My  friend, colleague, and mentor Paul Knudstrup, has written and recently published a new book, “The 8 Essential Skills for Supervisors and Managers“ that I’m really excited to have you learn about. This book highlights Paul’s significant experience in a 40-year career of managing people and as a well-respected consultant to managers and their organizations across the globe. He is President of Midwest Consulting Group, based in Kalamazoo Michigan.

In the interest of full disclosure, I owe a lot to Paul (including his delivery of my own free signed copy of his book). When I started my own business, he was generous and giving of his time to help make it successful. He was, and still is, my Myers-Briggs Type Indicator mentor as I was learning my way around that instrument. And he and I have participated in a fabulous monthly Master Mind group with Jan Andersen of Beyond Words, Inc. and Gretchen Johnson of Virtual Wordplay Marketing Communications  for a few years, a caring and supportive group of individuals who have helped each other without reservation to be successful in business and in life.

So with that out of the way, I am pleased to tell you that The 8 Essential Skills for Supervisors and Managers is a book that belongs in the hands of all leaders – whether they have direct reports or not. Readers of this post are entitled to a 10% discount off the cover price if they contact Paul at PaulK@MidwGroup.com.

Enjoy the following interview with Paul that will give you a small taste of its rich content.

What are the 8 skills?

1. Managing Yourself
2. Communicating for Results
3. Building Successful Relationships
4. Managing Others
5. Managing Change
6. Solving Problems and Making Decisions
7. Leading and Empowering
8. Growing Yourself

You’ve “lived” the content of this book for four decades. What prompted you to finally put your expertise into a book?

It’s always been there, waiting for the right time to come out in book format. This is really the compilation of many years of being a manager and teaching managers. In other words, the book content includes the skills that I found helpful when I was managing people, and that others whom I’ve taught over the years found helpful in their ability to supervise and manage others well.

Who are the audiences that will most benefit from The 8 Essential Skills?

Frontline supervisors and managers up to the mid level in an organization could best benefit from the book content. However, it is also useful for executives who want to understand (and remember) the kinds of issues and challenges supervisors and managers face on a daily basis.

Why did you choose 8 skills as the topic of your book? Why not 7 or 9 (or some other number)?

I made a list of the skills that I knew that supervisors and managers needed to know in order to be good at what they do. I originally came up with seven. When I looked over the list of seven, I asked myself “How do you leverage those?”, and skill 8 was born. It seemed like just the right number.

How do you envision readers applying what they learn from your book?

The best thing that could happen is that a light bulb goes off for them from time to time as they read and apply the concepts. They may know that they are struggling with some aspect of managing, but as they read the book, they will now know what they need to do. Positive changes in all areas of their life may occur as a result since the skills can all be used, in some way, at work and in life outside of work.

Perhaps they will learn that the challenges they face aren’t “bad”, but will discover that they can learn and grow as they experiment with some of the solutions to those challenges.

What are you most passionate about?

I am passionate about working with people who have a desire to grow; the kind of people that understand that their success in life and work is up to them. I especially enjoy working with groups of people and getting them to talk together and learn from each other and to find ways to work together more productively.

What else do you want people to know?

The book is a tool that can help people in all areas of their life, although at first glance, it is targeted at the work situation. And if they want to join in the conversation about the skills outlined in the book, they can do so at The 8 Essential Skills.

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