Joyce Karnes

Joyce Karnes, president of Positive Options, Inc., has enjoyed a thirty-year career as a trainer, consultant, and author in the field of team building, human motivation and supervisory skills. She began with the request to provide a supervisory training program for a small company that required great teamwork in order to perform well. Listening to the experienced supervisors describe their successes and failures, she gradually developed a sound program that would replicate the successful behaviors of those who knew how to build teamwork and maintain it daily. The success of the small company was the true measure of the value of the program.

Her program, which has been refined through many presentations, features an effective way to understand why people do what they do in terms of communication, learning, use of space and resources and work relationships. Based on the reliable and long proven successful personality type system, the Myers-Briggs, Joyce has adapted the understanding of people and their behavior to the daily problems of any supervisor. When a supervisor thoroughly understands both themselves and others, the task of matching people to appropriate work assignments becomes much more successful. In addition, a supervisor knows how to counsel people to be more effective, using their strengths rather than their weaknesses.

In addition, there are several simple, but reliable, organizational tools for managing people problems that have a profound effect on reducing the stress of supervision and making the job much more efficient, all of which are designed to provide an effective interface with Human Resources functions.

Throughout the book and the training, Joyce has chosen time-tested teaching methods such as stories of real people both failing and succeeding, case studies of problems to solve, role plays of words that work and words that don’t and finally weekly assignments that can be discussed in class. All of this is easy to understand and do and any supervisor can perform all of their duties in a calm, reasonable and professional manner.

Finally, when the program is done in house, Joyce provides each supervisor an individual walkaround conference in which she visits the supervisor in their work environment to address specific problems unique to each supervisor. Typically, a class a week is offered including walkarounds so that supervisors can work on their assignments and report back to class. Over the eight to ten weeks of the training, there is much skill building as well as resolution of long-standing problems that prevent effective supervision.

In short, this unique, proven program is easy, practical and highly effective. Contact Positive Options, Inc. at positive.options10@yahoo.com for discounted bulk orders of the book and arrangements for email Daily Supervisory Notes.