After reading this article you will learn about manager and its role.
The Manager:
The prime job of a manager is to manage the resources of the organization in the most optimum way in the best interests of the organization and the welfare of the employees through his leadership qualities by providing motivation and resolving conflicts. The individuals who achieve goals through other people are called the managers.
They make decisions, allocate resources, and direct activities of others to attain specific goals. They perform their functions within an organization. An organization is a consciously coordinated social unit composed of two or more people that function on a relatively continuous basis to achieve a common goal or set of goals.
Management Functions:
The management functions of a manager are:
i. Planning,
ii. Organizing,
iii. Leading, and
iv. Controlling.
The planning includes defining goals, establishing strategy, and developing plans to coordinate activities. The organizing functions determines what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom, and where decisions are to be made.
The term leading includes motivation, direction, and selection of effective communication channels and resolving conflicts. Lastly the term controlling means monitoring activities to ensure they are being accomplished as planned and taking corrective measures to keep them on predefined track.
Management Roles:
The managers perform highly interrelated roles covering:
Inter-personal roles:
i. Hiring,
ii. Training,
iii. Motivation,
iv. Discipline, and
v. Liaison.
Informational roles:
i. As company’s spokesperson,
ii. Inputs from outside,
iii. Competitors,
iv. Industry,
v. Government,
vi. Media, and
vii. Disseminator.
Decisive roles:
i. Resource allocation,
a. Human,
b. Physical,
c. Monetary, and
ii. Negotiator.
Management Skills:
Managers need competency to successfully achieve goals through various skills.
These skills are of three types:
1. Technical Skills:
It means the ability to apply specialized knowledge or expertise. This may include the one gained through specialized formal education and through expertise and experience on the job.
2. Human Skills:
It means the ability to work with, understand, and motivate other people, both individually and in- groups. Many people are technically proficient but interpersonally incompetent. They might be poor listeners, unable to understand the needs of others, or have difficulty in managing conflicts. Since managers have to get things done through others, so they must have human skills to communicate, motivate, and delegate.
3. Conceptual Skills:
It means the mental ability to analyze and diagnose complex situations. Decision-making requires managers to spot problems, identify alternatives that can correct them, evaluate these alternatives, select the best solution in the interest of the organization and the people in it. Managers can be technically and interpersonally competent, but may fail if they do not have the conceptual skills to rationally process and interpret information.
Effective Vs. Successful Managers:
All managers are not alike; there are average, successful and effective types of managers. There are some that move up most quickly in an organization and there are some who do not despite the fact that both do the same types of managerial activities and hold similar responsibilities.
If we analyze the basic functions we can broadly categorize them into four managerial activities:
1. Traditional Management:
This includes decision-making, planning, and controlling.
2. Communication:
Exchange routine information and processing paperwork.
3. Human Resource Management:
Motivating, disciplining, managing, conflicts, staffing, and training.
4. Networking:
Socializing, politicking, and interacting with outsiders.
Fred Luthans and his associates studied these activities of “what the managers do” and found startling results. The average manager studied spent 32% of his time in traditional management activities, 29% communicating, 20% in human resources management activities, and 19 % networking. However the amount of time and efforts that different managers spent on these activities varied a great deal.
The managers who were successful (defined in terms of speed of promotion within their organization) had a very different emphasis than managers who were effective (defined in terms of quantity and quality of their performance and satisfaction and commitment of their subordinates.)
Networking made the biggest relative contribution to manager’s success. Human resources management activities made the least relative contribution. Amongst effective managers, communication made the largest relative contribution and networking the least.
This study adds important insights to our knowledge of what managers do. On an average, managers spend approximately 20 to 30% of their time on each of the above activities, (traditional management, communication, human resources and networking. However successful managers do not give the same emphasis to each of these activities, as do effective managers.
In fact, their emphasis is almost opposite. This challenges the historical assumption that promotions are based on performance, vividly illustrating the importance that social and political skills play in getting ahead in organizations.