Manager Roles

Summary

This video script explores the multifaceted roles of managers, emphasizing their interpersonal, informational, and decisional responsibilities. Highlighting the figurehead, leader, and liaison roles, it illustrates how managers interact and motivate. Information gathering, processing, and sharing through the monitor, disseminator, and spokesperson roles are detailed, showing the vital role of communication. Decision-making through the entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator sub-roles is also discussed, providing a comprehensive framework for understanding managerial functions.

Takeaways

• 📘 Managers perform various roles beyond the traditional terms of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.
• 🗣️ Interpersonal roles are central to management, with managers often acting as figureheads, leaders, and liaisons.
• 🎤 In the figurehead role, managers engage in ceremonial duties, such as greeting visitors and representing the company at events.
• 🔝 As leaders, managers motivate and encourage workers to achieve organizational goals, including setting challenging targets.
• 🤝 The liaison role involves interaction with external parties, with studies showing managers spend significant time with outsiders.
• 🔎 Managers are information gatherers, spending up to 40% of their time obtaining and sharing information, as per MIT's Berg's study.
• 👁️ In the monitor role, managers actively seek and receive information, due to their extensive personal contacts.
• 📢 As disseminators, managers share collected information with subordinates and others within the company.
• 🏢 Spokespersons share information with individuals outside their department or organization, highlighting the outward-facing aspect of managerial roles.
• 🛠️ Decision-making is a critical part of management, with roles including entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator.
• 🔄 The entrepreneurial role involves adapting to change, while the disturbance handler role addresses immediate pressures and problems.
• 💰 Resource allocators decide on the distribution of resources, and negotiators handle agreements on schedules, goals, and employee raises.

Q & A

What are the four main management functions that managers engage in?

The four main management functions are planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.

How would you describe the typical activities of managers during their day?

Managers spend their day talking to people, gathering and giving information, and making decisions, rather than strictly using the terms planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.

What are the three major roles that can be observed in a manager's daily activities?

The three major roles are interpersonal roles, informational roles, and decisional roles.

What are the three sub-roles that fall under the interpersonal role of management?

The three sub-roles under the interpersonal role are figurehead, leader, and liaison.

What kind of duties does a manager perform in the figurehead role?

In the figurehead role, managers perform ceremonial duties such as greeting company visitors, speaking at the opening of a new facility, and representing the company at community events.

How do managers act as leaders in their role?

Managers act as leaders by motivating and encouraging workers to accomplish organizational objectives, such as establishing challenging goals.

What does the liaison role involve for managers?

In the liaison role, managers deal with people outside their units, spending as much time with outsiders as with their own subordinates and bosses.

Why is obtaining and sharing information important for managers?

Obtaining and sharing information is important for managers because it helps them make good decisions by staying informed about the business environment and internal company matters.

What are the three informational sub-roles identified by Mintzberg?

The three informational sub-roles identified by Mintzberg are monitor, disseminator, and spokesperson.

What is the primary activity of managers in the monitor role?

In the monitor role, managers scan their environment for information, actively contact others for information, and receive a great deal of unsolicited information due to their personal contacts.

How do managers in the spokesperson role differ from those in the disseminator role?

In the spokesperson role, managers share information with people outside their departments or organizations, whereas in the disseminator role, they distribute information to employees within the company.

What are the four decisional sub-roles that managers engage in according to Mintzberg?

The four decisional sub-roles are entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator.

Can you explain the role of a manager as an entrepreneur?

In the entrepreneurial role, managers adapt themselves, their subordinates, and their units to change.

What does a manager do in the disturbance handler role?

In the disturbance handler role, managers respond to pressures and problems that are so severe they demand immediate attention and action.

How are resources allocated by managers in their role as resource allocators?

In the resource allocator role, managers decide who will get what resources and how many resources they will receive.

What is the negotiator role in management and what does it involve?

In the negotiator role, managers negotiate schedules, projects, goals, outcomes, resources, and employee raises.

Outlines

00:00

📘 Managerial Roles and Daily Activities

This paragraph introduces the multifaceted roles that managers play in an organization, beyond the traditional terms of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. It emphasizes the people-intensive nature of management, highlighting the interpersonal roles of figurehead, leader, and liaison. Managers perform ceremonial duties, motivate workers, and interact with external parties. The paragraph also underscores the importance of information gathering and sharing, with managers spending a significant amount of time in face-to-face communication, which is crucial for decision-making.

🔎 Informational Roles in Management

This section delves into the informational roles that managers assume, as identified by MIT's Berg. It describes how managers act as monitors, constantly scanning the environment for information and receiving unsolicited information due to their extensive contacts. The role of disseminator involves sharing collected information with subordinates and others within the company, while the spokesperson role involves communicating with external entities. The paragraph highlights the significance of information in aiding managers to make informed decisions.

🛠️ Decision-Making Sub-Roles of Managers

The final part of the script focuses on the decisional sub-roles of managers, as outlined by Mintzberg. It details the entrepreneurial role, where managers adapt to change, the disturbance handler role, addressing urgent problems, the resource allocator role, where decisions on resource distribution are made, and the negotiator role, involving negotiations on various aspects such as schedules, goals, and employee raises. The paragraph concludes by emphasizing the framework provided by these roles and sub-roles for the core managerial functions.

Keywords

💡Managers

Managers are individuals responsible for overseeing and coordinating the activities of a group of workers in an organization. In the script, they are depicted as playing various roles that involve planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. The video emphasizes the dynamic nature of management, showing that it's not just about using specific terms but about the actions and interactions that managers engage in throughout their day.

💡Interpersonal roles

Interpersonal roles are the social and communicative aspects of a manager's job that involve interacting with people. The video script highlights three sub-roles under this category: figurehead, leader, and liaison. These roles are crucial as they demonstrate the people-intensive nature of management, where managers perform ceremonial duties, motivate workers, and liaise with external parties, respectively.

💡Figurehead

The figurehead role involves managers performing ceremonial duties that represent their organization. Examples from the script include greeting company visitors, speaking at the opening of a new facility, and representing the company at community events. This role is important as it showcases the manager's public face and their role in maintaining the organization's image.

💡Leader

In the leader role, managers are responsible for motivating and encouraging workers to achieve organizational goals. The script mentions that one way managers act as leaders is by establishing challenging goals. This role is central to the video's theme as it directly relates to the manager's impact on driving the organization forward.

💡Liaison

The liaison role involves managers dealing with people outside their immediate units. The script indicates that managers spend considerable time with outsiders, which is as significant as the time spent with subordinates and bosses. This role is essential for building relationships and coordinating activities across different parts of the organization.

💡Information

Information is a key element in the manager's role, as highlighted by the script's mention of managers spending 40% of their time in obtaining and sharing information. This aspect of the job is vital for scanning the business environment, listening to others, and processing information that aids in decision-making.

💡Monitor

The monitor role is one of the informational sub-roles described by Mintzberg, where managers actively scan their environment for information and maintain personal contacts to receive unsolicited information. This role is crucial for staying informed and aware of the organization's internal and external contexts.

💡Disseminator

In the disseminator role, managers share the information they have collected with their subordinates and others within the company. This role is highlighted in the script as a way to ensure that information flows throughout the organization, which is vital for coordination and alignment of efforts.

💡Spokesperson

The spokesperson role involves managers sharing information with people outside their departments or organizations. As mentioned in the script, this is in contrast to the disseminator role, which focuses on internal distribution. This role is important for external communication and representation.

💡Decision-making

Decision-making is a fundamental aspect of management, as described in the script with four decisional sub-roles: entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator. These roles are central to the video's theme, illustrating how managers make choices that affect the organization and its members.

💡Entrepreneur

In the entrepreneurial role, managers adapt themselves, their subordinates, and their units to change. The script emphasizes this role as a way for managers to drive innovation and adaptability within the organization, which is key to its evolution and success.

💡Disturbance handler

The disturbance handler role involves managers responding to severe pressures and problems that demand immediate attention. The script illustrates this as a critical role in managing crises and ensuring the organization can navigate through challenges effectively.

💡Resource allocator

As resource allocators, managers decide who will receive what resources and in what quantities. This role, as mentioned in the script, is essential for distributing the organization's resources efficiently and effectively to meet its goals.

💡Negotiator

In the negotiator role, managers engage in discussions to determine schedules, projects, goals, outcomes, resources, and employee raises. The script highlights this role as a key aspect of management, where effective negotiation skills can lead to better outcomes for the organization.

Highlights

Managers engage in planning, organizing, leading, and controlling but may not use these terms to describe their daily activities.

Managers play various roles, primarily interpersonal, informational, and decisional.

Interpersonal roles include figurehead, leader, and liaison, with managers performing ceremonial duties and interacting with both internal and external parties.

Managers spend significant time obtaining and sharing information, with 40% of their time dedicated to this task according to MIT's Berg.

Informational roles consist of monitor, disseminator, and spokesperson, highlighting the importance of information gathering and distribution.

In the monitor role, managers actively scan the environment and receive unsolicited information due to their personal contacts.

As disseminators, managers share collected information with subordinates and others within the company.

The spokesperson role involves sharing information with external parties outside the manager's department or organization.

Obtaining and sharing information aids managers in making good decisions.

Decisional roles include entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator, each with specific responsibilities and actions.

Entrepreneurial managers adapt to change, guiding their units and subordinates through transformation.

Disturbance handlers respond to severe pressures and problems requiring immediate attention and action.

Resource allocators decide the distribution of resources among team members and the quantity they receive.

Negotiators are responsible for settling schedules, projects, goals, outcomes, resources, and employee raises.

Manager roles and sub-roles provide a framework that encompasses planning, leading, organizing, and controlling.

The framework helps to understand the dynamic and multifaceted nature of managerial work.

Transcripts

[Music]

although all types of managers engage in

planning organizing leading and

controlling if you were to follow them

around during a typical day on the job

you probably wouldn't use those terms to

describe what they actually do rather

you'd see the various roles managers

play let's take a look managers talk to

people gather and give information and

make decisions furthermore these three

major roles can be subdivided into sub

roles interpersonal roles more than

anything else

management jobs are people intensive in

fulfilling the interpersonal role of

management managers perform three sub

roles figurehead leader and liaison in

the figurehead role managers perform

ceremonial duties such as greeting

company visitors speaking at the opening

of a new facility or representing a

company at a community luncheon to

support local charities in the leader

role managers motivate and encourage

workers to accomplish organizational

objectives one way managers act as

leaders is to establish challenging

goals in the liaison role managers deal

with people outside their units studies

consistently indicate that managers

spend as much time with outsiders as

they do with their own subordinates and

their own bosses

not only do managers spend most of their

time in face-to-face contact with others

they spend much of it obtaining and

sharing information MIT's Berg found

that managers in his study spent 40

percent of their time giving and getting

information from others in this regard

management can be viewed as gathering

information by scanning the business

environment and listening to others in

face-to-face conversations processing

that information and then sharing it

with people both inside and outside the

company

Mintzberg described three informational

sub roles monitor disseminator and

spokesperson

in the monitor role managers scan their

environment for information actively

contact others for information and

because of their personal contacts

receive a great deal of unsolicited

infor information in the disseminator

role managers share the information

they've collected with their

subordinates and others in the company

in contrast to the disseminator role in

which managers distribute information to

employees inside the company managers in

the spokesperson role share information

with people outside their departments or

organisations

Mintzberg found that obtaining and

sharing information is not an end in

itself obtaining and sharing information

with people inside and outside a company

is useful to managers because it helps

them make good decisions according to

mintzberg managers engage in four

decisional sub roles entrepreneur

disturbance handler resource allocator

and negotiator in the entrepreneurial

role managers adapt themselves their

subordinates and their units to change

in the disturbance handler role managers

respond to pressures and problems so

severe that they demand immediate

attention in action in the resource

allocator role managers decide who will

get what resources and how many

resources they will get in the

negotiator role managers negotiate

schedules projects goals outcomes

resources and employee raises manager

roles and sub roles provide a framework

for planning leading organizing and

controlling

[Music]