Another Super Bowl is in the books and it didn’t turn out to be quite the close game many thought it would be. It was entertaining to watch the seasoned veteran out play the young determined student. Never under estimate an old master, we always have a trick or two up our sleeves. It also demonstrated what fantastic leadership can accomplish as Tom Brady has now taken two different teams to Super Bowl victories. Every time the team would huddle up, he created magic in there with clear instructions and encouragement so everyone knew their role to make sure the mission was successful. This is something you can bring to your team by beginning each day with a huddle.

That’s why I continue this series, because through no fault of your own you may have not received the information or training needed to be successful at your job. A new supervisor faces many challenges and hopefully this will help give you the confidence to do the job correctly and an edge over the competition while impressing your bosses.

You can get the huddle habit going by having the staff assemble at a convenient location usually where they’ll begin working every morning or start of the shift, so the loading dock, warehouse floor, construction site, forklift area, shop floor, or the break room are all great locations. Make sure to join them in the circle and for the next five to ten minutes, no longer, address your staff in a positive and inspirational manner about any topic you need, to make sure they have a safe and productive day. The topics can cover the upcoming days activities, a safety reminder about wet floors during the rain storm, informing about an unusual number of cases to be picked and loaded, reminder on changing the production date stamp, commending a worker for their extra effort or just to say, thank you.

Once you’ve established your daily huddles you’ll open the floodgates to open and honest communication between you and the staff which is critical for any supervisor, manager or leader to build trust. You may not have the best knowledge of how a machine operates but if you can properly communicate and can relate to people you’ll learn everything you need to know. Then you can slowly incorporate a weekly safety tailgate/lunchbox meeting which is usually 10 -15 minutes, and then a monthly safety meeting which may last up to a hour depending on the topic and who knows maybe a quarterly safety committee meeting.

Remember, trust and open communication can be totally trashed with one miscue on your part and then it’s even harder to rebuild that trust. Always get back to staff on their questions or ideas even if it’s to say you don’t know but you’ll find out. Always be mindful, kind but firm and you’ll be a success.