Page 22 - July-Aug2024 Vol42 No2

TENNESSEE PUBLIC WORKS INSTITUTE By John Chlarson
Recap: Basic Supervision in PW Class

The 2024 Basic Supervision
in Public Works Class of the
Tennessee Public Works Institute
(TPWI) was held this spring,
both at the DoubleTree Hotel and
at the Tennessee Association of
Utility Districts Training Station
in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Twenty-seven students attended
the class, representing 13 local
government entities from
Memphis to Knoxville.
Class modules included:
Personality Profiles, the Nature
of Supervision, Qualities of
Leadership, Liabilities and Risks
as a Supervisor, Why Supervisors
Must Be Good Communicators,
Organizing and Planning, The
Importance of Delegation, The Nature of
Change, Challenges in the Workplace, and
Developing Effective Employees and Teams.
Exercises included testing the
participants to determine their personality
types and then showing participants how
to apply knowledge about the various
personality types in the workplace.
The benefits of a diverse workforce to a
supervisor also were illustrated through
diverse teams tackling problem solving
exercises and comparing team scores with
individual scores. In the majority of cases,
the team scores were higher than the
individual.
Information on effective delegation
was delivered, while the limitations of
attempting to supervise multiple tasks
without effective delegation were illustrated.
Class instructors included Scott Jenkins,
City of Knoxville; Chad Weth, City of
Knoxville; Bo Mills, City of Germantown;
Bryon Fortner, Blalock Construction; John
Eskew, UT-MTAS, and John Chlarson,
UT-MTAS.
Tennessee Public Works Magazine
publisher Klair Kimmey and Chlarson
are co-chairs of the Tennessee Public
Works Institute Committee, with Kimmey
managing the advance and onsite class
administration and the review portion in
assisting participants for final examination.
The next TPWI class, Maintenance
Technologies for Public Works, will take
place September 24-27, 2024. Registration
is open.
22 TPW July/August 2024