The role of managers

The role played by managers

The role played by managers. Many leaders of Chinese companies are not aware of the role they should play and the important role they play. The role of a leader is diverse, and diverse management constitutes the leadership's responsibilities. So do you know what roles managers play? Roles played by managers 1

1. According to Mintzberg’s role theory of corporate managers, managers play ten roles. These ten roles Can be classified into three broad categories: interpersonal roles, informational roles, and decision-making roles.

①Interpersonal role. Interpersonal roles arise directly from managers' formal power bases and are performed by managers in their relationships with organizational members and other stakeholders. The three interpersonal roles played by managers are representative role, leader role and liaison role.

②Information role. Managers are responsible for ensuring that the people they work with have enough information to complete their jobs successfully. Managers are not only the information transmission center of their unit, but also the information transmission channel for other work groups in the organization. People throughout the organization depend on the management structure and managers to obtain or convey the necessary information in order to get their jobs done. The information roles played by managers are supervisor role, communicator role and spokesperson role.

③Decision-making role. In a decision-making role, managers process information and draw conclusions. If the information is not used in the organization's decision-making, this information loses its due value. Managers are responsible for making organizational decisions, keeping work groups on track, and allocating resources to ensure the implementation of group plans. The decision-making roles played by managers include entrepreneurial roles, disturbance responder roles, resource allocator roles and negotiator roles.

2. The skills that effective managers need to possess are:

①Technical skills. Refers to the skills necessary to complete or understand the specific work of an organization, that is, business skills. For example, a school principal's teaching attainments, a financial director's mastery of financial knowledge, etc., are all technical skills.

②Interpersonal skills. Refers to the ability to deal with people up and down in an organizational unit, including the ability to contact, handle and coordinate interpersonal relationships inside and outside the organization, the ability to motivate and induce the enthusiasm and creativity of staff within the organization, and the ability to correctly guide and direct organizational members to carry out their work. ability. First of all, interpersonal skills require managers to understand other people's beliefs, ways of thinking, feelings, personalities, and everyone's attitude toward themselves, work, and the collective, and to recognize and accept different opinions and beliefs. Only in this way can they communicate better with others. Exchange opinions; secondly, interpersonal skills require managers to be keenly aware of the needs and motivations of others, and to judge the possible behaviors of organizational members and their possible consequences, so as to try to unify the personal goals and organizational goals of organizational members to the greatest extent; thirdly, requirements Managers master some techniques and methods for evaluating and motivating employees to maximize their enthusiasm and creativity.

③Conceptual skills. Refers to the ability of insight, analysis, judgment, abstraction and generalization of things. Managers should see the whole picture of the organization, understand how the organization interacts with the external environment, understand how the various parts of the organization interact, and be able to foresee the social impact the organization will have in the community. , political and economic roles, and know the status and role of their own departments in the organization. One manifestation of conceptual skills is the ability to analyze and summarize problems. Possessing high conceptual skills can enable managers to quickly and agilely identify the internal relationships of various factors from chaotic and complex dynamic situations, grasp the cause and essence of problems, predict the impact that problems will have, and judge The actions that need to be taken and their possible consequences. Another manifestation of conceptual skills is the ability to judge situations. By analyzing internal and external situations, managers can foresee the development trend of the situation in order to make full use of opportunities, avoid threats, and achieve the most favorable results for the organization.

3. The proportion of management skills required by managers at each level is shown in Figure 1-2.

Roles played by managers 2

Among the various roles of managers, three are directly derived from formal power and involve basic interpersonal relationships.

1. The role of "nominal leader"

As the leader of the organization, every manager must perform certain ceremonial duties, such as the president meeting with visiting dignitaries; The foreman attends the lathe operator's wedding; the sales manager invites an important customer to lunch.

The CEOs I studied spent 12% of their contact time on various ceremonial duties. The letters from 17 were letters of thanks and various requests related to their status. Tasks involving interpersonal roles may sometimes be routine and do not involve important communication and significant decision-making. However, they are vital to the smooth functioning of organizational functions and therefore cannot be ignored by managers.

2. "Leader" role

Since the manager is fully responsible for an organization, he needs to be responsible for the work of the employees of the organization. These behaviors constitute the manager's "leader" role.

Some actions of managers directly involve issues of leadership—for example, in most organizations, managers are usually responsible for hiring and training employees in their departments. In addition, there are also some indirect management tasks as a leader. Every manager must inspire and motivate his employees so that their individual needs and the goals of the organization are coordinated to a certain extent.

In fact, in every contact between managers and employees, subordinates are trying to figure out the manager's intentions: "Does he agree?" "What does he want this report to be like?" "What does he think of this report?" Are you interested in market share or high profits?" and so on.

The influence of managers is best reflected in the role of leader. Formal authority gives a manager tremendous potential power, and leadership largely determines the extent to which he actually uses that power.

3. "Liaison" role

Management literature has always recognized the leader role of managers, especially when it is related to incentive mechanisms. in this way. In contrast, management literature has until recently made little reference to managers' "liaison" role, in which managers liaise primarily with those outside the vertical chain of command they control.

In fact, studies of every management job show that managers spend as much time communicating with people outside the organization as they do with their own subordinates, and it’s worth noting. of. What is surprising is that he spends very little time in contact with his boss. Usually, the proportions of the time spent in these three types of contact are 45, 45, and 10, respectively.

The five CEOs I studied interacted with a wide range of people: including subordinates, customers, business partners, suppliers, managers of similar organizations, officials of government and trade organizations, and directors of other companies. etc. Robert Guest's research shows that managers come into contact with a wide range of people, rarely less than 25 and sometimes more than 50.

Through interpersonal interactions with subordinates and networks, managers demonstrate a nerve center status in their organizations. A manager cannot know everything, but he does know more information than any subordinate.

Research shows that these principles hold true for all managers, from gang leaders to the President of the United States. Richard Neustadt explained the reason through his research on Roosevelt:

The essence of Roosevelt's information-obtaining skills was competition. "He's going to call you in," his assistant once told me, "and tell you to learn about some complex event." After a few days of hard work, you come back and report what you've learned to him, and then you'll Discover that he already knows the whole situation, even some things you didn't know.

Usually he doesn't specify where he got the information from, but after this happens once or twice, you will be very cautious and responsible in collecting your information.

When we look at the interpersonal role and the informational role, we understand where Roosevelt got his information. As leaders, managers have formal and convenient channels to contact every subordinate. Therefore, as mentioned earlier, they tend to understand the internal affairs of the organization better than other organizational members.

In addition, the liaison role gives them access to information outside the organization, while their subordinates lack access to external information. In their contacts with the outside world, managers often come into contact with managers of equivalent status, who themselves occupy the information nerve center of their organizations. In this way, managers have a powerful information base.

The processing of information is one of the important tasks of managers. According to my research, CEOs have 40% of their contact time dedicated to spreading information, and 70% of incoming emails are purely informational. As opposed to, for example, requests for behavior. A manager doesn’t leave a meeting or hang up the phone to go to work; to a large extent, human interaction is his job. The following three roles can be used to describe the information level of managers.

4. The role of "monitor"

In order to obtain information, managers must constantly observe the environment around him and inquire about various contacts and subordinates, accepting proactive information obtained from his established interpersonal network. We mentioned earlier that a considerable part of the information managers possess is obtained verbally, including gossip, hearsay, or guessing. Through interactions, managers have the natural advantage of collecting soft information for the organization.

5. The role of "information disseminator"

Managers must share and disseminate most of the information collected with organizational members. The information they gain from personal contacts outside may be useful within the organization. Managers pass some authoritative information directly to subordinates who have no chance to know the news. Moreover, if it is easy for subordinates to communicate with each other, managers sometimes convey the information to each subordinate separately.

6. The role of "spokesperson"

As the role of "spokesperson", managers convey information to people outside the organization.

The leader of the organization delivers a speech to mass groups for the needs of the organization, and the factory director recommends that suppliers improve product performance. Additionally, as part of the spokesperson's role, every manager must provide information to the satisfaction of the influential people who have control over the organization. Especially for the CEO, he has to spend more time dealing with various influential groups. Examples include reporting the company's financial status to directors and shareholders, convincing consumers that the organization can fulfill its social responsibilities, and so on.

Of course, information itself is not the end point, it is the basic prerequisite for decision-making. Research on management work shows that managers play a major role in the organization's decision-making system. As a formal power, only managers have the power to entrust an important new action plan to the organization; as the information nerve center of the organization, only managers have sufficient, up-to-date information that is helpful for the organization to make strategic decisions.

The following describes the characteristics of managers as decision-makers from four aspects.

7. The role of "entrepreneur"

Managers pursue continuous improvement of the organization so that it can adapt to the changing environment. In the role of monitor, managers are constantly on the lookout for new perspectives. Once an excellent idea appears, as an entrepreneur, the manager immediately starts a development project. This project is supervised by himself or authorized to be completed by a subordinate. Sometimes it is stipulated that the final plan must be determined by himself.

From a CEO level, there are two interesting features of these new developments.

The first characteristic is that the project itself does not only contain a single or unified series of decisions, but a series of small decisions and sequences of actions over a period of time.

Obviously, if this is a complex decision, the CEO is extending the time on each project to be able to fit the projects piece by piece into their busy, fragmented overall schedule. , and also so that the executives themselves can gradually understand the problem.

The second characteristic is that each of the managers I studied managed more than fifty similar projects at the same time. Some projects involved new products or new procedures, and some involved Public relations campaigns, resolution of ethical issues in foreign branches, integration of computer systems, various mergers and acquisitions, etc.

The CEO seems to have a list of development projects at different stages of development that he manages. Some projects are in the execution stage, and some have yet to be launched. At each stage of the performance, there is new content dedicated to the audience. . At different times, managers launch new projects and abandon old ones.

8. The role of "crisis handler"

Managers are active initiators of change, but in the role of chaos handlers, managers are under pressure and passive. cope with changes. Changes here are beyond managers' control: workers go on strike, major customers go bankrupt, suppliers don't enforce contracts.

I mentioned earlier that we can fashionably compare a manager to the conductor of an orchestra. Drucker wrote in "The Practice of Management": The task of managers is to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The output of a highly productive company is higher than its input.

Just like the conductor of a symphony orchestra, through conducting, the noisy voices of individual band members can be turned into a beautiful piece of music. But the band conductor stands on the shoulders of the composer and is only interpreting the composer's results, while the manager is both a composer and band conductor.

Virtually every manager has to spend a lot of time effectively dealing with stressful, unexpected disruptions. No organization can always run smoothly and very standardized, and no unexpected events can be completely predicted in advance. Accidents do not always happen because poor managers ignore something; good managers often get into trouble because they fail to consider all aspects of a matter.

9. The role of "resource allocator"

Managers are responsible for allocating resources within the organization to specific people. Perhaps the most important resource managers allocate is their own time. Access to managers is, in fact, access to the organization's nerve center and decision-makers. Managers are also responsible for designing the organizational structure, that is, the organization's pattern of formal relationships, which determines the division of labor and coordination of various tasks.

As a resource allocator, an important decision of the organization must be approved by managers before it is implemented. By exercising this power, the manager ensures the coherence of all decisions—all decisions must pass through his brain. If this power is given up, it will lead to incoherent decision-making and discontinuous strategy.

In my research, I have found that CEOs face choices that are incredibly complex for ordinary people. They must consider the impact of each decision on other decisions and the organization's strategy; must ensure that the decision can be accepted by those who have influence on the organization; must ensure that organizational resources are not overly dispersed; must understand the costs and benefits and the feasibility of the plan; and Timing must also be considered.

When approving a plan, the problems mentioned above all exist at the same time. At the same time, although hasty approval will result in insufficient consideration of the problem, too fast denial will dampen the enthusiasm of subordinates, because it may have taken the subordinate several months to come up with this project plan that makes him proud, but delayed approval will cause time loss. waste.

When it comes to approving project proposals, a simple approach is to choose people rather than bills.

In other words, managers approve plans proposed by subordinates they trust. But obviously, managers cannot always use this approach.

10. The role of "negotiator"

Research on management at all levels shows that managers spend a considerable amount of time negotiating: Team owners sign contracts with superstars contract; the company president leads the company delegation to negotiate on new strike issues; the factory director negotiates with workers' representatives to resolve workers' grievances. Just like Leonard. R. Sayers said that negotiation is a shrewd manager's "way of survival."

Negotiation is the responsibility of managers, a daily matter, and cannot be avoided. Negotiation is an integral part of a manager's job because only managers have the authority to allocate organizational resources in "real time" and possess the important information needed for negotiations. Role played by managers 3

1. Leader.

As the head of a corporate organization, each leader is responsible for hosting some ceremonies, such as receiving important visitors, attending the weddings of certain employees, having lunch with important customers, etc. According to the survey, CEOs spend 12% of their communication time on ceremonial duties, and 17% of the letters they receive are letters of thanks or invitations related to their status. Responsibilities involving interpersonal roles may sometimes be day-to-day and involve little serious communication or important decision-making; however, they are too important to the smooth functioning of the organization to be ignored by leaders.

2. Leader.

By managing the organization, the leader is responsible for the work of the members of the organization. At this point, the leader's role is constituted. Some of these roles directly involve leadership relationships. For example, in most Chinese companies, leaders are usually responsible for recruiting and training staff. In addition, there are actions that play a leadership role indirectly. For example, each leader must motivate employees and somehow harmonize their personal needs with organizational goals. In fact, in every contact between a leader and an employee, employees will test the leader’s actions through clues: Does he agree? What kind of reporting does he like? Is he more interested in market share than high profits? ……

3. Contact person.

Business management in the past has always recognized the role of leaders, especially those related to motivation. In contrast, it is only in the last year or two that management experts have begun to focus on the leader's liaison role with people outside his vertical chain of command. In fact, business leaders spend as much time with their colleagues and others outside the business as they do with their own subordinates. And, surprisingly, he spends very little time with his superiors. The usual proportions of time spent in these three situations are 45%, 45%, and 10% respectively.

4. Monitor.

Relying on the connections of the interpersonal network including subordinates, the leader becomes the nerve center of the organization. He may not know everything, but he certainly knows more than any of his subordinates. As monitors, leaders need to constantly scan their environment in order to gain information. They ask relevant contacts and subordinates and receive unsolicited information, mostly from their personal network. Much of the information gathered by leaders in a monitoring role is verbal, often in the form of hearsay and gossip. These various connections give leaders a natural advantage in gathering "soft information" for the organization.

5. Communicator.

Managers must share and distribute information that may be needed internally within the organization, gathered through the leader's external personal contacts. In the role of communicator, leaders need to directly convey information that is exclusive to their followers because followers do not have access to it. When followers lack easy contact with each other, leaders sometimes deliver information to them individually.

6. Spokesperson.

Leaders sometimes need to send some information to people outside the organization, such as giving a speech or suggesting improvements to a product to a supplier.

Additionally, in their spokesperson role, each leader must keep informed and meet the demands of the people or departments that control the destiny of their organization. For example, the CEO of a company may spend a lot of time interacting with influential people, reporting to the board of directors and shareholders on financial status, and fulfilling the social responsibilities of the organization, etc.

7. Entrepreneur.

Leaders must strive to organize resources to adapt to changes in the surrounding environment. In the monitor role, leaders are constantly looking for new ideas. As an entrepreneur, when a good idea comes up, the leader will either decide on a development project and directly supervise the progress of the project, or delegate it to a subordinate.

8. Crisis handler.

The entrepreneur role depicts the leader as the initiator of change, while the crisis handler role shows the leader responding involuntarily to pressure. Here, leaders are powerless to control changes such as some unexpected event, the bankruptcy of a major customer, or a supplier's breach of contract. In fact, every manager must spend a lot of time dealing with high pressure or disturbance. No business can account for every contingency in advance. Riots occur not only because poor leaders ignore situations until they reach crisis levels, but also because good leaders cannot predict the consequences of all the actions they take.

9. Resource allocator.

A leader is responsible for allocating various resources within the organization, and perhaps the most important resource he allocates is his time. To be close to the leader is to be close to the nerve center of the organization. Leaders are also responsible for designing the organization's structure, that is, determining the pattern of division of labor and coordination of working relationships.

10. Negotiator.

Negotiation is an unshirkable job responsibility for leaders and is a major part of the job. Leaders need to spend considerable time negotiating because only the leader has the authority to direct organizational resources to the "moments that really matter" and only he has the nerve center information required for important negotiations.

These ten roles played by managers cannot be easily separated, they form a unified whole. No character can escape this framework without disturbing other characters. For example, if a disconnected leader lacks external information, he will neither be able to disseminate the information his followers need nor make decisions that are fully responsive to external conditions.