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Mintzbergs 10 Managerial Roles

Apr 15th, 2008 by MAW editor
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Management expert Professor Henry Mintzberg has argued that a managers work can be boiled down to ten
common roles. According to Mintzberg, these roles, or expectations for a managers behavior, fall into three
categories: informational (managing by information), interpersonal (managing through people), and
decisional (managing through action).
This chart summarizes a managers ten roles:

Mintzbergs Managerial Roles

Category

Role

Informational Monitor

Activity

Examples

Seek and acquire

Scan/read trade press,

work-related

periodicals, reports; attend

information

seminars and
training; maintain personal
contacts

Disseminator

Communicate/

Send memos and reports;

disseminate

inform staffers and

information to others

subordinates of decisions

within the
organization

Spokesperson Communicate/transmit Pass on memos, reports and

information to

informational materials;

outsiders

participate in
conferences/meetings and
report progress

Interpersonal Figurehead

Perform social and

Greet visitors, sign legal

legal duties, act as

documents, attend ribbon

symbolic leader

cutting ceremonies,
host receptions, etc.

Leader

Direct and motivate

Includes almost all

subordinates, select

interactions with subordinates

and train employees

Liaison

Establish and maintain Business correspondence,

contacts within and

participation in meetings with

outside the

representatives

organization

of other divisions or
organizations.

Decisional

Entrepreneur

Identify new ideas and Implement innovations; Plan

initiate improvement

for the future

projects

Disturbance

Deals with disputes or

Settle conflicts between

Handler

problems and takes

subordinates; Choose strategic

corrective action

alternatives;
Overcome crisis situations

Resource

Decide where to apply

Draft and approve of plans,

Allocator

resources

schedules, budgets; Set

priorities

Negotiator

Defends business

Participates in and directs

interests

negotiations within team,

department, and organization

In the real world, these roles overlap and a manager must learn to balance them in order to manage
effectively. While a managers work can be analyzed by these individual roles, in practice they are
intermixed and interdependent. According to Mintzberg: The manager who only communicates or only
conceives never gets anything done, while the manager who only does ends up doing it all alone.
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