Pull Yourself Out of the Supervisor Weeds

We’re wrapping up the end of our Sworn vs Civilian Month with a bit of motivation for you. When you feel overwhelmed as a supervisor things like team combativeness can be the tip of the iceberg. Supervising is like a Chemistry course where it builds upon itself. What you do today impacts your tomorrow. So what do you do when you’ve hit a roadblock that just seems too big to overcome? Listen, we pulled ourselves out of the supervisor weeds and steered our Forensic Unit in the right direction (and you can too).

In 2018, we were both promoted to supervisory positions – Ashley was the new Forensic Unit supervisor and Erin was the new Latent Print Supervisor. Our units didn’t have established training programs or SOPs, the majority of our staff were newbies, and unit processes (such as inventories, budgets, equipment maintenance, stats, and logs, etc.) were outdated, lacking, or nonexistent.

You’re probably not surprised to learn that it didn’t take long before we were both in the weeds, feeling more confused and less confident in our roles every day.

So, we did what every new supervisor does – tried to tackle our problems by working harder, putting in longer hours, and taking work home with us. The perfect recipe for burnout, right?

Less than a year into our new roles, it became obvious that something was going to need to change. We both knew there had to be a better way of doing things, and it likely required us to go against the grain of “the way things have always been done”.

But, How? How did we start steering our units in the right direction? Let’s take a look at the steps we took to pull ourselves out of the weeds.

Step 1: Stop doing technician tasks and start prioritizing supervisory tasks

⁣We had to step into OUR roles fully. That meant letting go of casework, delegating the in-house cases, and taking ourselves off the call rotation. Type A peeps put down the pitchforks! This isn’t as scary as you may think it is.

Your team is a reflection of you, yes, but it’s your job to build a great team. If they aren’t performing to your standards motivate them to get there. If that’s not appealing then – Warning! Hard Truth Incoming –

Maybe you shouldn’t be a supervisor.

Step 2: Analyze unit processes and workflows

Before we could really dive into complex tasks like writing SOPs, we needed to take a closer look at how to improve the daily processes and workflows within our units. ⠀

Then come up with better solutions to these problems – maybe you simplify your workflows to reduce confusion and inconsistencies, maybe you redesign your logs to automatically calculate stats, maybe you eliminate certain processes altogether. ⠀

Step 3: Improve “soft skills”

For us, the skills necessary to properly support our staff were not innate abilities. So we purposely sought out… (Continued in comments)⁣ training classes and began reading more books to develop better “soft skills” and become more supportive leaders within our units.

And just those 3 things alone gave us the momentum we needed to start thriving in our supervisory positions.

While our forensic units weren’t (and still aren’t) perfect by any means, we’re certainly more confident in our abilities as supervisors and know what to do whenever we find ourselves in the weeds.

Going against “the way things have always been done” in order to make a more meaningful impact (while also avoiding burnout) can be a big shift and it’s far easier to do with support and guidance.

Ready to join the conversation on being in the supervisor weeds in forensics?

There’s More, New Taboo Topics episodes will be published at the beginning of every month in 2023! Currently, we’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Anchor.

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