What is the role of a successful manager? What are the skills required for managers to carryout work successfully?
What is the role of a successful manager? What are the skills required for managers to carryout work successfully?
Regardless of their level or area within an organization, all managers must play certain roles and exhibit certain skills if they are to be successful. So, we must first highlight the basic roles managers play and then discuss the skills they need to be effective.
Managerial Roles: It was concluded that managers play ten different roles and these roles fall into three basic categories:
- Interpersonal Roles: there are three interpersonal roles inherent in the manager’s job. First, the manager is often asked to serve as a figurehead –taking visitors to dinner, attending ribbon-cutting ceremonies, and the like. These activities are typically more ceremonial and symbolic than substantive. The manager is also asked to serve as a leader –hiring, training, and motivating employees. A manager who formally or informally shows subordinates how to do things and how to perform under pressure is leading. Finally, managers can have a liaison role. This role often involves serving as a conductor or link between people, groups, or organizations. For example, IBM and Apple Computer recently agreed to cooperate on developing new technology. Representatives from each firm meet regularly to coordinate this new venture. Thus they are serving as liaison for their respective companies.
- Informational Role: the three informational roles flow naturally from the interpersonal roles. The process of carrying out these roles places the manager at a strategic point to gather and disseminate information. The first informational role is that of monitor, one who actively seeks information role that may be of value. The manager questions subordinates, is respective to unsolicited information, and attempts to be as well informed as possible. The manager is also a disseminator of information, transmitting relevant information back to others in the workplace. When the roles of monitor and disseminator are viewed together, the manager emerges as a vital link in the organization’s chain of communication. The third informational role focuses on external communication. The spokesperson formally relays information to people outside the unit or outside the organization. Although the role of spokesperson and figurehead are similar, there is one basic difference between them. When a manager acts as a figurehead, the manager’s presence as a symbol of the organization is what is of interest. In the spokesperson role, however, the manager carries information and communicates it to others in a formal sense.
- Decisional Role: the manager’s informational roles typically lead to the decisional roles. The information acquired by the manager as a result of performing the informational roles has a major bearing on important decisions that he or she makes. There are four basic decisional roles. First, the manager has the role of entrepreneur, the voluntary initiator of change. A second decisional role is initiated not by the manager but by some other individual or group. The manager responds to her role as disturbance handler by handling such problems as strikes copyright infringements, and energy shortages. The third decisional role is that of resource allocator. As a resource allocator, the manager decides how resources are distributed, and with whom he or she will work most closely. A fourth decisional role is that of negotiator. In this role the manager enters into negotiations with other groups or organizations as a representative of the company.
