Here is a comparison of the roles and responsibilities of supervisors and team leaders.
Often there can be confusion over who is supposed to do what.
This table should help clarify what supervisors and team leaders do in terms of strategic planning, work assignments, resource management, employee training, and performance management.
I hope you find this a helpful resource, and that you can organize your staff more efficiently and productively 😉
(Source Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)
So we all love Take You Child(ren) To Work Day.
It’s a great idea to bond with our children and share our work life with them.
This way they know what mommy and daddy do and also a little of what work is like.
But one of the funny things I noticed is how uncomfortable most parents seem with their kids around them in at work.
They have this worried and kvetchy look on their face.
They are crossing boundaries between personal/family/home life and professional/work life.
What is at once two-faces, two distinct roles is now combined for a single day a year.
Perhaps personal problems from home and between family members is entering the workspace or the problems of work life is evident to your close family members.
Maybe mommy or daddy really doesn’t get along all the well with little Johnny or Rosie all the time or perhaps little Johnny or Rosie is not that perfect little kid you’ve been showing around in pictures and talking up in the office.
Similarly, mommy or daddy may not be “all that” in the office that they come home and portray to their family about–that big management position and corner office could be just another run of the mill job and situated in a long row of cubicles deep this way and that.
In any case, the barriers are being crossed and even if there have been no outright lies told and caught, different sides of the person that are typically kept separate and sacrosanct are converging and the alternate egos and varied personas come head-to-head.
The good news is that the organization usually gives the parents leeway to not really do any serious work when the kids are around for the day and to mostly schlep them to special kids’ events in the workplace–everybody get to meet the CEO and have ice cream?
Thus, the unveiling of dual natures and embedded conflicts is kept to a manageable minimum, if not an uncomfortable merging of work and family life. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
We were at the movie theater over the weekend and something funny happened when we went up to the counter to get our tickets.
I ask my wife if she also wants anything to eat like popcorn etc.
She says yes, and I ask the lady behind the counter where the tickets and snacks are sold for some popcorn to ring up.
She points to the next register and says “You need to get the snacks over there” (pointing about one feet over to the left).
I look at my wife like, okay and we pay for the tickets.
Then, we waddles over to the empty counter a foot over and wait for someone to help with the popcorn.
Well the lady who just sold us the movie tickets waddles over as well and says, “Can I help you?”
We almost cracked up laughing.
I said, “Yes, we would like some popcorn, please.”
She says, “Sure,” and proceeds to get the popcorn and we pay again.
What was hilarious was the lady selling the tickets redirected us to the counter over for the popcorn, where she in turn did the proverbial, changing of the hats, and then after selling us the tickets served us up the popcorn as well.
It reminded me of a TV episode I saw a kid where some people visit a small town and stop at the Sheriff to ask where the local inn is. The Sheriff points them down the street. Then the people go into the inn and there is the Sheriff again, but this time wearing the innkeeper’s visor. After checking in, the people ask where the town pub is and then stroll over across the way. They walk up to the bar, and the bartender turns around, and sure enough it’s the Sheriff/innkeeper now with a servers smock on and asks what they would like to drink.
I may not be remembering the episode completely accurately, but you get the point.
In a small town or an organization where people have to multitask, one person can play many different roles.
That’s why very often management in interested in good employees who can “walk and chew gum at the same time”–employees need to be able to perform under pressure to get many projects and tasks done, simultaneously, and they very often need to assume multiple roles and responsibilities to get that done.
Pointing the finger at someone else saying not my job or the ball is in their court is no longer an excuse not to get things done. We have to shepherd the project all the way through the many leaps and hurdles that may stand in the way of progress.
When people have to perform multiple roles and jobs–due to time constraints, cost cutting, or shortage of trained and talented people–then they may have to change hats many times over the course of their day and week.
The Atlantic (5 July 2013) in an article about performing head transplants–yeah, an Italian surgeon believes this is now possible–retells an Indian folk tale called The Transposed Heads.
Two men behead themselves, and their heads are magically reattached, but to the other person’s body. The clincher is that the wife of one of the men doesn’t know which man to take as her husband–“the head or the heart.”
It’s a fascinating dilemma–what makes a person who they are–their thoughts (i.e. brain) or their feelings (i.e. heart).
Similarly, when a person performs multiple roles at home, work, and in the community–who are they really? Which role is them–at the core?
We tend to like doing one or some things better than others, but does what we like doing mean that is who we are? Maybe doing the things we don’t like that challenge us to grow is what we need to be doing?
Like the lady in the movie theater–one moment she was the ticket master and the next the concessions attendant–both were her jobs.
We too are made up of multiple and complex roles and identities–we are head and heart–and all the things they drive us to do in between. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
>I have a new article in Public CIO Magazine (April/May 2011) on the topic of Accountability In Project Management:
We’ve all be to “those” kinds of meeting. You know the ones I’m talking about: The cast of characters has swelled to standing-room only and you’re beginning to wonder if maybe there’s a breakfast buffet in the back of the room.
It seems to me that not only are there more people than ever at todays meetings, but meetings are also more frequent and taking up significantly more hours of the day.
I’m beginning to wonder whether all these meeting are helping us get more work done, or perhaps helping us avoid confronting the fact that in many ways we’re stymied in our efforts.
Read the rest of the article at Government Technology.
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