1 This includes defining and assigning priorities, planning and organizing, and programming and coordinating the operating tasks of a department so that the objectives of both the department and the company as a whole are achieved.įurthermore, the first-level supervisor must excel in interpersonal skills. Through such administrative competence, he or she must be able to link the unit’s accomplishments to the functioning of other organizational subunits.Įven at the first level, a supervisor must be able to think and act in terms of the total system of operation. Buried in an organizational web, this person must be adroit at administering a unit and at perceiving which, among all the daily tasks delegated downward, are the most important to accomplish. “If we don’t do something soon, we’re going to lose our best foremen-it’s no wonder that they’re turned off, given the pressures they have to live with,” the plant manager at the same company said.īeing a first-level supervisor is one of the most difficult, demanding, and challenging jobs in any organization. We were there to do research on the function of first-level supervisors. “Our supervisors can probably have more influence on our productivity, worker absenteeism, product quality, morale of our work force, labor relations, and cost reduction than any other group in the company,” the vice president of personnel at a manufacturing company recently told us. By allowing these lowest-level managers to use the levers of influence inherent in their position, higher-level managers will be improving the performance of the whole organization. Although first-level supervisors have the responsibility for implementing the goals of upper management, their organizational authority to carry out the necessary actions is frequently unclear and often insufficient. Today these supervisors are part of management, but chances are they were once among the employees they are now trying to supervise. First-level supervisors usually have mixed emotions about their situation and often lose their sense of identity as they try to perform this precarious balancing act. These needs are more often than not conflicting and even at times mutually exclusive. First-level supervisors must be able to harmonize the demands of management, the demands of the collective work force (often represented by unions), and the demands of workers with the requirements for doing the tasks at hand. In both positions, the ability to maintain one’s balance when shifting forces pull in opposite directions is a measure of one’s success. Performing well as a first-level supervisor is like walking the circus high wire.

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