors begin to understand employees from a more objective perspective based on findings from studies in organizational behavior. We will discuss theories of motivation and how that applies to individual performance in the workplace. We will discuss findings about group processes and how that influences individual and group performance in the workplace. We will also look at how confounding factors such as drug/alcohol, difficult personalities, problems at home, and mental illness may affect individual performance in the workplace.
Active Listening
This seminar will assist supervisors in identifying their interpersonal communication style. The supervisors will learn and practice effective communication skills (paraphrasing, reflection, open-ended questions, summarization, voice tone & body language) for interacting with employees. These tools are particularly helpful in dealing with an employee who is in distress, angry, or upset, and can help to diffuse potentially harmful situations. (Most effective if done in a series of sessions.)
Cultural Differences
This seminar will focus on racial biases, stereotypes and differences in perception; their pervasiveness in our culture; and the implications for bias and fairness in the workplace. It will allow supervisors to begin to explore how their previous experiences and assumptions have influenced their own level of comfort with racial differences. We will also touch briefly on the issue of gender bias and sexual harassment.
Emotion in the Workplace
When an employee has a death in the family, becomes critically ill, is upset about a performance evaluation, or reorganization, intense emotions can be generated in the employee and those who work with him/her. Most of us have little experience or training in dealing with these kinds of emotions. This seminar will help supervisors and managers understand the importance of addressing emotional issues in the workplace, and it will help supervisors deal more effectively with emotions in the workplace. The use of Duke EAP as a resource for the supervisor will be discussed.
Understanding Individual Differences using Meyers/Briggs
This seminar will help supervisors understand differences in learning styles and information processing styles and how those can affect workplace interactions. The supervisors will learn about their own learning/information processing style and have a better understanding of how that affects their own interactions with peers, employees, and management. The Meyers/Briggs categorization emphasized the strengths of all styles and can facilitate more constructive resolutions of interpersonal conflicts within the workplace. Supervisors must fill out the Meyers/Briggs form before the workshop.
Alcohol and Drug Training
Sometimes work performance or work behavior may deteriorate due to drug and/or alcohol related problems. Duke OMHP can help managers and employees learn to recognize behavior that may be indicative of substance abuse or related problems and provide guidance on how they might intervene.
Duke Occupational Mental Health Programs