Best Practices Manual for New Supervisors

To become a supervisor requires knowledge of how to motivate employees, ability to communicate with others, and common sense. The success of the supervisor in the performance of its duties determines the success or the failure of the programs and objectives of the company. Our ability as supervisor is to obtain first-rate performance through others and is far more important than what you can do yourself. The attitude—as viewed by others—is critically important to obtaining excellent performance through our staff. The following are some guidelines that will provide new supervisors with good practices in different supervisory responsibilities.

I. Communication Skills“Communication is the act of exchanging information. It can be used to inform, command, instruct, assess, influence and persuade other people. In our business world, invariably there are times we wish we would have done or said things differently. That is why supervisors need to master their writing and oral communication skills. There are situations we need to avoid when communicating with employees. One of these would be communicate in a negative way. “Be sure that the content and tone of [any] document are appropriate for the audience.” (Rue, Bryans. 2004 pg. 46) We need to try to be positive, enthusiastic when we communicate to our staff. As supervisors, we will have to let the employees know that we are ready, willing, confident, and able to accept new responsibilities.

Good communication helps organizations and their employees achieve their goals. The ability to write and speak well becomes increasingly important as we develop our skills as supervisors. People put things on writing to create reports, letters, and e-mails. “The main basic purposes of business and administrative communication are to inform, to request or persuade and to build goodwill.” (Locker. 2006 pg. 27)A) Written CommunicationWhen a supervisor inform, he explains or tell the...