How to Use the Six Steps of Supervision

Leadership can be broken into the main functions of management and supervision. Supervision is the aspect of leadership where things are accomplished utilizing people as your "resource". All of the Leadership Traits and Principles in the Effective Leadership series will come into play.

The most basic formula for supervising people is a military acronym. BAMCIS (pronounced BAM Sis) is your key to ensure that you are an effective leader in a supervisory role.

Things You'll Need

• Attitude and a will to succeed.
• Knowledge (Read the entire Effective Leadership series)
• People

Instructions

1. BAMCIS, B = Begin the Planning.

   Planning alone is an important Leadership skill. And, there will be an article down the road devoted to it. For now, what you need to do is sketch out what it is you want to accomplish. Take into account your time/money constraints and other conditions. Focus on getting to a final desired result.

2. BAMCIS, A = Arrange Reconnaissance.

   Few plans start with full information. If you are lacking info, then a recon is just the ticket. To arrange a recon, you need to lock in anyone and anything that will help you find the information you lack.

3. BAMCIS, M = Make Reconnaissance.

   This is "intelligence gathering" where you discover the need-to-know detail. Go to the site and physically check it out. For this article "site" is used to mean a physical locality, a website, or any real/online place that has the information you need. It may be a law library to research code specifics, or the local library to check out a book on using MS Powerpoint.

4. BAMCIS, C = Complete the Planning.

   Now that you have a mission and at least the need-to-know information, you can flesh out the plan. Fill in all the details. Who, What, How, etc. The plan should be detailed enough to be executed in your absence and flexible enough to change at need.

5. BAMCIS, I = Issue the Orders/Instructions.

   Gather all your team together in one place. Issue specific instructions to each person that will get them to complete their part of the mission. Issue any general guidance that applies to the group as a whole. Make sure that every order you give is clearly understood. You do this by having the subordinate "teach it back" to you by explaining what you want to accomplish in his or her own words.

6. BAMCIS, S = Supervision from beginning thru to Success.

   Now you simply set back and reap the rewards right? Not quite. Now you exercise leadership by walking around and observing your people at work. That is supervision at the base detail. You might shake a hand or two. You might ask some questions or tweak someones direction. The point is to be accessible for decision making, kept in-the-know on progress, but not smothering. Micromanagement is almost never a good leadership tool.

Tips & Warnings

• Your people are your greatest resource. Don't abuse them, don't assign tasks that they cannot perform.

• Inspect the results. Your team will always be best at what the boss inspects.

• DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT Oversupervise your team. No one enjoys it and it indicates a lack of trust. If details and timing must be exact, let them know what the critical points are and trust them to get it done.