Purpose of this Supervision Blog

Supervision is the activities carried out by supervisors to oversee the productivity and progress of employees who report directly to the supervisors. For example

  • Chief executive officers supervise those who report directly to the chief executives
  • Middle-managers supervise first-level supervisors
  • First-level supervisors supervise entry-level employees

Supervision is a management activity and supervisors typically are considered to have a management role in the organization.

This blog helps you improve your supervision by providing articles, opinions, commentary and many related resources. The blog is for a general audience, including beginners and those advanced in supervision.

The benefits of high-quality supervision are many, including:

  1. More meaningful and successful relationships between the supervisor and direct reports. (Research suggests that one of the biggest reasons that employees quit their jobs is due to poor relationships with their supervisors.)
  2. More commitment, ownership and participation among employees regarding their roles and responsibilities, when their supervisors effectively delegate to their employees.
  3. Higher performance among employees, especially among the supervisor’s direct reports.

Examples of Topics (or Categories) Relevant to this Blog

You can understand even more about the focus of this blog by looking at examples of various related topics (or categories) that this blog might write about. The following list includes examples of related topics as does the list of Related Library Topics in the sidebar. There may be other related topics, as well.

  • Roles and responsibilities of supervisors
  • Skills needed by supervisors
  • Clarifying roles and responsibilities of direct reports
  • Hiring the right employees
  • Training your employees
  • Organizing your employees
  • Delegating to employees
  • Coaching and mentoring your employees
  • Sharing feedback about performance
  • Dealing with difficult employees
  • Conducting performance reviews
  • Benefits and compensation

As posts are published, they will be organized into those or other related categories. Categories that have posts published to them will be listed in the sidebar in Categories of Posts. Readers can click on a category and see the posts in that category.

About Us, the Co-Hosts of this Blog

We’re Carter McNamara and Marcia Zidle, the co-hosts of this blog. You can read more about us next to our pictures on the right side of each page in the blog. We plan to publish a post at least twice a week about various aspects of supervision, and will focus especially on practical tips and tools. These posts will include posts from guest writers, as well.

How to Use the Library’s Blogs

We have implemented many features to make the blogs very valuable and convenient to use. To learn how to use the blogs, click on Library Blog’s Home under the header on each page of the blog.

If You’re Interested In Hosting a Blog for the Library

Just click on Contact Us at the bottom of each page and share your idea, including the topic that you would like to blog about. You would need to commit to publishing a post at least twice a week for at least six months. In return, you would get tremendous visibility to you and your writing. You would retain copyright of your writing – see the Copyright in the footer on each page.

Welcome!