Enhancing managers'supervisory effectiveness: a promising model

Abstract

Purpose

To describe the contextual supervision (CS) model, and to invite interested researchers to study its effects in a wider range of applications across a variety of management fields.

Design/methodology/approach

The developer of the CS model summarizes how he refined and studied the original situational leadership approach to assist supervisory personnel in education to mentor teacher‐interns as they developed their classroom instructional skills.

Findings

The 15 years of accumulated CS findings have consistently identified several strengths and one lingering limitation with the model. Key strengths are that CS is intuitively appealing and relatively easy to learn and that it helps participants clearly conceptualize the entire supervisory process. The limitation is that there appears to be a small, but persistent, number of supervisors who, although trained in CS, tend to exhibit a mismatch of style with supervisee developmental level.

Practical implications

There is enough research evidence to suggest that the CS model has potential to be adapted and studied by managerial personnel across a variety of other supervisory areas; and that it could enhance supervisors’ mentoring of protégés engaged in learning and/or improving the skills and knowledge specific to their particular fields.

Originality/value

The author invites collaborative inquiry across disciplines in order to have scholars and practitioners consider applying the CS model in their mentoring activities; and also to study and to disseminate the results in order to add to the research base on CS.

Citation

Ralph, E.G. (2005), "Enhancing managers'supervisory effectiveness: a promising model", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 24 No. 3, pp. 267-284. https://doi.org/10.1108/02621710510584071