It's all new and different

Within the past week I've learned alot about my new environment- mainly exhibited by my supervisors. There are four supervision styles that I've heard mentioned a number of times and every supervisor falls into one predominantly. Winston & Creamer came up with an assessment of these styles and I've found them described well by Virginia Tech as:

Authoritarian - based on the belief that staff members require constant attention
Laissez Faire - based on the desire to allow staff members freedom in accomplishing job responsibilities
Companionable - based on a friendship-like relationship
Synergistic - a cooperative effort between the supervisor and the staff member

In my new situation I have three supervisors, one authoritarain, one laissez faire and one companionable. What did I into? Coming from a place where my supervisors were synergestic, which is held as the ideal supervision style, this is a huge change.

I can easily deal with the laissez faire supervisor as that is the styles I experienced while working for pastors. However, the challenge is getting the information I need to do my job being that I'm new.

With the companionable supervisor I will need to step into the supervisor role instead of being the employee. Already I'm setting the professional boundary between us and not allowing this person to be my friend. The challenge will be not blowing up on them when they ask inappropriate questions like: are you homesick? Sorry, none of your business, you haven't earned that place in my life, especially since we don't interact in a work role more than a couple hours a week.

While interviewing I knew that having an authoritarian (or micromanaging) supervisor would be difficult for me. However I didn't know it would be this bad. It's very hard to never be doing anything right in your supervisors eyes and being treated like you have no professional or work experience.

The various supervision styles I'm learning to work with is just one of the new pain in the butt things about being here. The other is the lack of information I'm experiencing. My supervisors must think I have the superhero power of reading minds because when I do get an assignment, I don't get the information to do it. Partially this can be chalked up to the learning process of working together as a team, however you can't assume that I know how to get paid (I needed to ask after I didn't get compensation for my time here in June) or that a resident is moving in today instead of two weeks ago as they were supposed to and I learn that they are coming from another student.

No wonder why these positions were still open, there are more challenges than I expected with my work experience, I can't imagine what someone coming straight out of undergrad would be going through. Especially since I'm already counting down until I can move on!