Pacifico Investigations & Consulting

Leadership & Assertive Supervision

Course Outline

I. EXPECTED OUTCOME FOR STUDENTS

Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:

A. Clarify the supervisor’s role as a leader
B. Effectively build teams
C. Continue to develop skills to make effective and efficient decisions
D. Consider the overall effect and implications of your decisions
E. Develop assertive and confident decision making
F. Clarify the disciplinary process
G. Utilize old and new skills in practical examinations
H. Prepare a performance evaluation
I. Conduct a counseling session

II. CONTENT
A. ASSERTIVE LEADERSHIP
1. Break-Out Groups with group presentation
a. Define Leadership
b. Define Management
c. Is their a difference? If so, what is it?
d. What makes leaders effective?
e. What makes leaders ineffective?
2. Leadership versus Management
a. What is the difference? – Personal Power & Influence
b. Authority
c. 80/20 rule
d. real leaders assume power in the vacuum (80% taken)
e. some leaders wear the title but provide no leadership (20% given)
f. Use 100%
3. Responsibility
a. Accept responsibility for your decisions and actions
b. Accept responsibility for your subordinate’s decisions and actions
c. Accept responsibility for your and your subordinate’s failures
d. Challenge Conventional Wisdom
i. “All employees are created equally”
ii. Treating each fairly does not mean equally
iii. Utilize Talents where they are best suited
iv. This does not imply allowing laziness as a cover
v. “With enough training every employee will exceed”
• Understand your employee’s assets and limitations

Page 1! of 5!
www.derekpacifico.com
 Pacifico Investigations & Consulting
Leadership & Assertive Supervision
Course Outline

• Don’t set your employee’s up for failure by “equally and fairly”

assigning tasks
• “Established policies and rules must be followed”
• Effective leaders are willing to develop better ideas and change with
the times – Remember, dinosaurs didn’t make it.
• Write new and effective mission parameters and execute new ideas
4. New Philosophy
a. Motivate your employees by raising the bar
i. Employees don’t want it easy
ii. Expect excellence and you’ll get it.
iii. Discipline in private, praise in public!
• Seek out and reward good work
iv. Challenge your employees
• Offer them the process to make things better with solutions
v. Empower your employees
• Put them in charge of change
• Sell them on changes and workloads by having them be part of the
decision making process
vi. Lead, guide and develop your employees
• Provide guidance
• Set the example
• Check and verify is not micromanagement

B. CONFIDENT LEADERSHIP
1. Goes back to the 80/20 rule
a. Stop second guessing everything you do
b. Just because there is a disagreement doesn’t make you wrong
c. General Colin Powell leadership rule #1, “Being responsible sometimes means
pissing people off.”
2. Take responsibility for failures, give praise to others for success
a. Your bosses know that the success of any organization lives and dies by its leaders –
DON’T SELF PROMOTE.
3. Don’t rule by committee
a. Take input and consider options, but ultimately you are in charge
b. Make timely and appropriate decisions that best suit the mission
i. If you wait for all the information, it will be too late

Page 2! of 5!
www.derekpacifico.com
 Pacifico Investigations & Consulting
Leadership & Assertive Supervision
Course Outline

C. FRIENDLY LEADERSHIP
1. Friendship versus leadership
2. Being nice and friendly and presenting a continuously positive message is absolutely
necessary.
3. Don’t confuse being friendly with being friends – don’t let the line between supervisor
and subordinate become so fuzzy no one can tell who is in charge
4. People want to be led by their bosses and want to feel comfortable knowing someone is
absolutely in charge – especially leaders themselves!

D. ASSERTIVE SUPERVISION – Where the rubber meets the road.

1. Things You Must Know
a. Know the mission goals
i. If the goals are ambiguous, define new ones
b. Know the laws and policies that govern your organization
ii. Make sure you can legally do what you want to do
c. Know your leader’s expectations
iii. If you aren’t sure, ASK!
2. Things you must do
a. Clearly explain your expectations
i. People want to know what the rules are
3. Define up front the do’s and don’ts
a. It’s okay to have personal preferences and dislikes
b. Let your staff know what your pet peeves are
c. Let you staff know what impresses you
4. Confront Difficult & Underachieving Employees
a. Have a quick and defining meeting early on
b. Set clear and specific expectations
i. Ask for compliance
ii. Explain the outcome of not achieving compliance (Know your laws and
policies)
iii. Document the conversation in written form – “Letter of Discussion” (LOD)
iv. If it isn’t written down, it didn’t happen.
v. If negative performance continues – “Performance Improvement Plan” (PIP)
vi. If LOD and PIP were ineffective, further discipline is required and must be
followed through.
c. If supervisors are unwilling or have failed to confront underachieving performance of
subordinates, it should be reflected in their evaluation


Page 3! of 5!
www.derekpacifico.com
 Pacifico Investigations & Consulting
Leadership & Assertive Supervision
Course Outline

E. EVALUATIONS
1. Regular and Confidential
a. Honesty is key
b. Negative messages must be delivered with tact, but MUST BE DELIVERED
c. Shall be performance based, not personality based
i. We don’t judge people, we evaluate their work performance
ii. Overlooking negative performance is a failure of leadership
iii. Good employees want to improve, they won’t if you don’t help them
iv. Negative comments on a quarterly or yearly evaluation should not be a
surprise.

F. ETHICS BASED DECISION MAKING SKILLS

1. Legal, ethical and moral decisions
a. Truth to Power
b. Doing what is right versus what may be popular
c. Organizations come undone when ethics are optional

G. TIME MANAGEMENT
1. Organization is the key
a. There are multiple methods of organization
i. Pick the one right for you – BUT PICK ONE!
b. Goal setting is an old idea that doesn’t need fixing
i. Set reasonable and attainable goals
ii. Strive to surpass those goals legally, morally and ethically
c. Prioritize
i. Understanding the mission allows you to effectively prioritize
ii. Having daily autonomy (employee empowered decision making) allows for
creativity and prioritizing based on one’s skill set
2. Control Yourself
a. Minimize useless chatter and distractions that will keep you from attaining your goal
b. As a supervisor, this means watching the little things and keeping an eye on the staff
to ensure they are on target
3. Control Your environment
a. Overwhelming feelings often result of the physical environment
b. Reduce clutter
c. Organize the project and the individual tasks if “overwhelming” is a recurring theme
d. FOCUS – Find Our Calm Under Stress


Page 4! of 5!
www.derekpacifico.com
 Pacifico Investigations & Consulting
Leadership & Assertive Supervision
Course Outline

4. Procrastination
a. Due to lack of prioritizing, self-control, environmental factors and lack of FOCUS
b. Supervisors must determine whether the failure is training related or motivational
problems
i. Is the employee right for the job?
ii. Is the job right for the employee?
iii. Is this a purely performance based problem that requires a different solution?

III. METHODS OF INSTRUCTION

A. Lecture
B. Guided Discussion
C. Work Groups
D. Videos / DVD
E. PowerPoint Presentation
F. In Class Practical Exercises

IV. EVALUATION
A. Methods of evaluation
1. Critical thinking and analysis questions from practical exercises
2. In-class mock counseling sessions using role-playing
3. In-class performance evaluation writing exercise
4. Public Speaking exercises

Page 5! of 5!
www.derekpacifico.com