The 21st Century Supervisor
Book

The 21st Century Supervisor

Nine Essential Skills for Developing Frontline Leaders

Brad Humphrey and Jeff Stokes
Jossey-Bass, 2000
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Editorial Rating

6

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Overview
  • Inspiring

Recommendation

Definitely designed more like a textbook than a manifesto, this volume bills itself as the only supervisory training book you’ll ever need to deal with today’s issues and skills. Consultants Brad Humphrey and Jeff Stokes’ punctuate their book with illustrative graphs, chapter wrap-up questions and lots of notes in highlighted bold type. Their tone of voice would fit well into many classrooms as well as corporate offices. This wide-ranging book covers the basics and offers very complicated productivity analysis, worker evaluation protocols and even an initial primer on how computer applications can help your productivity. For the manager or supervisor who’s just testing the deep waters of management theory, getabstract recommends this fairly easy first step into the deep end. The authors suggest that an organization’s supervisors should all read a chapter and then deal with the questions and exercises in a discussion group. That’s the supervisory skill equivalent of "Okay, everybody in the pool!"

Summary

Essential Skills for Frontline Leaders

Organizations can transform their supervisors into professional leaders and realize greater long-term results if they encourage supervisors to develop nine core skills. According to surveys and field experience, these are the skills that organizations most want their future supervisors to have. The nine essential skills include: communication skills, coaching skills, team skills, project management skills, computer skills, continuous improvement skills, writing skills, business analysis skills and resource management skills.

Supervisors have long been the backbone of most organizations. Their leadership is often the difference between getting work accomplished or not meeting schedules. They are the buffers between upper management and frontline employees, serving as human barometers for both groups. Both professional and personal changes mean that supervisors must have more knowledge in the twenty-first century. Several factors drive these changes:

  • Because of the Internet, communication growth is skyrocketing.
  • Workers are much more diverse.
  • Workers are less loyal to a single company.
  • Customers...

About the Authors

Brad Humphrey  and Jeff Stokes  are cofounders of the Pinnacle Performance Group, a training and consulting firm specializing in team development, leadership and management skills, and supervisory training. Their Web site is www.pinnacle-performance.com.

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