A manager must consider himself/herself as a facilitator for the people he/she manages. Manager must ensure that all the needs of people managed are properly met. Peter Drucker says “the manager must do things right, the leader must do right things.” While there is no doubt that a good leader may also be a good manager but it is important to know the difference between a manager and a leader. Today I’ll discuss the qualities and short comings of the two i.e. the manager and the leader. We must understand and appreciate their respective roles.
- The manager provides to the team members all that may be needed for the performance of their respective roles. For any shortfalls in this context the manager must consider he/she responsible. Such shortfalls are bound to affect performance.
- Developing a mechanism to monitor that there is very little tolerance in the efficacy of the duties performed by the team members, is manager’s duty. That means the work must go ahead with as much accuracy as is possible.
- Productivity depends upon aligning various efforts of the team members. It also depends upon ensuring that the differences emerging out off the various cultural backgrounds do not interfere with the productivity. It requires thorough understanding on the part of the manager habits of the different members of the team, of their characteristic traits due to the cultural backgrounds and also the working style.
- All the members of the team need to be trained properly for the seamless progress of efforts for achieving team’s goals. Often times the members of the team may not indicate any development need due to whatever reason. Therefore it is the duty of the manager to identify these development needs and arrange for the appropriate training.
- The next job that the manager has on hand is to create right environment conducive for better performance. It will depend upon the goals and various situational factors. Due to the constant changes in the market the manger needs to be alert and responsive to these changes.
- Some of the members of the team may even require coaching for coming up to a certain satisfactory level. Here again it is the duty of the manger to identify the persons and their needs and organized coaching to meet the situational challenges.
Since the business environment is very competitive, it is but necessary that the manager needs to leave up to the challenges and face these squarely. This will be good for the manger, for the team as well as for the organization.
Thanks for reading.
