1• The Supervisor’s fob
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1. Supervisors should possess all five skills in order to be effective
managers.
2. Supervisors need to possess more technical skill than do middle
managers or executives.
3. Supervisors need about the same high level of human skills as do
other managers.
4. Supervisors need about the same amount of political skill as executives.
However, supervisors may need less political skill than do
middle managers.
5. Supervisors need fewer diagnostic skills than executives, and less
conceptual skill than do executives and middle managers.
THE NEW SUPERVISORY CHALLENGE
The job of a supervisor has always been both challenging and frustrating. Supervisors are constantly asked to raise productivity even under the most trying conditions. They are asked to accomplish results through people, many of whom are unenthusiastic about achieving organizational goals. In addition, supervisors are often asked to make do with aging equipment. Despite these demands supervisors generally do not participate in many of the financial rewards and privileges enjoyed by higher ranking managers.
As supervisors face the 1990s, they are confronted by forces that make the supervisor’s job even more challenging than in the past. Seven factors are particularly significant: increasing complexity of work; negative employee reaction to factory and office automation; increased number of difficult-to-supervise jobs; decline of the work ethic; rising expectations of workers; increased legal power of employees; and problems created by employee involvement programs. ⁸Figure 1-4 illustrates these challenges.
Increasing Complexity of Work. A visitor to a modern high school would be impressed by the technical complexity of many of the career-oriented courses. High school students learn to write their own computer programs and repair jet engines. Similarly, young people are performing tasks on the job which are much more complex than those performed by their parents at the peak of their careers. Jobs have become so specialized
⁸Several items in this list are from David S. Brown, “Rethinking the Supervisory Role,” Supervisory Management, November 1977, pp.2-l0. Although these observations were made more than 10 years ago, they remain current problems. Other items on the list are referenced below.
