Goals

• Each supervisor needs specific objectives from her own boss, consultant Kevin McManus writes on his Great Systems website. This includes a scorecard covering production volumes, safety, quality and costs. Each supervisor should devote 30 to 60 minutes every day to outlining her team's inputs and outputs, along with monthly summaries of critical achievements and challenges. This data identifies production efficiencies and inefficiencies so that a supervisor knows where to focus her energies. She also needs to be aware of the consequences that follow if she fails to meet these goals.
  
  

Motivators

• An effective first-line supervisor recognizes his influence over his team members. He sees his employees every day and intentionally sends powerful messages about what is important and what is not. His familiarity with his workforce is as strong as his knowledge of their tasks at hand, according to Supervisor Essentials website. He concentrates on bringing out the best in his staff by creating a positive work environment and knows that simple changes like better lighting or a new coffee machine can mean big differences in morale.
  
  

Mistakes

• Mentoring employees represents one of the biggest hurdles to improving production, says Supervisor Essentials. Coaching means allowing team players to make mistakes and learn from those mishaps so they don't repeat them. A supervisor must offer immediate feedback and demonstrate the right way of working a process. He also has to push his workers toward a higher performance level and ensure that they believe he has their best interests in mind. Using these errors as growth opportunities instills confidence in employees while building wisdom in a first-line supervisor.
  
  

Time

• Patience becomes more than a virtue when improving productivity. Allocating time toward learning good supervisory habits is paramount in the business world, according to Great Systems website. Many company managers register their supervisors for leadership skills workshops and mistakenly believe their front-line administrators walk away with all the right tools for their jobs. Managers need to allow their supervisors to gradually improve their skills before expecting to see improvements in output along with reductions in waste and costs.