1. Strategies for
Successful
Supervision and Team
Collaboration
ADAM MEYER
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA
ADAM.MEYER@UCF.EDU

2. Books to Reference
Crucial Conversations (Kerry Patterson et al)
Crucial Confrontations (Kerry Patterson et al) --- 2nd
Version: Crucial Accountability
The Speed of Trust (Stephen M.R. Covey)
Dare to Serve: How to Drive Superior Results by Serving Others (Cheryl Bachelder)
The Servant Leader: A Simple Story About the True Essence of Leadership (James
Hunter)
Good to Great (Jim Collins)
Puzzle of Motivation (Daniel Pink Ted Talk, based on his book Drive)
Leadership is an Art (Max DePree)

3. Your Motivation

4. What is your motivation as a leader?
Protect yourself
Make yourself look good
Make others look good
Fear
Love
Make it better
Power Grabber or Power Giver?
You or others in the spotlight?
Serving students? Staff? Faculty?
Yourself?
Self-ambition? Ambition to serve
others?
Be the creative voice or the one
who facilitates creativity?
??????????

5. The reality…
Others know (or assume) your motivation even if you do not.
Do you want to decide what is your motivation or leave it to
others?

6. Leadership

7. How do you define leadership?

8. What are some of the things you appreciate
(appreciated) about your favorite supervisor?

9. What are/were some of your greatest
frustrations in working with your least favorite
supervisor?

10. Leadership defined here…
The skill of influencing people to work enthusiastically toward
goals identified as being for the common good.
Leadership…
• Revolves around character
• Can be learned and developed by anyone
• Effectively utilizes authority
-- The Servant Leadership

11. The true measure of leadership is influence; nothing more,
nothing less.
-- John Maxwell

12. Power of Influence
If you have 5 full-time people looking to you for leadership, in the
year ahead you will have 10,000 hours of influence opportunity.
-- Dare to Serve

13. Trust

14. The ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust with all
stakeholders is the KEY leadership competency…
Every interaction with every person is a “moment of trust.” The
way you behave in that moment will either build or diminish
trust.
--Stephen M.R. Covey
You Need To Establish Trust

15. Do you care for me?
Can you help me?
Can I trust you?
What people want to know…

16. The answer to…
“Do you trust your boss?”
…is more predictive of team and office performance
THAN ANYTHING ELSE!
If you are a supervisor…

17. When we believe that people are truly acting in our best interest,
we tend to trust them.
When we believe they are not acting in our best interest (or we
may not be sure of the intent), we do not trust them.
--Stephen M.R. Covey
Could It Be This Simple?

18. Trust is a function of 2 things…
CHARACTER
•Your integrity
•Your motive
•Your intent with people
**Constant**
Violation = quickest way to decrease
trust
COMPETENCE
•Your capabilities
•Your skills
•Your results
•Your track record
**Situational**
Quickest way to increase trust

19. Great Way to Show Competence
Under-promise
&
Over-deliver

20. • Motives (your why) are consistently about the genuine
care of others
• Agenda is one that seeks mutual benefit
• Behavior is focused on the best interest of others
Your intent creates the
greatest trust when your…

21. 1. Talking Straight (honesty in action)
2. Demonstrate Respect
3. Create Transparency (through authentic
communication)
13 Critical Behaviors from
The Speed of Trust

22. 4. Right Wrongs (immediately)
5. Show Loyalty (give credit to others; talk like
they are in the room)
6. Deliver Results

23. 7. Get Better (through continuous improvement)
8. Confront Reality (elephants in room, sacred
cows, that which cannot be discussed)
9. Clarify Expectations
10. Practice Accountability for self and others
(easier when #9 happens)

24. 11.Listen First (with ears, eyes and heart so
you know what matters)
12.Keep Commitments
13.Extend Trust as appropriate

25. High-Trust Organizations…
• Share information openly
• Tolerate mistakes as means of
learning
• Promote innovation and
creativity
• Confront real issues
• Have real communication and
real collaboration
• Share credit abundantly
• Practice transparency
• Have authentic people
• Hold people accountable
• Have a vitality and an energy
that can be felt

26. How are you actively building trust?

27. Flow

28. What is Flow?
•Mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in
what he or she is doing
•Feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the
process of the activity
•Completely focused motivation
•The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture,
while performing a task
Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

30. Love

31. I do not have to necessarily like my players and associates,
but as a leader I must love them. Love is loyalty, love is
teamwork, love respects the dignity of the individual. This is
the strength of any organization.
-- Vince Lombardi

32. Reframing Love
• Common in English language: Love is a feeling
• Reframe: Love is a behavior, an action (Agape love)
• Patience
• Kindness
• Humility
• Respectfulness
• Selflessness
• Forgiveness
• Honesty
• Commitment

33. A team member or employee motivated by fear, force or
any other form of manipulation is not that same as a team
member motivated by love or the knowledge that someone
cares about them.
-- Zach Thomas

34. More than Money

35. Intrinsic Motivation is Critical
Autonomy
• The desire to direct our own lives
Mastery
• The desire to get better and better at what we do that truly matters
Purpose
• The yearning to do what we do in the spirit of something larger than
ourselves
Traditional management is great for compliance. Self-direction works better for
employee engagement.
-- Daniel Pink

36. Help Them Reach Goals,
Even if it Means They Leave

37. Growth Mindset
•How can you make each person better?
•What are your colleague’s…
• Short-term goals?
• Long-term goals?
• Work Passions?
• Work Strengths?
• Obvious places where they can contribute in the office operations?

38. Individual Connection
Must connect with each employee individually…each have unique
needs
Think UDL -- Universal Design for Leading 

39. Examples…
• Develop presentation skills?
• Develop programs?
• Organize events?
• Enhance office processes and policies?
• Database management?
• Get involved in committees on campus?
• Assistant Director?
• Director?
• Leaving disability field for something else?

40. Leaders owe people space, space in the sense of freedom.
Freedom in the sense of enabling our gifts to be exercised.
-- Max Depree

41. None of us is as smart as all of us.

42. Understanding and accepting diversity enables us to see
that each of us is needed. It also enables us to begin to
think about being abandoned to the strengths of others, of
admitting we cannot do everything.
-- Max DePree

43. Of all of the bad ideas circulating the grapevine, pretending that
leaders must know everything is among the most ridiculous and
harmful. Leaders earn their keep, not by knowing everything, but by
knowing how to bring the right combination of people (most of
whom know more about certain topics than the leader) and propel
them toward common objectives.
It is okay to say, “I do not know. Ideas anyone?”
-- Crucial Confrontations

44. Ultimate Leadership Goal
To have your boss come into your office and tell you
that you mentored someone so well that they will now
be better in your position than you…so get out 
Leaders leave behind a positive influence when they leave and the office
builds on the leader’s work and flourishes

45. Supervising Challenging
Employees or Challenging
Situations

46. What are some challenges you experience
in supervising employees?

47. 4 Possible Roots of ‘Challenging
Employees’
1. Me
2. Unmet Expectations
3. Lack of skill
4. Lack of motivation

48. Me
•Our attitude toward others plays a large role in other’s performance
results
•Everyone is a valuable member of the team…do you think that?
•Where am I the person’s barrier to great performance?
•Where have I failed to communicate or act in the manner needed for
that person’s success?

49. Most leaders can tell you the weaknesses of their team
members. But can you cite the strengths and talents of your
team? Are you accessing their very best capability?
-- Dare to Serve

50. So much of what we call management consists in making it
difficult for people to work.
-- Peter Drucker

51. •Expectations clearly outlined but not followed
•Expectations not clearly outlined, likely assumed
and subsequently not met
Unmet Expectations

52. The ability to hold others accountable lies at the very center
of a person’s ability to exert influence.
-- Crucial Confrontations

53. The Reality of Poor Performance
For people to behave badly (and/or to not meet our expectations) over
the long haul, WE have to do 2 things:
1.We choose to avoid the conversations we need to have.
• Keeps people from seeing the true consequences and impact of their
actions
1.We create a work-around that enables others to continue doing what
they are doing (namely unproductive and possibly negative actions).
-- Crucial Confrontations

54. Lack of Skill and/or Motivation?
•Does the employee have the right skill set for the task(s) at hand or
the overall job?
•Does the employee have the right motivation?
• No one wants to do overly hard, noxious, boring or unimportant work.
•Get the right people on the bus and get them in the right seats. (Jim
Collins)

55. Skill and Motivation are Often
Interwoven
•Is it the chicken or the egg (skill or motivation) as to why the staff
member is not performing to expectations?
• Keep in mind ‘Flow’ concept

56. Identify challenges with THEIR input, not based on your assumptions
and judgments alone
• Involving others in the solution empowers others, creates motivation
and creates mutual understanding of expectations
• “What will make this better for you?”

57. Don’t Forget the Role of Me
Ask the employee:
• Where am I contributing to this challenge? (and desire honest
feedback)
• What can I do to assist?
• If our roles were reversed and you were supervising me in this
situation, what would you tell me? How would you work with me?

58. Consider the Critical Role of
Environment
We often assume that people act the way they do because of
uncontrollable personality factors (their disposition) as opposed to
doing what they do because of forces in the environment (the
situation).
It is easy to see other’s actions only while we are acutely aware of
forces behind our choices.
-- Crucial Confrontations
Remember: We are each a force in our environments

59. Environmental Wonders…
•What other sources of environmental influence may be impacting
this person?
• Work systems
• Physical design/space layout
• Polices and procedures
• Cultural expectations and assumptions
• Organizational supports (or lack thereof)
• Chain of command
• ????

60. Dig Deeper
•What is their assessment of the situation?
•What environmental factors are contributing to their actions?
•What role am I playing?
•What am I missing in my assessment?
Consider beyond the typical
“Gee, what in the world is wrong with them?”

61. It is the Problem, Not the Person
•When discussing work problems, let the person know you see them
as a person of value and worth who is currently unable to meet
expectations…
• And you want to help the person as best as you can
•Keep the focus on the problem, not the person
• Helps other person feel safe in the conversation

62. Use CPR Approach
•Content – focus on the facts of the matter
•Pattern – explain what see happening over time
•Relationship – explain impact of the problem on our relationship
(which offers the biggest impact in awareness and understanding)
What is going on? Are you okay?
How can I help? What am I missing here?

63. Follow-Up
•Who does what by when
•Maintain accountability

64. Keep It Fun

65. Make Monday morning as pain-free as possible.

66. Give Thanks

67. Gratitude is the most effective currency for
helping people perform at their best.
-- Michael Hyatt

68. Sharpen Your Skills

69. Leadership and Supervision are
Skills
•To improve requires intentional effort
•Feedback
•Reading
•Mentoring
•Workshops
•Reflection
•???

70. No matter how good you think you are as a leader, my
goodness, the people around you will have all kinds of ideas
for how you can get better. So for me, the most
fundamental thing about leadership is to have the humility
to continue to get feedback and to try to get better -
because your job is to try to help everybody else get better.
--Jim Yong Kim

71. In the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a
meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful
life without meaningful work.
-- Good to Great
It is the leader’s responsibility to bring purpose and
meaning to the work of the organization.
-- Dare to Serve
Closing Thoughts to Consider…

72. Holding Yourself Accountable
Based on this presentation, what is one next step you will commit to
completing by next Friday?
• Order a book to read
• Review this presentation and take more thorough notes, map out a
game plan, etc.
• Find a mentor
• Have a conversation with a mentor
• Journal
• Have a conversation with an employee
• ????

73. Questions?