Maybe you don’t want to be a supervisor (and that’s okay)

Ask almost anyone in a job interview where they see themselves in three to five years, and you’ll hear some version of the same answer:

“Stable employment, a good company, room to grow and move up.”

It’s a good answer. It’s also the answer we’ve all been taught to give. In behavioral health, “moving up” usually means one thing: becoming a supervisor. More money, a better title, a seat in the meetings. It’s the next rung, so you reach for it.

But here’s a question almost nobody asks before they apply: do you actually want the job — or do you want what comes with it?

Those aren’t the same thing. And I learned that the hard way, on Halloween.

The interview

Many years ago, I interviewed someone on Halloween — dressed like a witch, because we had a theme that day. This guy sits down across the room, and I’m watching his body language. Super comfortable, confident, carrying himself well.

The interview goes great. He answers the scenario questions well, the supervision questions too — we were hiring for a supervisor. I grill him with follow-ups, and he holds strong. My interview partner and I both like him. We’re similar people, so we bring in a third interviewer who’s the opposite of us, just to check ourselves. All three of us agree.

On his first day, he’s supposed to do online training. I’m in the middle of building a new couch for one of the homes. He walks in, puts his backpack down, gets on the floor, and starts building. “You don’t have to tell me — I see where I’m needed.”

Music to my ears.

He finished his 90 days strong. Running the floor, doing his thing.

Then, around the one-year mark, the patterns started.

What it looked like

He wanted to be liked — by the residents and by the staff he was supervising. Every hard decision became, “It’s not my fault, management said this, so we have to do it.”

I don’t mind being the bad guy. But it created a bigger problem: staff and residents started skipping him and coming straight to me. Every conflict, every concern, every issue — he bounced it back up. So everyone figured, why not cut out the middleman?

We coached. A lot. Detailed plans: what skill we were working on, how we’d monitor it, how we’d know it was working. We met twice a week — once for the regular stuff, once for coaching.

Months into his second year, it still wasn’t working. I was stuck, and he didn’t seem bothered. So I finally asked: “Tell me what’s going on in your head. What’s working, what’s not?”

He said, “I don’t think I want to be a supervisor.”

My face did something. I’m not sure what.

He told me he’d always been floor staff, and that’s where he wanted to be — with the residents. “This supervising thing requires a part of me I don’t think I have — and I don’t think I want to have.” His real goal wasn’t supervision at all. It was clinical work.

After almost two years, I asked him what made it so hard to say sooner.

He said, “I didn’t know either. Something wasn’t adding up, and when you asked me just now, this is what came out.”

So I followed his lead: you want the floor? Pick a shift, day or night. And that’s where he was happy, for some time — until he moved on to a more acute program while finishing his counseling degree.

What supervision actually asks of you

From the outside, supervision looks like a bigger version of the job you already do. It is — and it isn’t. Some of what made you good comes with you, and it should. You don’t drop everything you knew the day you get the title. But a big part of supervision is a whole different job.

It asks you to:

• Disappoint people you like — and still show up the next day.
• Be the person decisions stop with, not the person who passes them along.
• Hold expectations when it would be easier to be liked.
• Watch other people do the work you love, while you handle the schedule, the documentation, the call-outs, and the conversations nobody wants to have.

Some people find that meaningful. Some people find it draining in a way no raise fixes. Neither one says anything about how good you are at this work.

Ask yourself before you apply

• What part of my job do I love most? If the answer is “being with the clients,” supervision will give you less of that, not more.
• Can I have a hard conversation with someone I like — and hold the line when they’re upset with me?
• Do I want this job, or do I want the title and the pay? Both are fair reasons. Just be honest about which one is driving.
• Five years from now, what do I actually want to be doing every day? Does this role get me closer, or just higher?

Up isn’t the only direction

In this field, growth gets talked about like a ladder. It’s more like a map.

I’ve wondered about this for years: why is moving up only ever vertical? Why don’t we talk about horizontal growth? If your agency has an education department and you have a teaching degree, why isn’t moving there “moving up”? If you’re a case manager in grad school, why can’t your growth plan say, plainly, “In two years, I want to be a clinician here”?

You can grow toward clinical work, like he did. You can become the person who trains and mentors new staff. You can specialize in a population, a program, or a skill set people come to you for. You can go back to school. Or you can get very good at the job you have, and become the person every supervisor wants on their shift.

None of those is a consolation prize.

The lesson I kept

That conversation changed how I hire and promote. I learned to ask about values, goals, and what someone actually wants before I say jump — and before I let them jump.

I learned to ask hard questions, because hard doesn’t mean bad. It’s just hard.

And I learned that sometimes people are great — just not great for the job at hand.

If you’re not sure you want to supervise, that’s not a weakness. It might be the most honest thing you know about yourself. Say it early. It’ll save you — and someone like me — a lot of time.

I’m Sara Tudor, founder of Grow2Guide. I write about the parts of behavioral health work nobody explains at orientation.