Chapter 10: Learning To Wear Many Hats: Supervisor, Manager, and Leader in Student Affairs

Student affairs (SA) professionals often say that they accidentally ended up working in SA (Biddix, 2011). Whether they intended this career path, once in the profession, there is a common theme among how they develop as supervisors. The pathways in the SA profession happens late in the college experience, many master’ s students and new(er) professionals have limited time to observe supervision, leadership, and management in action let alone opportunities to distinguish between the three. With various routes to entering SA, not all professionals have received formal training in the various skills they need to utilize daily in the jobs (e.g., supervising, budgeting, or advising skills). Moreover, some graduate SA preparation programs do not specifically teach or focus on supervision skill acquisition. This lack of emphasis means that many new graduates are not prepared to “hit the ground running” when they enter SA positions. Instead, new professionals must learn these skills on the job. In addition, these things are often missing from SA graduate programs. As a result, learning to supervise happens on the job. Among the many aspects of supervision that inform daily work, understanding the difference between supervising, leading, and managing can be tough to navigate. Many new professionals feel they are not adequately prepared to be supervisors (Davis, 2004; Waple, 2006; Winston & Creamer, 1997) and would have liked to have had more course work and training in their graduate preparation programs (McGraw, 2011).