Supervisor Development System™
Your Supervisors Carry The Frontline Load. Equip Them To Hold It.
Most supervisors were promoted because they were good at frontline work. Few were given the training to lead it under intense, trauma-facing pressure. The Supervisor Development System™ builds that capacity.
Delivered live to your organization now, or on demand starting Q1 2027.
Two Ways To Bring It In
Available Now
Live Cohort For Your Organization
Delivered by both co-founders, virtual or on-site, scoped to your supervisors and your schedule.
Request A Proposal Launching Q1 2027
Asynchronous Course License
On-demand modules supervisors complete on their own schedule. Waitlist members get a discounted rate through their first two renewals.
Join The Waitlist Does this sound like your supervisors?
A performance issue sits for months. There is too much going on to open it, or the supervisor is afraid of losing one more person.
When an employee is in distress, their work lands on everyone else, or they get too little support for what they are carrying. Sometimes both.
Every new directive from leadership reaches the team as one more thing.
Two people miss the same deadline. One conversation happens. Everyone notices.
The complaint that reached HR was not news to anyone on that team.
None of this is a character flaw. It is what happens when people are handed authority over trauma-facing work without the skills to carry it. Those skills can be taught. (We have been teaching them in live rooms for years.)
Who You Are Working With
Both Of Us. Every Session.
Jessica Doering, PhD, and Lauren Spigelmyer, M.Ed., each spent over ten years doing frontline work with people in crisis and with trauma histories, and have supervised teams doing frontline work. They know the weight of both roles and how much supervisors matter to a healthy, functioning team. Today they work with leaders in community health, behavioral health, human services, education, legal services, and public safety to support teams carrying heavy work.
The Supervision Gap
How A Small Miss Turns Into An Organizational Cost
Most organizations teach supervisors the administrative side of the job. The human moments are left to instinct. Here is one example of how that goes.
One Example
1
It starts with
An unclear expectation or a missed responsibility.
→
2
Then
The conversation gets delayed, softened, or skipped.
→
3
Meanwhile
The rest of the team covers for it and starts to resent it.
→
4
Eventually
A director inherits a conflict, a risk, or a resignation.
→
5
The organization pays
In rework, turnover, and service capacity.
Swap in a missed deadline, a boundary nobody named, or a staff member in distress that no one knew how to approach. Same sequence. The system is built to interrupt the pattern.
Why This Is Different
There Is Plenty Of Supervisor Training Out There. Most Of It Assumes An Ordinary Workplace.
Your supervisors lead people who absorb client trauma every shift, and then absorb what their teams absorb. Those pressures are predictable, which means a program can be built around them. This one was.
Every module starts from how people function under sustained load, draws on the research on cumulative stress and moral injury in helping professions, and ends with something a supervisor can do on the next shift with the team they already have.
65%
of frontline supervisors were placed in the role for frontline performance or tenure rather than supervisory skill
23%
have never taken part in supervisor training of any kind
19%
less likely to report frequent burnout when trained for the role in the past year
Source: Gallup, When Good Frontline Workers Make Bad Supervisors
What We Design Around
·Supervisors taking pressure from leadership and from their team at the same time
·Secondary trauma that looks like a performance problem
·Vacancies that make every accountability conversation feel like a retention risk
·Moral injury when the work cannot be done the way it should be
·Crisis arriving mid-shift with no time to prepare
·Compliance demands that compete with the human work
The Twelve Modules
Twelve Modules, Built On The Core Competencies Leaders In High-Pressure Organizations Need
We started with the places where high-intensity organizations lose capacity and built a module for each one, in the order supervisors meet them.
Inside Every Module
Built to change what happens on the next shift. A full module takes 20 to 45 minutes.
1
Short Teaching Segment
10 to 12 minutes, as video, audio, or reading. Short enough to finish between two meetings.
2
Scenario Practice
A realistic situation with a decision to make. Supervisors choose, then see why each option plays out the way it does.
3
Conversation Tools
Openers, response maps, and planners that supervisors adapt to how they already talk. Tools to think with, in their own words.
4
Field Tool And One Thing To Try
A one-page tool tied to the conversation, and one action to take with their own team that week.
The Four Parts
We grouped the twelve modules into four parts, and the order is deliberate. A new supervisor needs to get steady in the role before anything else will stick. Clear expectations come next, because you cannot hold people to a standard they never heard. Performance and conflict come third, once there is a standard to point to. Support comes last because holding a standard and supporting someone in distress at the same time is the hardest thing on this list. Each card below shows the modules in that part and what a supervisor can do once they have finished it.
01
Part 1 · Three modules
Enter The Role
Use authority without losing connection, overfunctioning, or becoming reactive.
Promoted From The Team Or New To The Team
Two entry paths: leading former peers, or arriving from outside and earning the room.
Steady In The Moment
Staying regulated when someone is angry, defensive, in distress, or demanding an answer now.
Know What Is Yours To Carry
What the supervisor owns, what belongs to leadership, and what belongs to the staff member.
02
Part 2 · Three modules
Create Clarity And Ownership
Reduce confusion, dependency, preventable conflict, and firefighting.
Setting Clear Expectations
Outcomes, ownership, authority, deadlines, and what good work looks like, said out loud.
Building A Supervision Rhythm
Predictable check-ins and access boundaries so the supervisor is available without being on call.
Delegating For Shared Ownership
Handing work off so it does not come back.
03
Part 3 · Four modules
Address Performance And Conflict
Intervene before frustration, workarounds, and risk pile up.
Diagnose The Miss
Sort clarity, skill, capacity, resources, motivation, conduct, and system barriers before choosing a response.
Accountability Before Crisis
Open the conversation early, name the impact, set the next step, and follow through.
Defensive, Angry, Or Shut-Down Reactions
Hold the conversation when it goes badly, without retreating, rescuing, or escalating.
Employee Concerns And Conflict
What to do with what staff bring to you, and with conflict between them.
04
Part 4 · Two modules
Support And Contain Pressure
Keep compassion intact without becoming the therapist, the fixer, or the one who passes pressure down.
Support Without Becoming The Therapist Or Fixer
Support a staff member in distress with limits that protect them, the team, and you. The sample below comes from this module.
When Everything Is Urgent
Make priorities and tradeoffs visible so pressure from above does not become a silent demand for more.
Look Inside
A Peek Inside the Supervisor Development System™
The sample coaching script walks a supervisor through the conversation with a frontline staff member who has just taken an intense disclosure. It is one component of one module, at the level of detail supervisors receive throughout. The engagement overview shows how a live cohort runs inside your organization, from the first briefing to the final report.
From Prior Engagements
What Leaders Say
96%
Rated prior Five Ives™ leadership training useful or very useful
93%
Rated satisfaction 4 or 5 out of 5
100%
Said they intended to apply the content
You nailed this training. Resonant with the work, dialed into our biggest struggles.
Statewide Child Advocacy Leader
Leadership cohort
They meet you where you are, customize what they deliver, and leave you with strategies your staff will actually use.
Jeniffer Potter, M.Ed.
Director of Education Supports, Thrive to Five · Lancaster, PA
This information can be applied in any setting. It will help me support my employees after a traumatic event.
Community Health Center Leader
Arizona
Participant feedback from prior Five Ives™ leadership engagements. These describe the live work this system is built from.
Available Now
The Live Cohort, Scoped To Your Organization
We deliver this ourselves, to your supervisors, around your shift coverage. That is also why we take on a limited number of cohorts each year.
Who delivers it
Jessica and Lauren, together, for every session.
Format
Live virtual on a weekly, every-other-week, or monthly cadence. On-site runs as a one- or two-day intensive at your location.
Scheduling
Session blocks offered at more than one time so supervisors on every shift get the same content.
What supervisors keep
Field tools, conversation guides, and scenario work built from the pressures your organization actually faces.
Investment
Scoped to supervisor count and format, stated in the proposal. Agreement, invoice, and W-9 provided.
What it is priced against
One preventable resignation. One complaint that became an investigation. One team that stopped telling you what was wrong.
Want the full shape of the engagement before you ask for a proposal?
Download The Engagement Overview (PDF) Launching Q1 2027
The Asynchronous Course License
The same twelve modules, on demand. Supervisors complete them on their own schedule, and the 12-month organizational license covers every supervisor you have now and every one you hire during the year.
Waitlist members hear first and receive a discounted rate on the license, held through the first two renewals.
Joining the waitlist is free and carries no obligation.
Questions
What Leaders Ask Us First
Supervisors in any organization where frontline staff regularly face trauma, crisis, or chronic stress. That includes community health centers, behavioral health and SUD providers, hospitals, human services and direct-service nonprofits, early childhood and K-12 education, legal services, and public safety. Built for new and experienced supervisors who need supports on the four key compentency areas addressed in the SDS.
Same twelve modules. The live cohort is delivered by Jessica and Lauren to your supervisors, scoped to your organization, and available now. The asynchronous course is a 12-month organizational license supervisors complete on their own schedule, launching Q1 2027. Many organizations will do both: a live cohort for the supervisors they have today, then the license for everyone hired after.
Session blocks can be offered at more than one time so supervisors across shifts get the same content. We confirm cohort structure and timing with you before the agreement is finalized.
By agreement and invoice. We provide the agreement, invoice, W-9, and ACH or check instructions, plus whatever documentation your procurement process needs.
Yes. The annual license includes onboarding new supervisors during the license year. You do not buy it again every time someone steps into the role.
No. This teaches supervisory judgment and behavior under pressure. Your policies, employment-law guidance, HR compliance training, investigations, and clinical protocols remain the responsibility of your HR and legal team.
Email hello@fiveives.com with your sector, rough supervisor count, and the supervision problem you most need solved. We answer by email.
Built By People Who Know The Work
We Have Been On Both Sides Of That Conversation
Between us, more than a decade on the frontlines of trauma-facing work and years in the supervisor seat, responsible for teams doing it. We know what it costs a team when a supervisor does not know what to say, and we know what it is like to be the supervisor searching for the words. This system is what we wish we had been handed when we started supervising teams carrying heavy work.
Jessica Doering, PhD
Co-Founder, Five Ives™ · Northern Kentucky (Greater Cincinnati)
Lauren Spigelmyer, M.Ed.
Co-Founder, Five Ives™ · Phoenix
Equip The People Holding The Frontline Together
Request a proposal for a live cohort, or join the waitlist for the Q1 2027 license.
Request A Proposal Join The Waitlist 