5 Traits to Look for Next Time You Hire a Supervisor

Like good frontline employees, every good supervisor is unique.

The best supervisors come with some common traits that make them succeed. Even better, they often have the ability and willingness to learn more and become better.

And those are some of the top traits you want to look for when hiring a supervisor.

Find Supervisor Traits Internally or Externally

Before you bring on a new supervisor, you’ll want to consider if you should hire from within or outside the organization.

Six in ten managers are promoted from within, while the other 40% are external hires, according to a Joblist study.

Managers promoted from within:

• Are more likely to report feeling supported by their teams
• Find it easier to lead
• Earn a higher salary, and
• Feel they have a highly productive team.

Separately, the majority of managers hired externally also:

• Feel supported by their new teams
• Find it easy to lead, and
• They also indicate it’s easier to gain the respect of their team.

How Employees Feel about New Supervisors

While the majority of both internal and external hires for supervisor roles feel comfortable leading new teams, employees have feelings about who you hire as their supervisor.

Two-thirds prefer to be managed by someone who was promoted internally within their company rather than someone hired from the outside, the Joblist study found. More than 70% believed promoting candidates internally is better for scaling a business.

5 Top Supervisor Traits

Here’s a checklist of traits you can use the next time you need to find the perfect person for a supervisor role:

Supervisor Trait 1: Adaptability

You want leaders who can adapt to a changing business environment, employee attitudes and responsibilities.

A stubborn manager can cause all sorts of problems, especially as the workforce includes different generations who have different values from their predecessors.

Supervisor Trait 2: Problem-Solving Skills

In some ways, a wealth of technical experience is less important than an ability to learn on the fly and handle all the new and unexpected problems supervisors face. So while adaptability is important, so are the soft skills to manage change and people who experience it.

For that reason, more companies than ever are changing their emphasis to skills-based hiring when recruiting and hiring supervisors.

Supervisor Trait 3: Ability to Listen

Recruiters know to look for managers who can communicate. But it’s just as — if not more — important for managers to seek out communication from employees, respond to criticism and gather input from subordinates.

The best part: You can vet listening skills through interviews by asking supervisor candidates to recount things you’ve said or explained.

Supervisor Trait 4: People Skills

It may seem like a no-brainer, but many companies still don’t give people skills enough weight. On the contrary, some companies are giving it all the weight with personality hires.

Either way, it’s well established that employees don’t quit companies, they quit bosses — and workers are more motivated when they respect the person they’re working for.

Supervisor Trait 5: Self-Confidence

You want to hire managers with strong people skills, but you’ll also want to make sure they trust themselves and their decisions.

Find candidates who are bold about their decisions, even the failed ones from which they learned.

What Makes a Great Manager

Once you have ideal supervisors in place, help them gain the skills and knowledge to become great leaders.

In one survey by Zety, employees pinpointed the skills, behaviors and characteristics of the best leaders they’d ever worked for. The most important qualities of a great supervisor — regardless of whether they were hired from within or externally — from the study included a manager who:

• Listens to their voices and factors their ideas and concerns into their decisions
• Gives meaningful and balanced feedback
• Makes sure team members have enough autonomy to make decisions
• Cares about their employees’ work-life balance
• Is honest and trustworthy
• Has a positive attitude and a good sense of humor
• Supports the team members and has their back
• Has a clear vision for the team, and
• Is confident, displays strong leadership, interpersonal, and decision-making skills.

Article originally published by HRMorning.com on March 27, 2025. Written by Michele McGovern.