Levels and Areas of Management

Top Managers: Determining the Overall Direction

• normally called CEO’s (chief executive officers), COO, president, and senior vice president

• top managers: determine what organizations long-term goals should be for the next 1-5 years with resources they expect to have available

  • must be future-oriented, strategic, and able to deal with uncertain, highly-competitive conditions

  • must have leadership skills, profesional experience, good communication skills, knowledge, organization, time-management skills, delegation techniques, and confidence

Middle Managers: Implementing Policies and Plans

• middle managers: implement policies and plans of the top managers above them and supervise and coordinate activities of first-line managers below them

  • critical for organizational success

First-Line Managers: Directing Daily Tasks

• aka supervisors

• first-line managers: make short-term operating decision, directing the daily tasks of non-managerial personnel

Team Leaders

• team leaders: facilitate team members’ activities to help teams achieve their goals

• most successful teams have 4 key elements:

  1. compelling direction

  2. strong structure

  3. supportive context

  4. shared mindset

• must have honesty, integrity, and humility and be able to hold you and your team accountable

• must be able to be decisive and make hard decisions for you and your team

Non-managerial Employees

• non-managerial employees: people who either work alone on tasks or with others on a variety of teams

Areas of Management

• functional manager: manager responsible for one organizational activity

• general manager: responsible or several organizational activities