Managerial Roles

Managers are the constantly changing personnel. They walk in other’s shoes and they wear different a lot of hats. The diversified roles they perform within, and outside an organization reflects on the type of manager they really are.

Henry Mintzberg, understood the roles of the managers and systematically created a mode of operation and roles, a manager has to perform during his career. [1] He argued that management is relatable to science, as much it is art. He outlined these managerial roles in a simple, applicable model.

Interpersonal Roles

The interpersonal roles are the informational roles that a manger has to perform. A manager serves as the figurehead of his organization. People look up to a him, to guide them into their social, legal and ceremonial responsibilities and inspire them to be ahead of time itself. A leader takes the charge of his sub-ordinates, be a role model, motivates and encourages the employees, ushering them into doing better and better. A leader does not push people around, but he actually works along with them to make the magic happen. A manger acts as a bridge between his organization and the outside word. As a liaison, he communicates on behalf on his organization, internally and externally.

Informational Roles

A manger is responsible for his team, and he cannot very well be a manager, if he does not know what he is looking for. A manager monitor his organization in term of productivity and effectiveness of work. A manager not only knows his colleagues and workers, he is a disseminator, as he delegated the useful information that has the potential to improve their skill and performance. A manger acts as a spokesperson, when he delivers information to the outside world.

Decisional Roles

A manager performs the role of an entrepreneur, when he strives hard and work fast to create change by introducing something new to the standard practicing way. He works with his team on problem solving, idea generation, implementation and control of the changes that are happening inside the organization. Disturbance is the part of any system, and human factor has to have some degree of disturbance. It is the job of a manger to act as a disturbance handler, take charge in situation where the organization hits a roadblock. He acts as a medium to solve the disputes and negate the propaganda. A manger is responsible for resources of the organizations, so it they also have to be the resource allocator. He has to decide where the energies should be directed in terms of man, money and machine. A manger takes an active role as a negotiator, and performs the necessary negotiations on behalf on the organization. The nature of the negotiation maybe internal, external, legal or worker related. 

Since the inception of Henry Mintzberg’s ten managerial roles, they have been used as a reference by the mangers all over the world, as a standard job description for managers.

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[1] ‘Henry Mintzberg: Mintzberg on Management. Inside Our Strange World Of Organizations 1989, New York and London: Free Press/Collier Macmillan. 418 Pages’, Organization Studies, 11.4 (1990), 599 <https://doi.org/10.1177/017084069001100414>.