My Thoughts

The Art of Supervising: Why Your Best Workers Make Terrible Supervisors

Three months ago, I watched my best salesperson destroy team morale in under six weeks. Sarah had been smashing targets for four years straight, knew every product inside out, and could charm the pants off a mannequin. Naturally, when the supervisor role opened up, she got it. What happened next was like watching a master chef try to perform brain surgery with a spatula.

Here's the uncomfortable truth nobody wants to admit: your star performers are often your worst supervisor candidates. I've been training workplace supervisors for over 18 years now, and this pattern repeats itself more often than bad PowerPoint presentations at Monday morning meetings.

The problem isn't competence—it's translation. High performers succeed through personal excellence, but supervising teams requires an entirely different skill set. It's like expecting Usain Bolt to coach marathon runners. Different game altogether.

The Individual Excellence Trap

Most businesses promote based on individual performance. Makes sense, right? Wrong.

Sarah could close deals in her sleep, but she couldn't understand why her team struggled with what came naturally to her. When Jenny from accounting took twenty minutes to process something Sarah could do in five, Sarah's frustration leaked everywhere. Her coaching sessions became thinly veiled criticism sessions.

This isn't unique to sales. I've seen it with tradies, IT specialists, accountants—you name it. The best electrician doesn't automatically know how to manage three apprentices, a timeline, and a difficult client simultaneously. These are separate skills that require separate training.

The real kicker? Nobody tells them this during the promotion conversation. They just hand over the keys and expect magic.

What Actually Makes Someone Supervisory Material

After watching hundreds of promotion disasters, I've identified what actually predicts supervisory success. It's not technical expertise or individual performance metrics.

It's patience. Emotional intelligence. The ability to see potential in others even when they're failing spectacularly.

The best supervisor I ever worked with was Mark, a mid-level engineer who'd never been the star performer. But Mark had something special: he genuinely enjoyed watching other people succeed. When his team members got promoted past him, he threw them farewell parties.

Mark understood that supervisor skills for managers aren't about being the smartest person in the room—they're about making everyone else smarter.

Compare this to Sarah, who took every team mistake personally. When someone missed a target, it reflected on her. When the team succeeded, she wondered why it took them so long to figure out what she'd been telling them for weeks.

The Four Types of Supervision Disasters

I've categorised the most common supervision failures I encounter:

The Micromanager: Usually a former high performer who can't delegate because "it's faster if I just do it myself." They create bottlenecks everywhere and burn out within eighteen months.

The Best Friend: Tries to be everyone's mate instead of their leader. Avoids difficult conversations, lets problems fester, then explodes when everything goes sideways. Popular until decision time.

The Absent Leader: Got promoted but never stopped doing their old job. Technically a supervisor but functionally invisible. Their team operates like a bunch of freelancers who happen to share an office.

The Dictator: Rules through fear and rigid processes. Gets short-term compliance but zero innovation or loyalty. Usually creates the exact problems they're trying to prevent.

Sarah was definitely a micromanager with dictator tendencies. Lovely combination.

The Australian Supervision Challenge

We've got a unique challenge here in Australia. Our cultural preference for egalitarianism makes traditional supervision models feel awkward. Nobody wants to be seen as "getting above themselves" or acting like they're better than their mates.

This creates supervisors who apologise for giving direction, soften every instruction until it's meaningless, and avoid performance conversations entirely. I've met Melbourne managers who would rather resign than have a difficult conversation with their team.

But here's what I've learned: good supervision isn't about hierarchy—it's about responsibility. When you're responsible for outcomes, you need the authority to influence inputs. Simple as that.

The best Australian supervisors I know embrace their role without apologising for it. They're clear about expectations, fair in their feedback, and absolutely committed to their team's success. They don't pretend they're not in charge, but they don't lord it over anyone either.

What Nobody Teaches About Supervision

Most supervisory training courses focus on processes, policies, and performance management systems. That's like teaching someone to drive by explaining how the engine works.

Here's what they should be teaching:

How to have conversations that matter. Not performance reviews—actual conversations about goals, concerns, career development, and workplace issues. Most supervisors avoid these because they're uncomfortable, which means problems compound until they explode.

How to coach, not just instruct. There's a massive difference between telling someone what to do and helping them figure out how to do it better. Coaching requires asking questions, listening to answers, and resisting the urge to jump in with solutions.

How to manage up, not just down. Your job as a supervisor includes protecting your team from organisational chaos, fighting for resources, and translating corporate speak into human language. Nobody mentions this part during promotion conversations.

How to recognise your own blind spots. Every supervisor has things they're naturally good at and things they struggle with. Self-awareness prevents most supervision disasters.

The Sarah Epilogue

Six months later, Sarah moved into a senior sales role with no supervisory responsibilities. She's back to smashing targets and loving her work. Her replacement, Dave, was the second-best performer on the team but had been informally mentoring newer staff for years.

Dave's team just had their best quarter ever.

The lesson? Promote the right people for the right reasons. Technical excellence and leadership potential are different qualities that sometimes overlap but often don't.

Making Better Supervision Decisions

If you're in a position to influence promotion decisions, here are the questions you should be asking:

Does this person actively help their colleagues succeed? Do they seek out mentoring opportunities? How do they handle frustration when others don't perform at their level?

Most importantly: do they want to be a supervisor, or do they just want the pay rise and status?

I've met plenty of excellent individual contributors who took supervisory roles for the wrong reasons and made everyone miserable—including themselves. There's no shame in being brilliant at your current role and wanting to stay there.

The best organisations create advancement pathways that don't require supervision responsibilities. Senior specialist roles, project leadership positions, mentoring roles—there are dozens of ways to grow without managing people.

Because here's the final truth: supervision is a specific skill that requires specific training and a specific temperament. Treat it accordingly, and you'll save everyone a lot of heartache.

Your best worker might make a terrible supervisor. And that's perfectly fine.

Looking to develop genuine supervisor skills? Check out our favourite resources for workplace training and professional development programs across Australia.