Advice

The Unspoken Art of Supervision: What Master Chefs Know That Corporate Managers Don't

Three weeks ago, I walked into a Melbourne restaurant kitchen during the dinner rush and watched something extraordinary happen. The head chef – let's call him Marco – was supervising twelve staff members preparing 200+ covers without raising his voice once. No clipboards, no performance metrics, no weekly one-on-ones. Just pure, instinctive supervision that would make most corporate managers weep with envy.

That moment crystallised what I've been banging on about for fifteen years: we're teaching supervision completely backwards in the business world.

The Kitchen Truth

Here's what Marco understood that most supervisors don't: supervision isn't about watching people work. It's about creating conditions where people supervise themselves. When the apprentice chef started burning the garlic (again), Marco didn't swoop in with a corrective action plan. He simply moved closer, adjusted the heat with one finger, and said, "Feel that difference?"

The kid nodded. Problem solved. Forever.

Corporate Australia, meanwhile, would've scheduled a coaching session, documented the incident, and probably created a garlic-burning prevention matrix. We've turned supervision into bureaucracy when it should be choreography.

Why Everyone Gets This Wrong

Most supervisory training courses start with theory. Big mistake. They teach you about communication styles and performance frameworks before you've ever had to manage someone having a complete meltdown over a deadline.

I learned supervision the hard way – by stuffing it up spectacularly. Back in 2008, I was promoted to supervise a team of five trainers in Brisbane. Armed with fresh knowledge from an expensive course (which shall remain nameless), I implemented everything they taught me. Weekly check-ins. SMART goals. 360-degree feedback.

Within three months, two people had quit and the rest were updating their CVs.

The problem? I was supervising the process, not the people.

The Proximity Principle

Chefs know something we've forgotten: proximity matters more than process. Watch any experienced chef during service – they're constantly moving, sensing, adjusting. They don't need dashboards to know when someone's struggling. They feel it.

Last year, I worked with a manufacturing supervisor in Western Sydney who'd increased his team's output by 23% without changing a single system. His secret? He moved his desk from the office to the factory floor. Not groundbreaking stuff, but it worked because he could sense problems before they became crises.

Most supervisors today are managing spreadsheets, not people. They schedule time to "check in" with their team instead of being present when the actual work happens. It's like trying to conduct an orchestra via email.

The Ego Problem

Here's an uncomfortable truth: terrible supervisors often have the best intentions. They want to help so badly that they can't help themselves from helping. Every mistake becomes a teaching moment. Every success needs their fingerprints on it.

Great supervisors? They're comfortable being invisible.

I once watched a site foreman supervise a crew laying concrete for eight hours without giving a single direct instruction. Instead, he asked questions. "How's that corner looking?" "Think we need more time here?" "What do you reckon about the weather?"

The crew made better decisions than he would've imposed on them. And here's the kicker – they owned those decisions completely.

The Australian Way

We Australians have a natural advantage in supervision that we completely ignore in corporate training. We're culturally suspicious of authority figures who take themselves too seriously. We respect competence over credentials. We value straight talk over corporate speak.

Yet our leadership training programs are filled with American-style rah-rah nonsense about "empowering stakeholders to optimise synergistic outcomes."

Mate, just tell me if the job's getting done properly.

The Micro-Management Trap

Every new supervisor falls into this hole. They think supervision means knowing everything that's happening all the time. They create elaborate reporting systems and demand constant updates. They confuse being informed with being in control.

Real supervision is the opposite. It's creating clarity about outcomes, then trusting people to find their own path. When someone asks, "How should I handle this?" the best supervisors often respond with, "What do you think?"

Not because they're lazy. Because they understand that people support what they help create.

Technical Skills vs People Skills

Here's where most organisations get it completely wrong: they promote their best technical performers into supervisory roles, then act surprised when things go sideways. Being brilliant at your job doesn't automatically make you good at helping others do theirs.

The best supervisor I ever worked with was average at the technical work but exceptional at reading people. She could tell when someone was having relationship problems before they missed their first deadline. She knew which team members needed detailed instructions and which ones just needed to be pointed in the right direction.

That's not management training. That's emotional intelligence. And you can't learn it from a manual.

The Feedback Revolution

Corporate feedback has become so sanitised it's useless. We've created elaborate systems to avoid hurt feelings, when the kindest thing you can do is tell someone the truth quickly and directly.

Chefs give feedback in real-time. "Too much salt." "Perfect temperature." "Start again." No performance improvement plans. No documentation. Just immediate, honest feedback that helps people improve.

I worked with a supervisor in Adelaide who revolutionised his team's performance by stealing this approach. Instead of saving feedback for monthly reviews, he gave it immediately. "That report was excellent." "This section needs work." "Can you redo the conclusion?"

His team's work quality improved 40% in six months. Not because the feedback was harsh, but because it was timely and specific.

What Nobody Talks About

The hardest part of supervision isn't managing poor performers – it's managing good ones who could be great. Most supervisors are so busy firefighting with their problem children that they neglect their potential stars.

Great supervisors flip this script. They spend 70% of their time developing their best people and let natural consequences handle the rest. Sounds harsh, but it works. High performers want to work for supervisors who invest in excellence, not mediocrity.

The Time Investment Myth

New supervisors always complain they don't have time to supervise properly. "I'm too busy doing the actual work," they say. This is backwards thinking.

Good supervision creates time. When people understand what's expected and feel supported to deliver it, they need less oversight, not more. You invest time upfront to save time later.

Bad supervisors stay busy forever because they never teach people to work independently. They become the bottleneck in every decision and wonder why they're working sixty-hour weeks.

The Australian Context

We need to stop importing supervision models from cultures that don't match our workplace reality. American-style motivational supervision feels forced here. British-style formal hierarchy doesn't suit our egalitarian nature.

The best Australian supervisors I've worked with understand that respect is earned through competence and fairness, not position or title. They lead by example, speak plainly, and don't take themselves too seriously.

They also understand that Australians will follow you to hell and back if they trust you, but will passive-aggressively destroy you if they think you're a fraud.

The Real Skills

Forget everything you've learned about supervision styles and personality types. The skills that actually matter are simpler and harder to teach:

Presence. Being genuinely interested in your people's success, not just their output.

Timing. Knowing when to step in and when to step back.

Clarity. Explaining what success looks like without prescribing how to achieve it.

Patience. Understanding that people learn at different speeds and in different ways.

Courage. Having difficult conversations early instead of hoping problems will disappear.

These aren't management competencies. They're human competencies.

The Bottom Line

The best supervision happens when people barely notice they're being supervised. Like that chef in Melbourne, great supervisors create conditions for success, then get out of the way.

They understand that their job isn't to control outcomes – it's to develop people who can create those outcomes independently.

Most importantly, they know that supervision is about serving your team's success, not feeding your ego.

And yes, that's exactly as simple and as difficult as it sounds.

The kitchen doesn't lie. Neither should your supervision.