by David J. Eloi

Created on: June 16, 2009   Last Updated: June 24, 2009

What is the primary role of the manager?

To often the manager maintains the mistaken identity of leader. Albeit, management and leadership enjoy a symbiotic relationship of sorts the two classifications are different. Before we delve into the question of What the primary role of the manager is we need to make the distinction between manager and leader.

Leaders posses, articulate and in turn inspire the team, group or organization towards a vision.

A manager is responsible for and supports the efforts of the team in the interest of the organization's goals. The manager is a problem solver and guardian of the status quo. Managers analyze situations and select the most appropriate responses.

The Harvard Business review published an article a few years back entitled Managers and Leaders: Are they Different? The author, Abraham Zaleznik discusses the idiosyncrasies of management and leadership roles. Zaleznik, a leadership expert, states that it takes neither genius nor heroism to be a manager, but rather persistence, tough-mindedness, hard work, intelligence, analytical ability, and perhaps most important, tolerance and goodwill. Alternatively, leaders operate in a much different direction than managers, reports Zaleznick, in developing new ideas for old problems and smashing the status quo! Managers tend to limit choices while leaders excite people towards change. Distinguishing between leader and manger allows us to examine the role of management more fully.

To understand the primary role of the manager one must identify the varying levels of management. Three levels of management are often found within large organizations:

Top managers - guide the company from a macro perspective. Top managers think in terms of the long view and are future oriented.

Middle managers - oversee the production of a department or division. Project managers also fall into the middle management group through coordinating complex projects.

Fist line managers - often referred to as the supervisor or team leader is responsible for a relatively small group of workers.

Managers, no matter the level of management, plan, organize, direct, and control resources to accomplish a specified goal or task. Although, managers by and large follow the same management process to achieve a specific end the skills executed vary. One Harvard scholar, Robert L. Katz, classified the skills required by managers as being technical, human, and conceptual.

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