When you were a volunteer for the Bush-Cheney campaign, you came in the morning; you had a supervisor who gave you a list of calls to make and a time to do it in.

The real damper on employee engagement is the soggy, cold blanket of centralized authority. In most companies, power cascades downwards from the CEO. Not only are employees disenfranchised from most policy decisions, they lack even the power to rebel against egocentric and tyrannical supervisors.

My mum was a costume designer and costume supervisor in the theater and, especially, the ballet. But that was before I was born.

I have chosen to seek election to the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and not reelection to Congress.

As a child, I liked to play outside, to stroll through the fields, and I was an active member of the local children's gang, frequently being chased by field guards and building supervisors. Nevertheless, my performance at school was very good, and mainly due to the influence of my mother, I was allowed to attend high school.

Having a small business and being one of thousands of people whom no one in government will listen to, I have decided to run for supervisor as a person.

At the Centers for Disease Control, I rose up fairly quickly into management positions. The first team I led there included many people who had been my supervisors in previous roles or were more senior than I was. So it was kind of a daunting challenge.

Films happened to me accidentally when I met Marc Robinson in a hotel in Goa, where my mum worked as a supervisor. I would often go there, and the manager there would see me and tell my mom that I should try being a model.

To spend this particular year reading essays to Dennis Robertson as one's supervisor, and, simultaneously, enjoying membership of the group round Keynes was indeed an intellectual treat.

We're charged by Congress with regulating financial institutions. We take that mission seriously. We are tough supervisors and regulators.

'Ice Age 4' came totally out of nowhere for me. I was told Fox Animation was interested in hiring me as a story supervisor or something or other that sounded way too professional for me.

Demarcation disputes between supervisor and student are always difficult, probably impossible to resolve... it is the supervisor who has the final responsibility for the success or failure of the project.

I left my frogs, which I had grown, with my supervisor, who had moved to Geneva, and he and a technician grew them up. So by 1962, they were adults, and one could publish a paper to say that these animals, derived from nuclear transfer, really were absolutely normal. So it took a little time to get through.

As a brand new graduate student starting in October 1956, my supervisor Michail Fischberg, a lecturer in the Department of Zoology at Oxford, suggested that I should try to make somatic cell nuclear transplantation work in the South African frog Xenopus laevis.

In high school and college, I'd set a bunch of goals for myself. I wanted to be the lead effects supervisor on one of these really big, innovative visual effects productions, something on the scale of a 'Star Wars' movie. And I wanted to work on a project that wins the Academy Award for best visual effects.

I think it's an important part of the visual effects supervisor's job to get really deeply embedded in production and keep us all focused on trying to generate the best result. I'm not proprietary about, 'I would rather do this effect than let physical effects do it.' No, let's do the smartest thing for the movie.

On my first mission, I was the spacewalk supervisor: the person that runs the spacewalk from inside the vehicle. As such, I was the one that closed the hatch when my colleagues left to work outside for six hours. And I was also the person who opens the hatch when they come back, and we repressurize.

I was born Pauline Matthews and grew up in Bradford as one of three children - I had an older brother, David, and an older sister, Betty. My father Fred worked in the mills as a textile weaving supervisor, and my mother, Mary, was a housewife.

In any situation, it is good to be aware of even your co-workers, and if you are uncomfortable or concerned about a colleague's behavior, report it to a supervisor.

Any supervisor worth his salt would rather deal with people who attempt too much than with those who try too little.

Those in powerless positions aren't about to complain about bullying bosses, abusive supervisors or corrupt co-workers. There is no safe way to do so and no process that promises redress.

As CEO, I accept responsibility for the irregularities that have been found in diesel engines and have therefore requested the Supervisory Board to agree on terminating my function as CEO of the Volkswagen Group.

Having more women in company boards, in senior management, supervisory positions and workers in the formal sector is not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do. It's good for the bottom line.

I have actually had to ask my supervisors not to curse in meetings or in general in the workplace.

We have not provided our frontline supervisors and managers and individuals with the proper procedures that would allow them to use their common sense.

My mom had been a script supervisor in Hungary, but you can't just jump into that in Canada without knowing any English. She worked retail jobs and raised my sister and me while learning English.

Before I became an actor, I was a producer and a visual effects supervisor. Our industry wasn't making the kind of films I was interested in.

Nico Tinbergen was my doctoral supervisor, and he was a benign, avuncular sort of influence; everybody loved him.

We have got to be more comfortable experimenting with different models. So maybe a client just needs execution people or a lot of young people who are great with social media. We don't always have to give them the pyramidal structure of senior VP and account supervisor.

Lacking a profit motive, workers in the government by and large have a different work ethic from those in private industry. When they could make one call, federal workers take a meeting. When they could find an answer on the Internet, they form a study committee. Instead of appointing one supervisor, they appoint five.

I don't believe in luck. Everything is our doing or undoing. If something doesn't come out right, then as a director, you have to take full responsibility. You can't just say, 'No, I gave this job to the music supervisor. They promised me they would do it, and they didn't do it.' You can't blame anyone else.