YOU CAN NO LONGER DO IT YOURSELF
The moment you become a supervisor, the production work you do yourself becomes secondary to the relationships you build with the people who do most of the actual work. Even though you may be able to do the job better or faster than those who work for you, and even though you would enjoy doing it yourself, you must turn it over to your employees. You must achieve productivity by learning how to direct, train, create, and maintain a motivating environment. You can seldom afford the luxury of doing it yourself. In other words, in terms of production work in the department, you will contribute more by doing less. Here is how the process works.
If you remain an employee, you are primarily responsible for your own job performance and productivity. Your productivity is measured and compared with that of others, and is the focus of your concern. As a supervisor, you are responsible for the productivity of everyone in your department. Consequently, management will be interested in measuring departmental productivity and not what you produce yourself.
Obviously you cannot increase productivity substantially through your own production. You cannot supervise effectively and produce at a high level at the same time—you are only one person, not two or three. Even if you arrive at work two hours early and leave two hours late every day to do production work, the increase in total productivity would not be substantial, and, of course, you could not continue at such a pace for long.
Therefore, as a supervisor, you can maintain or increase productivity substantially only through others. You cannot do it by yourself. If you do not accept this fact, you will never be happy as a manager.
When you become a supervisor, you must learn to let the personal satisfaction of working with people replace the satisfaction you previously enjoyed in working with things. Your future is in the hands of those you supervise, so you must take pride in creating the kinds of relationships that will motivate people to achieve the productivity you desire. First, create the relationships; then work through them to achieve your productivity goals.
Create and maintain an atmosphere of respect and trust. By listening and following through on your employees' suggestions, going to bat for them with your superiors, recognizing their individuality, and, above all, demonstrating two-way communication, you will build trusting relationships.