Supervisor, Manager, Leader: The Basics of Being a Boss

by Mike Kraus

be aware of your responsibilities.

Place the list

d...

bulletin board in front of my desk (or any location that is “in your face”...

handwritt...

“Should you be doi...

responsibility list will be your foundation for your time management.

No matter how good you are at keeping your calendar in line with your responsibilities, you must reevaluate and prioritize at the beginning of each day.

Whatever is left undone at the end of the day will get reevaluated the next morning against the calendar and associated distractions and emergencies of that day. That’s reality.

regularly marking out time in the day for things such as returning emails and voice mails, visiting with and checking on the welfare of my people, and—imagine this—quiet office time,

once a week to have lunch with my

my team, this is one key to success.

personal priority,

One person can only accomplish so much. As a result, if we don’t delegate, we’re not maximizing the potential of our organizations.

Delegation is an extremely valuable tool—when properly used.

If you don’t set clear expectations and parameters, you will end up using more time and effort in correcting a poor result or in frustration doing the project or job yourself. And worse yet, you’ll inadvertently frustrate or discourage the person to whom you delegated the project.

Pick the right person

remember not to overload your people with delegated assignments. Be aware of their workloads.

“Is this program even relevant or necessary, or are we just wasting our time and money on a program simply because we’ve always had it?”

pay attention to their people’s workloads.

monitor the progress without micromanaging.

without interfering with the creative flow of the group or the empowerment and development of the individuals.

Managing budgets is clearly an important part of both public- and private-sector organizations. However, in the public sector, we’re talking about the budgeting of taxpayer dollars.

needs the ability to apply the skill of conflict resolution when dealing with the people of an organization.

the intent of constructive debate is to encourage members to voice and actively debate all points of view, with the intended result of reaching the best decision for the organization.

one of the most important skills for a manager to possess is that of managing change.

Change must and will occur; it’s a simple fact.

Once we see that there is really nothing for us to personally fear,

we usually open our minds and begin supporting the proposed change.

“Change before you have to.” This is important to remember. Change from within the organization puts you and your people in the driver’s seat, as opposed to externally driven change that forces us to change without input.

understand why we do what we do.

who actually needs to be a leader or show leadership characteristics? In my opinion, anyone who is responsible for seeing that employees meet the daily mission and work to attain the vision of the organization must be a leader.

anyone reading this book reports to or takes direction from someone.

leaders can’t do it all.

need to have the ability to harness the knowledge, skills, abilities, and creativeness of those they oversee to meet the mission and attain the vision of the organization. This means that supervisors and managers at all levels need to be leaders.

you truly need to be a leader.

most organizations leave the leadership aspect out of their training programs, or they wait until an employee is promoted to a supervisor or manager position and then maybe—and I do mean maybe—they begin an attempt to develop that person into a leader.

Leadership knowledge, skills, and abilities take years to learn, practice, and master.

those of us who have been given the responsibility to oversee employees must inspire those same employees to accomplish the established goals and objectives that lead to successfully achieving the respective visions of our organizations.

“The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined efforts of each individual.”

informal leaders without rank or title are indispensable in any organization. They are usually the glue that holds everything together.

An organization needs both leaders and hardworking, loyal employees to be successful.

an individual must have the desire to become a leader, not just the capability.

those who are interested in promoting to supervisory and management positions within an organization also want to be good leaders. The problem is that no one has really taken the time to teach them what leadership is.

To make matters worse, many organizations don’t even teach supervisory or managerial skills to their people, much less leadership concepts.

How does a capable individual with the desire to become an effective leader educate themselves if their company doesn’t promote the concept?

Read all you can about the subject.

learn from both good and bad examples in your workplace.

Practice, practice, practice!

you, you’ll

Integrity