Redefining Managerial Roles
"Redefining Managerial Roles for the Leader"Extending on Ott Reader Article: 19 - BennisIn my previous paper, I discussed how out of the ten managerial roles defined by Henry Mitzberg in the 1960s, a true leader must focus on the more critical managerial roles. Mintzberg defined these ten roles as: figurehead, leader, liaison, monitor, disseminator, spokesperson, entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator. (Robbins, p.3) I proposed that if a manger were to focus his efforts primarily on being a leader, secondarily on monitoring and being an entrepreneur, and finally on the other seven remaining roles, then they could emerge as a true leader. (Erickson, 2002)In a recent article, Henry Mintzberg focused on two managers of two separate Red Cross camps in Tanzania. He wanted to define what made these two managers exceptional despite the very real world dangers and friction that they encountered. He spent a day with each manager observing how they spent their time and efforts.In his study of the Red Cross camps, he concluded that the managers had only six roles: communicating, controlling, leadi
Table 1 represents how some of the values line up. Additionally, the older role of entrepreneur was annotated with a minus sign to annotate that it was a very weak association, which I will discuss later. " Both managers certainly don't expect failure and friction to happen, but they both are willing to step in when it does. A manager spends time dealing with subordinates and monitoring information provided to him/her. Likewise, the respective roles of linking and dealing would cover figurehead, spokesperson, liaison, and negotiator. In the role of controlling, I think the strongest links are to disturbance handler and resource allocator. Managers must control any internal disturbances as well as closely manage their resources. This is because the role of controlling deals with the type of information being provided to the manager. If a manager focuses on these six roles, their ship will always make it safely to the next port. In the case of the Red Cross camps, the managers strictly managed the very limited resources of money and vehicles. This information is then processed and returned to the group at large.
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