Managers

What Managers Do

Managers are responsible for ensuring tasks are completed in the day-to-day.

Small businesses

• In small businesses, leaders and managers are often the same people.

Larger businesses

• As businesses grow, however, the role of leaders and managers can become distinct from one another.

  • In a growing business, a focus on long-term vision and direction is often needed, and it is the role of a leader to provide this.

  • Managers focus on ensuring tasks are completed, and deadlines are met, in such a way to support the long-term vision and direction of the leader.

The manager's role

• The manager’s role, as a decision maker, includes many different roles:

  • A manager must set objectives so that success criteria are available to later establish whether or not a task has been completed successfully.

  • A manager must review and analyse data so that adaptations to current processes can be made if required.

  • A manager must select strategies and implement these to ensure processes are working efficiently and are supporting overall objectives.

  • A manager must review the impact of their decisions and use this review to inform the setting of future objectives.

Types of Leadership

Businesses are diverse in their size, structure, and approach. One management or leadership approach might be successful in one type of business and unsuccessful in another type of business.

Factors which influence styles of management and leadership

• The external environment can affect the type of management or leadership style which is appropriate for a business.

• The culture of a business can affect the type of management or leadership style which is best suited to the business’ needs.

  • For example, in businesses with a very clear and well-defined culture, a change of leadership style may be difficult to introduce without resistance from the majority of employees.

Factors which influence styles of management and leadership

• The skill level of the workforce can influence the type of management or leadership style used as managers may, or may not, want to involve employees in the decision making process.

  • For example, managers and leaders often value the knowledge of skilled and qualified staff but less so when staff are unskilled or inexperienced.

Autocratic leadership

• Autocratic leadership refers to an approach by leaders or managers to keep control of decision making and ensure that employees are closely supervised.

• If a business has a largely unskilled workforce, a manager or leader may wish to maintain decision making powers and therefore adopt an autocratic approach.

Democratic leadership

• Democratic leadership refers to an approach by leaders or managers to discuss and consult with employees, delegate decision making authority and empower employees through their involvement.

  • For example, in businesses which employ highly skilled and highly qualified employees, such as universities, Google and Microsoft, a manager or leader may decide that the contributions of such staff could be highly valuable to the business; here, a democratic approach may be suitable so that employees can contribute their expertise to the decision making process.