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Top Five Soft Skills: For Future Safety Managers
The costs of labor are the highest expense for any organization. Because of that, the safety manager must spend the money on hiring the proper personnel and getting the most out of them each day. Soft Skills is a short but informative book highlighting the top five soft skills that every manager should be proficient. The author has over twenty years of safety management experience.
38 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 1, 2015
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About the author
Fred Fanning
46 books53 followersFred Fanning worked for over 20 years as a Safety Professional. He authored a peer-reviewed book and two chapters published by the American Society of Safety Professionals. He has also written nine paperbacks and four electronic books on occupational safety and health that he self-published. Fred has nearly fifty articles published in various journals and periodicals. He is an Emeritus Professional Member of the American Society of Safety Professionals. He earned the finalist award for his book Essential Safety Programs from Reader Favorite and the B.R.A.G. Award for Mystery at Devil's Elbow. Fred held the Certified Safety Professional certification from 1995 through 2010. Fred earned master’s degrees from National-Louis University and Webster University.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 7, 2019
Target audience: The primary target is the people who want to become (better) managers.
About the author: According to his Goodreads page, Fred Fanning began writing in 1994, published his first book in 1998, and began writing full time in 2015. He has authored nearly fifty articles. His articles have appeared in Safety Professional; Perspective; PM World Journal; the International Journal, Organization, Technology and Management in Construction; PMI GovCOP Magazine; and several journals of the U.S. Army. Fred has written fiction and non-fiction books, chapters in technical books, and stories in anthologies. His works have earned him ten awards. Fred has also presented technical papers before national audiences. Fred is a member of the American Society of Safety Professionals where he is a professional emeritus member and Kansas Authors Club.
Structure of the books: Each book has around 35 pages, divided into a couple of chapters plus an introduction. They can be read in about 1 hour each.
Overview: This review refers to both Top Five Soft Skills for Managers and Top Five Hard Skills for Managers. The two books complete each other and they should read one after the other. Exactly like, let’s say, yin and yang, they are two parts of a whole.
For those of you who do not know, hard skills stand for technical skills, which are characteristic to doing a particular job in a particular domain. On the other hand, soft skills stand for social skills, or how you interact with the others. While hard skills are limited to domains, soft skills are universal; people work with people in every single domain, and every specialist is, after all, a human being: it has frustrations, it has feelings, it has judgment, and messages in the wrong form might be interpreted in many negative ways. So, soft skills require knowing more or less psychology.
People manage things all the time: we manage our cars, we manage our homes, we manage our children, our jobs and so on. But things are managed differently depending the things that have to be managed. And often managing is a process that require more people coordinating themselves, exactly like many people needed to lift a large boulder. In a way, we are all managers to a certain degree. However, as I said in the first line, these books are not targeting the common people. They are for people who have a certain amount of experience in management. The books are not trying to teach management from ground zero, but to fill the “holes” that are currently present in the management philosophy. The author presumes that the reader has some management background, and if he does not, the author mentions the books and the authors that have to be read before in order to understand the current works. Yes, as a “layman” you can read them (as I did), but you won’t be able to understand them at their true value; exactly as a football player is not able to see or recognize a brilliant chess move/strategy.
Quote: Emotional hijacking happens differently to each person, and managers must learn how it happens to them. I have found that recognizing it as it begins to happen is critical to responding correctly.
Strong points: The books are right on target, and so they are quite short and quite schematic.
Weak points: As a layman, it was hard for me to follow them in some parts. Most things seemed logical and made sense, but I could not decide on some statements. So, I give them 4 stars by going safe.
About the author: According to his Goodreads page, Fred Fanning began writing in 1994, published his first book in 1998, and began writing full time in 2015. He has authored nearly fifty articles. His articles have appeared in Safety Professional; Perspective; PM World Journal; the International Journal, Organization, Technology and Management in Construction; PMI GovCOP Magazine; and several journals of the U.S. Army. Fred has written fiction and non-fiction books, chapters in technical books, and stories in anthologies. His works have earned him ten awards. Fred has also presented technical papers before national audiences. Fred is a member of the American Society of Safety Professionals where he is a professional emeritus member and Kansas Authors Club.
Structure of the books: Each book has around 35 pages, divided into a couple of chapters plus an introduction. They can be read in about 1 hour each.
Overview: This review refers to both Top Five Soft Skills for Managers and Top Five Hard Skills for Managers. The two books complete each other and they should read one after the other. Exactly like, let’s say, yin and yang, they are two parts of a whole.
For those of you who do not know, hard skills stand for technical skills, which are characteristic to doing a particular job in a particular domain. On the other hand, soft skills stand for social skills, or how you interact with the others. While hard skills are limited to domains, soft skills are universal; people work with people in every single domain, and every specialist is, after all, a human being: it has frustrations, it has feelings, it has judgment, and messages in the wrong form might be interpreted in many negative ways. So, soft skills require knowing more or less psychology.
People manage things all the time: we manage our cars, we manage our homes, we manage our children, our jobs and so on. But things are managed differently depending the things that have to be managed. And often managing is a process that require more people coordinating themselves, exactly like many people needed to lift a large boulder. In a way, we are all managers to a certain degree. However, as I said in the first line, these books are not targeting the common people. They are for people who have a certain amount of experience in management. The books are not trying to teach management from ground zero, but to fill the “holes” that are currently present in the management philosophy. The author presumes that the reader has some management background, and if he does not, the author mentions the books and the authors that have to be read before in order to understand the current works. Yes, as a “layman” you can read them (as I did), but you won’t be able to understand them at their true value; exactly as a football player is not able to see or recognize a brilliant chess move/strategy.
Quote: Emotional hijacking happens differently to each person, and managers must learn how it happens to them. I have found that recognizing it as it begins to happen is critical to responding correctly.
Strong points: The books are right on target, and so they are quite short and quite schematic.
Weak points: As a layman, it was hard for me to follow them in some parts. Most things seemed logical and made sense, but I could not decide on some statements. So, I give them 4 stars by going safe.
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January 28, 2021There are hard and soft skills that managers must be familiar with to get results in the workplace. Soft skills are the things you can't see or measure. This book outlines the top five skills that managers must be familiar with. This is a great introduction for managers.
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