Try to make the life of your delegating supervisors easier whenever possible. Below are suggestions of how you can do this.

Interacting with your supervisor

Remember, supervisors are usually happy to have a trainee under their supervision and may well have volunteered to do so, so don’t assume that your presence will be an annoyance. However, when you first meet your supervisor, try to judge their personality and adapt your style and behaviour accordingly. Perhaps ask around before the start of your seat and try to learn about their general demeanour, expectations and quirks (other trainees that have previously sat with the supervisor, or in their team, can be a valuable source of knowledge!).

In addition, keep supervisors informed of your capacity and progress and remind them in advance about any holidays, training sessions or graduate recruitment events that you have in the diary. Also make sure you seek their consent before requesting time off or signing up for training sessions or other commitments. If things get busy but your supervisor had consented in advance to your absence, you should be forgiven for being unavailable to help. If instead they were relying on you and hadn’t anticipated your absence, then this won’t reflect too well on you.

Make your supervisor’s life easier

Try to make your supervisor’s life as easy as possible. Thinking of ways to do so will reflect well on you (and they will probably be busier and more stressed out than you are). Start by coming in at the same time as your supervisor (unless you are told otherwise), always checking that there is nothing else you can help them with before leaving the office, and regularly checking your phone when you’re out of the office in case something urgent comes up.

If you are unsure of how to approach a particular task, provide different options/interpretations if possible so that they may be able to simply pick one; this shows that you have at least taken the time to think about the issue. Essentially, try to avoid them having to do your work for you. This ties in to using your supervisor’s time as efficiently as possible. For instance, if you are marking-up (i.e. correcting or amending) a long document and you have questions for your supervisor, tab the pages relating to your questions so that you can quickly refer to each (thus saving time when standing in front of them and actually asking those questions). If you are producing a long research note/report, perhaps provide a summary at the top that can be quickly digested.

Preferences

You can easily create a good impression by understanding, for instance, your supervisor’s formatting/structuring preferences for documents, the way they like things to be printed/presented and the length and detail they prefer for research assignments etc. Similarly, if you have been asked to deliver work for a partner, consider asking associates or that partner’s PA how that partner likes work to be presented. You might have to adapt your approach to work and your writing style to suit your supervisors until you have earned the right to impose your own style on others.

When things go wrong

When you realise you have made a mistake, always come clean immediately. Something that seems like a huge error to you may not matter at all to your supervisor or could be easily rectified. The fallout from a small mistake may become a lot worse if you try to hide it (not to mention the negative impact this can have on your reputation as a trainee).