Before you can start advising others how to get their act together, you need to ensure that you have got your act together. i.e. you need to walk the talk and set a good example. Now that you have a good idea of what supervisors need to do to be good supervisors, let us explore some basic qualities needed to make a person a positive, capable, responsible, diligent person, whether he/she is a supervisor or not.

"Being Proactive" is covered in this article; "Being Productive" will follow.

Proactive Defined

Proactive means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives, and are not led around blindly by others. Our behavior is largely a function of our own decisions, rather than our conditions. We have the initiative and the drive to assume full responsibility for our own lives, and make things happen that should happen.

Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, (p.81-3) defines being Proactive/Reactive in terms of Circles of Concern. We all have concerns.

Proactive people deal almost exclusively with the area within which they have influence and can do something about. Their positive energy increases their Circle of Influence. Reactive people are concerned about everything and have little influence on anything. Their negative energy shrinks their Circle of Influence over time. As Covey puts it, "They focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern. They focus on the weaknesses of other people, the problems in the environment, and circumstances over which they have no control. Their focus results in blaming and accusing attitudes, reactive language, and increased feelings of victimization."

Responsibility

Look at the word responsibility: response