Transitioning from an Employee to Supervisor is an ongoing challenge. As a leader of 30 plus years in the financial industry, I can say with certainty that training for the employee transitioning into a supervisory role today is not sufficient. Employees master their technical skills and become noticed by leaders and find themselves promoted and expected to perform in a new leadership role with skills never taught before. If the newly promoted and highly effective employee does not rise to the occasion as a supervisor, they find themselves becoming a non-performer or sadly, being fired.

We are not born leaders, we are taught through trial and error, through a training program, or possibly a coach/mentor. The traditional training programs available today lack relevance with the Millennial Supervisor/Manager. Millennial employees do not learn well from PowerPoints or long drawn out 2-3 days of classroom training. They watch their favorite TV show with a few clicks on their cell phone or google questions to learn as they go. These new leaders love person-to-person interaction, podcasts, videos, and watching TED talks. So how does this relate to training a new supervisor? We need to change the way we look at training and understand the needs are of the upcoming supervisors. What is the Millennial Supervisor looking for in training?

The Millennial wants personalized training that helps them demonstrate “participative” leadership within their work environment. They will focus on the social aspect of work embracing diversity and inclusion. They want to feel valued and for their teams to be valued. Simulation, social platforms, mobile and video are the way of the future for training programs. People leave people, not companies and this will become even more apparent as the Millennials become the new leaders. Transparency and trust are required of the new leaders. Millennials are more about understanding the teams they lead and the individual learning styles of their staff. They place value in work-life balance and wish to belong to charities doing great things.

One tool gaining in popularity when used effectively are the personality assessments. These assessments provide direction on understanding the different personality traits of employees. What are their strengths and weaknesses? How do they communicate best? What are the dos and don’ts of communication with each personality? The new supervisors can study this information and learn the best ways to communicate. Personality assessments tend to be used improperly by labelling people and then placing the assessments in a drawer never to be seen again as if they were just “ice breakers” for an event. When properly and effectively implemented, they provide a longtime value to the leaders and the employees. Communication skills are taught, development plans are built, “blind spots” are better understood, and leaders learn to lead their teams by continuously utilizing the data from the assessments.

Mentors are also recommended within the organization to help the new supervisor avoid the minefields along the way. For training (knowledge), they have been taught to look everything up on Google or You Tube so travelling to conferences is of no interest. While they do like in-person interaction, it is in smaller time blocks. Maybe lunch-n-learns or zoom training. Flexibility is a must as well and we need to ask ourselves, do we offer leadership training that is available at any time? In the old days we use to send our staff to conferences for 1-3 days and when they came back, they were fired up and ready to go but within ten days, it was if they never attended the conference. So, training needs to be continuous, not just the first ninety days or a once-a-year conference.

Customized training sessions or programs that focus on the social platforms and mobile devices will be the future. LeBrun Management Solutions LLC (LMS) has more than 30 years of leadership experience and a team staffed with Millennials. Let’s partner up and work together and create your customized leadership training program! Call now at 937-912-9045 or visit our website at https://lmsolutionsllc.com.