The old adage "don’t take it personally" doesn’t resonate with Linda Schenkel, program manager for the Department of Psychiatry at UNM.
And since she was recently named a recipient of the UNM’s Staff Council Outstanding Supervisor award, she might be on to something.
Schenkel, one of 10 children and a mother of two, said she believes the most important aspect of supervision is the development of fair, personal relationships with each of her staff members.
“It’s really important to get to know them,” she said. “Every employee wants to be heard.”
Constant availability and regular visibility are vital to successful supervision. She said she maintains an open door policy and keeps her work cell phone on her at all times.
“Being visible to your employees is big; being accessible, I think, is huge,” she said.
As a supervisor, forging strong personal relationships with each staff member on an individual basis is the most fulfilling, effective way to discover a team’s strengths and weaknesses as a collective, Schenkel said. Having decades worth of managing experience make her no stranger to the art of utilization in the workplace.
“(I) try to capitalize on their strengths and build (upon) their weakness,” Schenkel said. “Because when you can identify your employees’ strengths, you can also try to shift roles to really make a more powerful team, depending on the people that you have.”
Shenkel said the aim of supervision isn’t to do things on your own, but to be able to develop a team on which you can rely.
“Sometimes you want to just do it yourself. It’s quicker, faster and you know it’ll be done right, but that doesn’t really help develop your team, it doesn’t really help develop the employees at all if you’re just going to constantly try to cover it,” she said. “If I can do it myself, I wouldn’t need to hire them.”
If you’re going to hire someone, you might as well give them a chance to succeed, excel and learn, Schenkel said, “and then when you get your team all up and trained, you have a powerhouse instead of trying to do it all yourself.”
She said the trick is to “not stifle their growth, but try to direct it without smashing it.”
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
As far as imparting wisdom goes, Schenkel said she likes to let her staff take ownership.
“I like them to be able to become leaders themselves,” she said. “If you really listen to some of their ideas, you can grow as a supervisor leaps and bounds.”
Schenkel said it is also important to give them a chance to fail.
“It’s all part of being a supervisor,” she said. “If they fail, hopefully we can all learn from it, and move forward.”
Schenkel said she is proud of her staff’s ability to consistently turn a negative into a positive in one way or another, and she prides herself on being in tune with her staff members’ work/life balance.
“I know my staff well enough to know when something isn’t right,” she said.
For Tara McCune, a two year supervisee of Schenkel’s, conversing over her supervisor’s approach to her job was an absolute pleasure.
“She physically shows that she sees me,” McCune said, “and that she really sees me as a human being.”
The genuine concern Schenkel has for her supervisees manifests itself in her consistent advocacy of their needs and in an atmosphere of interdependency, she said.
Supervising requires you to ask questions, Schenkel said, such as “how can I work with you to make sure that you’re able to attend to whatever’s going on at home?” without being too nosy.
She said she acknowledges the fine line that a supervisor has to walk.
“I compare it to parenting,” Schenkel said. “I can’t be your friend.”
She said the bottom line message for those working under her becomes one of trust and dependability.
“‘You don’t have to like what I’m doing, you don’t have to agree with what I’m doing, but you need to listen to what I’m saying, because there’s a reason I’m saying it," she said.
Johnny Vizcaino is a staff reporter at the Daily Lobo. Contact him at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @thedailyjohnnyv
