Customer Reviews

The New Supervisor: How To Thrive In Your First Year As A Manager, Fifth Edition

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This book is loaded with practical advise covering a very broad range of key areas including: power; relating with subordinates, superior and peers; managing stress; communications; planning and organizing; directing and controlling; delegation; motivating by enriching the job; interviewing; training; meeting leadership; problem solving; making presentations; team-building; and self-development. There are helpful chapter summaries and exercises. This is a highly useful work, especially for those just getting into the role and also of value to more seasoned supervisors. Reviewed by Gerry Stern, founder, Stern & Associates, author of Stern's Sourcefinder: The Master Directory to HR and Business Management Information & Resources, Stern's CyberSpace SourceFinder, and Stern's Compensation and Benefits SourceFinder.

This book offers a very cliched, narrow vision of supervising people that emphasizes power over teamwork, delegation over coordination. Other advice is very commonsensical - "Make to-do lists," etc. It is not a sophisticated analysis, but rather, the transcript of a superficial one-day workshop.

I have used this book for years (since the 1990's) and trained hundreds of supervisors with it. As with any tool, it is not the end all for training materials, but a useful adjunct for use with practical experience and common sense. Remember, there was a time when the only things supervisors had to know were planning, organizing, directing and controlling. Today's managers need so much more. This is a very good book to start discussions on those other areas of supervision. Well worth the price and worth keeping as a useful reference.

Many new supervisors would find difficulties in their new working situation. After changing to a new position, they may not know how to handle the relationship with their subordinates and their boss, and even may not know how to handle their work. If you are one of them, ¡§The New Supervisor¡¨ will give you some insights.

In this book, it suggests that being a new supervisor, new attitudes toward their job, subordinates, and their boss are needed. The authors suggest that a new supervisor must understand that his role has been changed; he needs to supervise his subordinates and work with them to achieve the goals of the organization.

In fact, I am only a university student, the recommendations to new supervisors seems not applicable and practical to me. However, I still gained some insights from this book. The suggestions about stress management are most useful to me. Authors recommend six stress management principles to readers: 1) Do not hasten to react with a matter that arises abruptly, it is better to take some time to think it in details and react. 2) Do not be a clever-clog, since others may have lots of great ideas. 3) Get along with others, and try to compromise with different opinion. 4) Do not do the work at the last minutes; this can help in relieving pressure. 5) Good planning can have a clear direction to future; this can reduce chance of getting stress. 6) Keep a happy mood can increase your efficiency and effectiveness in working. Yes, I do find those suggestions are practical not only to working people with great pressure; also students like me can apply them to manage my pressure in my studies.

After reading this book, as I know that my relative who is a supervisor having problems in managing his subordinates, so I told him what I¡¦ve learnt from this book, and ask him try to find some useful recommendations. Actually, he did not delegate the work to his subordinates properly, so he has great pressure in handling all of the jobs. When he understood it is important and it is his responsibilities to supervise his staff and work with them together to complete the tasks, in order to attain the goals of the company. He tried to adopt some recommendations from this book, e.g. communicate with other department heads and his subordinates; delegate the work to appropriate subordinates, this help to increase the morale of his staff; and he will also express his appreciation to his subordinates if needed, which improve the relationships between him and his subordinates.

After adopting those recommendations, he started to understand how to work with his position ¡V supervisor. And he enjoys his job now.

This book really gives lots of constructive ideas to supervisors, but the organization of the contents is not very well. Since the authors repeated and repeated similar ideas in the same chapters, it bored the readers and it is better to write in a simpler way.

But it is still a book which will useful to people who are the ¡§beginner¡¨ of a supervisor. You are one of them? Find new and practical ideas from ¡§The New Supervisor¡¨ You may find it useful.

Written by Ng Shuk Yee Shirley from City University of Hong Kong, Department of Marketing

Had to buy this book for a class and the content is easy to read and easy to relate to being a first time supervisor. The book came in excellent condition. It did take longer than expected for shipping. It took almost 3 weeks to get here. Luckily I ordered it a while before classes started because if I would have ordered it any later I would have missed the first assignment from the book.

If you are a new supervisor or will be promoted as a supervisor in near future, you may find this book ¡§The New Supervisor¡¨ is useful for you.

This book covered a wide range of areas that a new supervisor needs to concern and make notice, including: a new attitude toward the job, the subordinate, and the boss; supervisors¡¦ relations with their coordinates; stress management, effective communications; planning and organizing; directing and controlling; delegation; motivation; interviewing; training; good meeting; problem solving; presentations; team building; and self development. The author gives advices on each area and there are chapter summaries provided which recap the important points for the readers.

The most important thing for the new supervisors is that they need to understand their new role; they have to supervise their subordinates to achieve the goals instead of doing the job themselves. They need to trust their subordinates¡¦ abilities and motivate them to do the job. Therefore, appropriate level of delegation and motivation is good. They also need to trust their boss and share the burden with their boss and remember not to create any extra problems to their boss. Treat the boss as the way you want the subordinates to treat you. It is a good guideline for the new supervisors to think of.

The new supervisors also need to keep good relations with supervisors in different departments and have an effective communications among them. They should work cooperatively to achieve the common goals. This can help to facilitate the efficiency and effectiveness of the work in an organization.
There are some important skills that are required for the new supervisors such as leadership skill, interviewing skill, and problem solving skill. They are all included in this book.

Although I¡¦m not a new supervisor, this book still provides some insights to me. This book enhances my knowledge about what a supervisor needs to do and his roles. Moreover, I think some of the contents of this book are useful for all people and not only for new supervisors. For example, the six principles for handling stress mentioned in this book are useful for all people including me because everyone would be under stress in facing this challenging and highly competitive world. In addition, problem solving skill is also useful to me, the author mentioned eight steps to solve a problem, including 1) identify the problem 2) search useful information 3) find out the origin of the problem 4) list out all possible alternatives 5) choose the best solution 6) apply the solution to the problem 7) mark down the results 8) see whether the problem is really solved. I would try to use this problem solving skill when I face problems.

Since I¡¦m a university student, and most of my coursework are in a team base, the chapter that about the team building is also quite useful to me. The author suggests some criteria for developing a successful team and what the team members should do in a team. All these give me insights about how to be a good team player and how the team can work more efficiently and effectively.

The last chapter of this book, self-development and evaluation also gives me some insights for my personal development and understand myself better.

If you are a new supervisor, this is a useful book for guiding you. However, if you are not a new supervisor, you can still get some benefits through reading this book.