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. Technical skill being the expertise used to perform a task. Managing relationships effectively is of the human skill type also known as emotional intelligence. While conceptual aptitude is the ease in which the manager solves complex problems analytically.
Business schools have grouped together a list of the following skills or managerial competencies for would be managers:
Communication
Self-management
Leadership
Critical thinking
Professionalism
Teamwork
The team oriented environment has become the mainstay of best management practices for achieving the highest employee performance results. According to team building experts Frank LaFasto and Carl Larson, the authors of When Teams Work Best, management practices that tend to best support a productive work environment set direction, align effort, and deliver results. Setting direction involves clearly defining and communicating (repeatedly) a goal. Aligning effort is accomplished through focusing the priorities of the organization toward the achievement of the goal. According to LaFasto, managers would prove successful in delivering results by establishing clear operating principles such as:
1. We will work towards the goal
2. We will be accountable for our results
3. We will work together
4. We will not engage in team politics
At the end of the day, the manager's primary role is to set clearly define goals, communicate those goals repeatedly, foster a team environment such that the goals are accomplished efficiently, hold team members accountable for their work, and reward or not accordingly. Fortunately, the above traits of management acumen can be learned and fostered through business school training, coaching, mentoring programs and hard work.