My Thoughts
Why Most "Leaders" Are Actually Just Supervisors in Disguise
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The bloke sitting next to me at the coffee shop yesterday was loudly explaining to his mate how he's a "natural born leader" who "doesn't need supervision training because leadership comes from within." I nearly choked on my flat white. After twenty-three years in corporate training and watching countless executives crash and burn, I can tell you that most people who call themselves leaders are actually just supervisors who've watched too many TED talks.
And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Leadership Labels
Here's what nobody wants to admit: supervision is the foundation of leadership, not its poor cousin. Every leader worth their salt started as a supervisor who actually mastered the basics. Yet somehow we've created this mythology that supervision is beneath "real" leaders.
I've seen CEOs who couldn't run a decent team meeting try to "inspire organisational transformation." Meanwhile, the best supervisor I ever worked with - Janet from a logistics company in Perth - could motivate a team of warehouse workers to hit impossible deadlines while keeping morale sky-high. Janet never called herself a leader. She was too busy actually leading.
The problem is we've confused titles with competence.
What Supervisors Actually Know That Leaders Forget
Supervisors deal with reality. They know that 73% of workplace problems stem from poor communication between just two people. They understand that you can't inspire someone who doesn't know what they're supposed to be doing tomorrow morning.
Immediate Problem-Solving Supervisors fix things. Today. Not in the next quarterly review cycle. When Sarah calls in sick and the client presentation is in three hours, supervisors don't hold a strategic planning session - they redistribute work, call in favours, and get it done. Leadership training workshops that focus on these practical skills create better leaders than most MBA programs.
People Management, Not People Inspiration This might ruffle some feathers, but I believe effective supervision trumps inspirational leadership nine times out of ten. Inspiration is great when everything's going well. Supervision keeps things functioning when they're not.
Real supervisors know their people's actual capabilities, not their potential. They know who performs better under pressure and who needs more lead time. They know which team members clash and how to prevent it.
The Skills Transfer That Nobody Talks About
Most leadership development programs start from the wrong end. They teach vision before they teach delegation. Strategy before they teach basic performance management.
The supervisor-to-leader progression should be natural, but we've made it artificial by pretending they're different skillsets. They're not. They're the same skills applied at different scales.
Accountability Structures Good supervisors create accountability without micromanagement. Scale that up, and you get leaders who can hold entire departments accountable without breathing down everyone's neck. Miss this foundation, and you get executives who either micromanage everything or disappear completely.
Resource Allocation Supervisors juggle limited resources daily - time, people, equipment, budget. Sound familiar? That's exactly what strategic leaders do, just with bigger numbers and longer timeframes.
Between you and me, I've watched plenty of "visionary leaders" fail spectacularly because they never learned how to allocate a Tuesday afternoon effectively.
The Australian Context (Because It Matters)
Australian workplaces have always had a more egalitarian approach to hierarchy. We're suspicious of people who lead from ivory towers. The best Australian leaders I know still remember what it was like to be in the trenches.
Companies like Bunnings succeed because their store managers are essentially supervisors who've mastered the fundamentals before taking on bigger responsibilities. You won't find many Bunnings managers who can't handle a difficult customer or organise a weekend stock take.
This practical foundation creates resilient leadership. When COVID hit, the leaders who adapted fastest weren't the ones with the best vision statements - they were the ones who could pivot operations, manage stressed teams, and solve immediate problems.
Where Most Leadership Development Goes Wrong
We've created this false hierarchy: supervision = operational, leadership = strategic.
Rubbish.
The best strategic thinking comes from people who understand operational reality. Every successful business strategy I've seen was built on insights that could only come from someone who'd actually supervised the work being strategised about.
I used to think differently. Early in my consulting career, I'd dismiss supervisory training as "basic level" work and focus on "high-impact leadership development." I was wrong. Dead wrong.
The breakthrough moment came when I was working with a manufacturing company in Brisbane. The CEO wanted leadership coaching, but the real problem was in the middle management layer - supervisors who'd been promoted without any business supervisory training. No amount of visionary leadership from the top could fix the operational chaos below.
The Integration Nobody Wants to Do
Here's the controversial bit: most organisations need fewer "leaders" and more people who can seamlessly switch between supervision and leadership modes.
The future belongs to adaptive leadership - people who can zoom in to solve immediate supervisory challenges and zoom out to think strategically. This isn't about having two different skillsets; it's about having one integrated approach that works at multiple levels.
Practical Implementation Start with supervisor excellence. Master the fundamentals: clear communication, fair performance management, resource allocation, conflict resolution, and team development. Everything else builds on this foundation.
Don't skip steps. Don't assume that understanding strategic frameworks means you can handle a difficult performance conversation.
The Daily Reality Most leadership happens in the small moments. How you handle an unexpected crisis on a Tuesday morning. Whether you can have a tough conversation without destroying the relationship. Your ability to maintain team morale during busy periods.
These aren't "just" supervisory skills. They're leadership skills that happen to be practised at the supervisory level first.
Why This Matters Now More Than Ever
Remote work has blurred the lines between supervision and leadership even further. Managing distributed teams requires both micro-skills (checking in without micromanaging) and macro-skills (maintaining culture and direction without physical presence).
The leaders succeeding in this environment are those who can supervise effectively across digital channels while maintaining strategic focus. No surprise - they're usually the ones who learned solid supervisory foundations first.
Look, I'm not suggesting we eliminate the concept of leadership. I'm suggesting we stop pretending supervision and leadership are separate things requiring completely different approaches.
The best leaders are supervisors who never forgot where they came from. The worst are people who skipped the foundational work and jumped straight to the strategic level without understanding what they're actually strategising about.
Master supervision first. Everything else follows naturally.
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