The Roles And Responsibilities Of Managers

It is very important if a manager wants cooperation from his team or employees, or to pay attention. A good manager practices empathy and respects the personal values, opinions and ideas of the people he interacts with. He should listen and respond and offer praises and encouragements when they make progress. By doing that he will enhance their self esteem and will build trust. As the boss, his ability to develop trust and confidence, resolve problems and issues will result in a productive, goal oriented work group. He should encourage his team to ask for help, get involved and participate. A capable manager is often described as having a vision of where to go and the ability to articulate it.

Communication skill

A manager is the middle person in between the top management level and the team that reports to him. He is also the team’s link to the larger organisation. He must have the ability to effectively negotiate and use persuasion when necessary to ensure the success of the team and project. Through effective communication, manager supports individual and team achievements by creating guidelines for the career advancement of team members and for accomplishing tasks. He has to ensure that communication between the two layers is smooth and is conveyed clearly to avoid misinterpretations and dissatisfaction. Good communication skills are useful to develop his negotiation and customer service skills, especially if he deals with clients.

A good planner

In order for a manager to achieve long term goals and commit to strategies for substantial earnings, he has to communicate the vision of the company to his subordinates. He should break down and clarify the goals that each team or individual have to perform and assign work schedules and strategies to them. It also involves thinking and planning out strategies on how to improve quality and also being cost conscious and effective. Having goals and planning out the directions allow for effective time management and saves cost and resources. Setting deadlines and goals helps keep employees focused, busy and motivates them to do their work. A good manager should talk to each of his employees about the company’s goals, and work with them to set individual goals directly linked to organization’s target mission. He should make sure that the employees understand their professional growth path in the company.

Decision Maker

The daily routine of making decisions for a manger includes determining how to approach an employee who is not performing or lacking progress and how to bring about change to the organization and its team. His day to day decision is based on what’s important, what’s right and not who’s right.

Leadership skill

This is one of the most important skill. His position entails him to guide and give direction so that the team can perform effectively. A good manager offers job coaching, training and support. In order for individuals to meet the needs and objectives, they may need extra input, information or skills. The performance of his team depends on his abilities to empower them. How well a person performs depends on his motivation. His task as the boss is to encourage and coach others to improve themselves and the quality of their work. He needs to implement in them the desire to excel and accept responsibility and self management.

Appraiser

A good manager need to have the capacity to evaluate and examine a process or procedure and decide on the best choice to produce an outcome. He looks at the importance, quality and values and then taking the best approach. He is also expected to track the progress of each individual’s activities and effectiveness, review them and offer feedback and counselling.

Recognize problems

It is impossible for a manager to know about personality conflicts, lagging productivity or other problems in the office if he has his head in the sand. If he notices a change in an employee’s work habits or attitude, he should try to get to the root of the problem before that problem starts to affect rest of the staff.

Provide Satisfaction

The subordinates of a manager are happy when they are provided with the necessary tools and resource. They feel secure if the management puts priority to health, safety and cleanliness issues. And this in turn helps in satisfying customers by giving good quality of service or product and taking care of their needs.

New methods and technologies

A manager should keep himself updated on methods and technologies that can make him and his team more efficient.

Proper use of power

In order to achieve the goal expected from a manger, he must have power and authority to act in a way that will stimulate a positive response from the workers. A manager depending on the situation, exercises different types of power, viz reward power and expert power. Besides the formal basis, the informal basis of power also has a more powerful impact on organizational effectiveness. A manager is only effective when his subordinates obey his orders. So, the manager uses appropriate power so that his subordinates willingly obey the orders and come forward with commitment.

Proper time management

Time is the most precious and vital thing in management. There are three dimensions of time

boss imposed time

system imposed time

self imposed time

As the manager has a thorough knowledge of the principle of time management such as preparing time charts, scheduling techniques, etc., he should utilize the time productively in the organization.

Relationship

Managerial behavior implies the existence of a manager managed relationship. This relationship arises in an organization. A manager should have a very good relationship with all his subordinates. It is very important for both his personal and official life.

Sources of influence

In case of a manager, authority is attached to his managerial position. In other words, managers obtain authority from his followers or subordinates.

Sanctions

A Manager has command over all allocation and distributions of sanctions between employees. For Example, Manager has control over the positive sanctions such as promotion and awards for his task performance and the contribution to organizational objectives. Manager is also in a position to exercises the negative sanctions such as with- holding promotions, or mistakes, etc. A leader has different type of sanctions to exercise and grant. He can generate or with hold access to satisfying the very purpose of joining the group’s social satisfactions and related task rewards. These informal sanctions are relevant to the individual with belongingness or ego needs: where as the organizational sanctions granted or exercised by the managers are geared to the physiological and security needs of individual.

Competence

Selection of managers in an organization is done on their ability to successfully lead others rather than on past technical expertise. A manager who has a winning track record is considered competent. Competence also requires expertise in management skills. A capable and competent manager has the ability to challenge, inspire, model, enable and encourage his employees.

Cool under pressure

In a perfect world, projects would be delivered on time, under budget and with no major problems or obstacles to overcome. This happens due to a manager who takes all these problems in stride. When efficient managers encounter a stressful event, they consider it interesting, they feel they can influence the outcome and they see it as an opportunity. They take these events as a challenge rather than a stress.

To be an exemplary role model

Managers who set high standards or goals and achieve them are great leaders by examples. The ability to tolerate stress and remain poise under job pressures and still maintain a high activity and energy level is the main quality of a manager. In order to be a respected and efficient manager, a manager needs to work hard in his personal growth.

EFFECTIVE DEALING OF PROBLEMS BY A MANAGER

In a workplace a manager suffers from a lot of problems from his employees. These problems may be personal or official. Some of the most common problems are briefed below : –

Poor performance

People think that poor performance occurs due to lack of skill but it is not always like that, it may also occur as employees are disorganised. Proper guidance can correct this problem. If performance difficulties relate to a lack of skills, additional training or coaching can solve these problems.

Job incompatibility

Sometimes skills of an employee aren’t compatible with their assigned tasks or regular duties. In this type of cases, offering the employee additional training or assigning them a different set of tasks is usually the most appropriate course of action.

Sloppy work

Whenever a manager notices that, an employee has made some errors, he should point out the mistakes to the employee and monitor their work more closely. If the problem persists, he should speak with the employee and detail the most serious examples of problems with their work. A good manager always remains positive and remembers the employee’s contribution to the company.

Create an effective message

A manager’s message should fit executives, middle managers, supervisors and employees. An effective message by a manager should also explain the employees´ day-to-day duties directly affect the company’s performance and he should touch on the values and pride of the employees. A direct face to face interaction by a manager can help to inspire employees and to reinforce positive attitude in them. This interaction helps the employees to adapt any change in the organization.

Listening to employees

Employees’ feedback is very important in an organization in case of managing change. Holding focus groups with employees is a great way to gauge reaction and monitor the progress of change. A manager can also ask his employees to provide feedback through email or company intranet. Even a blog can be used for this purpose which is quite popular now. For a successful change management proper communication is very important. Talking to your employees is not an one-time event, a good manager should reinforce his message by communicating quite often and on a regular basis.

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EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT MANAGERS

An efficient leader can be summarised as a person who has a lot of capability where as an effective leader is one whose works produce good results for an organization. Effectiveness and efficiency are mutually exclusive things. They are both fundamental preconditions for a manager. Being effective means that one has the ability to properly analyse the evolving environment and selecting the right things as the areas of strategic focus for the enterprise. On the other hand, being efficient requires a carefully carved cultural and operational framework which helps the manager to achieve a particular degree of success, given the level of resources applied to a particular objective.

Both the terms efficient and effective refer to the ability of a person, enterprise, or process to perform a function well. High efficiency refers to an efficient person while an effective person has high effectiveness. However there is a small but very significant difference between these two measure of performance. Efficiency refers to the economy in use of resources for performing a task, and effectiveness refers to the total output generated.

Efficiency is measured in terms of ratio of “output generated” divided by inputs used in the process – for example, widgets produced per kilogram of raw material used.

Effectiveness measures the total output produced – for example, total widgets produced in a day.

An example is given to understand the concept. Two different lathe operators, say X and Y, are assigned the task of making bushes on a lathe. Let us say A produces 200 bushes in a shift, and in the process uses up 8 kilogram of steel rod in the process. In comparison, B produces 120 bushes using 10.5 kilogram of steel rod.

The effectiveness and efficiency of these two lathe operators based on their performance is compared in table below:

Operator Effectiveness Efficiency

X 200 Bushes per shift 25 Bush per Kg of Steel

Y 320 Bushes per shift 18 Bush per Kg of Steel

So, we see that operator A has higher efficiency but lower effectiveness.

In management, both efficiency and effectiveness are very important. The relative emphasis to be given to efficiency and effectiveness depends from situation to situation. One more example will completely justify the concept. For example, we must be careful to control the quantity and cost of water used in a factory during routine operations. However, if the same factory is on fire, we will not think twice about using whatever water can be made available for putting out the fire.

Effective Versus Efficient

The difference between effective and efficient are loaded with some of the most important concepts : –

Efficient – doing things right

Effective – doing the right things

Both concepts are very important and both concepts are utilised in the management of work. These concept begins with organization and does not depend on the position of an employee whether he is a manager or a staff employee.

The great business writer Peter Drucker defined five functions in his writings : –

Objective setting

Organising the team or group

Communicating and motivating

Performance measurement

Developing people

Effectiveness means that the job was done correctly and was accomplished but does not regard whether the job was done inexpensively or on time. Whereas, efficiency means that the job was accomplished cheaply and on time yet may not be a very thorough and impressive accomplishment. “Efficient” is defined as working without waste or using a minimum of time, effort and expense. But, the definition does not define the goals of the operation. A person can be very efficient but still he cannot get a positive result because he is not doing the right things at the right time. That’s where “effective” comes in. “Effective” means “having the desired result”. Once the desired result is obtained, the tasks leading to the result can be isolated and these tasks can then be completed efficiently.

Some characteristics of an efficient manager are :

He is organized. He can find things quickly

He know how to use the tools on his computer to the nth degree

He writes readable and actionable emails

His meetings are well run

He processes all the financial reports properly and on a regular schedule

He knows how to work well with his employees

Some characteristics of an effective manager are :

Meeting deadline for reports and contributions

Making a quota

Earning the amount targeted

Leading the time to define and execute a project

We will consider an example to clear out the difference between the two qualities, i.e. how a manager solves a problem efficiently :

STEP 1: He defines the problem in detail. Once he satisfied that the problem is well defined, then he starts looking for a solution.

STEP 2: The second stage is the alternative courses of action that solve the problem. In this stage multiple potential solutions are generated. This step involves some research and asking others about their ideas. Here, the manager comes up with 2-3 alternative solutions.

STEP 3: The third stage is related with studying each option and the advantages and disadvantages related to it. One alternative may appear quicker but might be costlier whereas the other alternative might be less costly but requires a lot of effort and time. Proper understanding of each alternative helps to get the right solution.

STEP 4: This step is related to the selection and implementation of the best solution.

STEP 5: The final step is related to the monitoring of the implemented solution i.e. whether it worked or not. If the solution is not good enough then again need to follow step 1.

CONCLUSION

Efficiency and effectiveness are different but when combined leads to an unstoppable result orientation which feeds success. So, we can conclude that both efficiency and effectiveness are important for a successful manager. As a result of the manager’s hard work the employees work properly and in an efficient manner which as a result gives fruitful results to the company.