Essential Skills for Supervisors



To successfully complete this exercise, review the material concerning supervisors essential skill sets.



Current theorists believe that supervisors are involved in a wide variety of activities. These activities require specific skills that may not fit neatly into the classic supervisory skills. The classic list of management skills include technical, human relations, conceptual, and decision$-$making skills. Later theorist reconceptualized these skills as those involved in task$-$related, people$-$related, and change$-$related activities. Learning and practicing the skills presented in the text are essential to become an effective supervisor.



You are a Business Administration student, and your instructor has given you an assignment concerning the skills supervisors need to practice and perfect in order to be effective supervisors. You have made arrangements to spend several afternoons observing a variety of supervisors at a local organization. While there, you take notes of what various supervisors are doing and what others have to say about them. In order to prepare your assignment, you now need to relate your observations to skills discussed in class.