Many supervisors believe that the responsibility of leading a team well falls entirely on their shoulders—to help subordinates grow, maintain work motivation, balance task pressures, resolve team conflicts, ensure the boss’s satisfaction… They feel they must become the team’s “all-powerful guardian.”
In coaching sessions, I often encounter exhausted supervisors who tend to assign “unlimited responsibility” to their managerial role. They feel they must be the heroic leader who answers every demand from upper management while also being the omnipotent protector of their subordinates. But surprisingly, the more supervisors try to shoulder everything alone, the more problems arise!
What exactly are the role and responsibilities of a supervisor? By mastering the key aspects of leadership within an organization, you can achieve twice the result with half the effort and navigate your role with ease!
Table of Contents:
- Supervisors Are Not “Solo Fighters”
- Your Team Is Not Just Your Team
- The Responsibility of Early Warning to Prevent Problem Escalation
- Inspector Megure in Detective Conan: A Model of “Effortless Leadership”?
1. Supervisors Are Not “Solo Fighters”
As a supervisor, do you feel you should single-handedly take on the responsibility of “leading the team well”?
Many supervisors believe that these are their managerial responsibilities:
- Subordinates continuously improve their abilities and perform better and better
- Subordinates feel their working hours, workload, and task content are just right—not too heavy, not too boring
- Subordinates feel their career prospects and work-life balance are cared for
- The team spirit is high, the atmosphere is harmonious and cooperative; no one is discouraged or indifferent, and there are no internal conflicts
- The team recognizes you as a good supervisor
- By effectively bridging upper management and the team, everyone is happy and harmonious
However, have you ever thought that as a supervisor, you are actually part of an “organization”, not working alone?
No matter what situations team members encounter, they are the result of interactions within the entire organization. It also requires everyone in the organization to perform their duties to move forward together. The “supervisor” is just “one part” of it.
2. Your Team Is Not Just Your Team
For a positive example, suppose you want to cultivate a very promising subordinate:
Besides what you can teach, the learning environments and tasks you can design, and the encouragement you can provide, there are many other key stakeholders. Especially if you want to help this subordinate get promoted, receive a raise, and move toward long-term career goals, it absolutely requires the cooperation of many people to be effective.
Another often-overlooked negative example is helping subordinates who are under high stress:
When you notice someone on your team frequently working overtime, verbally attacking colleagues, leading improperly, feeling frustrated and unmotivated, or consistently withdrawing and stagnating, do you instinctively try to “help them” on your own?
Many supervisors don’t think to “signal early to other stakeholders,” including informing higher-level supervisors, HR, in-house counselors, etc.
In more toxic work environments, I often hear clients in coaching sessions say, “I can’t trust my boss/HR… What’s the point of telling them? They won’t do anything anyway!”
However, whether you inform them or not is one thing; whether the people in the organization who should be informed fulfill their responsibilities and do their jobs is another.
💡 Further Reading:
- Delegation vs. Control? Trust Is the Core of Leadership
- How to Empower Through Delegation? Supervisors Can’t Control Everything—Become a Delegation Expert!
3. The Responsibility of Early Warning to Prevent Problem Escalation
In fact, not informing or warning the organization early is, to some extent, hindering others from performing their responsibilities.
Especially if you truly feel your superior (the N+2 of your subordinates) is terrible—it’s because of their incompetence, unclear instructions, emotional instability, lack of resources, or unwillingness to take responsibility that everyone is suffering. If you don’t reveal that the team is having issues, thinking you’re protecting your team, but no one in the organization notices, you’re actually protecting this terrible superior.
Moreover, if something does go wrong—for example, an employee collapses from overwork, complains externally causing a PR crisis, leaves maliciously, or even sues the company—the first responsibility when investigating is whether the supervisor “noticed and took appropriate measures,” including early warning to management and HR, seeking systemic support and improvement measures.
4. Inspector Megure in Detective Conan: A Model of “Effortless Leadership”?
Have you ever noticed that in the anime “Detective Conan,” Inspector Megure often lets others do the work while he watches from the sidelines, but his leadership is unquestioned?
He trusts his team, delegates tasks appropriately, and doesn’t try to shoulder everything himself. This kind of leadership style might be worth reflecting on for supervisors who feel overwhelmed.
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