During the mid-1970s, Professor Henry Mintzberg of McGill University, criticized the

management theory as unrealistic. He was not really convinced about Henry Fayol's depiction of
managerial functions as planning, organizing, leading and controlling. He started thinking 'what
do managers do?' he then conducted his own research and observed top-level managers and their
daily activities. He even asked some of them to maintain a log of their daily activities. He has
written all his findings in the book, "Mintzberg on Management: Inside Our strange World of
Organizations". His findings suggested that in a typical day's work a manager does more work
than plan, organize, lead and control. They perform many roles. Some of these roles comes as  a
formal responsibility whereas others are required to create harmony and productivity in the
organization.  He classified these roles in three broad categories: Interpersonal, Informational
and Decisional. 

Interpersonal Roles: The term interpersonal means between two people, i.e. any form of
relationship building, or communication or interaction between two or more people. Under
Interpersonal role a manager performs three distinct roles and they are:

·         Figurehead: Since a managerial position in a formal position a manager must perform some
formal task that comes as a fiduciary responsibility of the manager. Figurehead role, is a term
that is used to explain that a manager sometimes performs a ceremonial task like inaugurating a
community hall, or cutting ribbon in a event or maybe attending donation giving ceremony in a
library etc. This is where a manager formally represents his/her organization to the outside
world.

·         Leader: A manager is responsible for an organizational unit. He or she is responsible for

managing a team, a unit, or a department. In this regard, he or she is playing the role of a leader.
Other than hiring and firing, as a leader, a mangers needs to motivate, inspire, train, guide, and
empathize his subordinates. A manager must reconcile a subordinate’s individual goals with the
organizational goals. He possess a lot of power vested on him by his position, however as a
leader, he needs to decide how much of that power he will exercise and why.

·         Liaison: As a liaison a manager must act as a bridge between his organizational unit and
influential parties who controls the organizational unit. It can be government officials, regulatory
bodies, an influential suppliers, board of directors, shareholders etc. He needs to inform these
parties about function and performance of his organization unit, for instance the shareholders and
board of directors must be informed about organizational performance.  On the other hand,
he/she must convince the customers about how the organization is fulfilling its social
responsibilities. 

Informational Roles: In this category there are three roles whose main functions is to receive
and convey information. A manger needs to carefully get information from both inside and
outside the organization and at the same time must also convey relevant information to both
inside and outside parties.
·         Monitor: A manager plays the role of a monitor when he/she gathers information about the
organization from outside. A manager needs to be aware of what is happening to the external
environment, such as government policies or competitor’s strategies, and how it may affect the
organization. However, a manager also needs to know what is happening inside the organization.
He or she should aware of any internal problems, for instance, conflict between the
organizational members.

·         The next informational role is the role of a disseminator. No matter where the information is
coming from, internal or external, a manager needs to convey them to the relevant internal
members in the organization. He/ she needs to share these information in order to run the
organization more effectively and efficiently. For example, the marketing department must know
about a favorable tax policy in advertisement or a competitor’s new product launching ideas.

·         Spokesperson: A manager often needs to relay information to the public or outside parties about
the organization and its performance.    When a manager publicly announces the organizations’
performance and future plans in an annual shareholder’s meeting he/she is performing the role of
a spokesperson.

The third classification of roles was decisional role. A manager often needs to make
decisions about many different aspects of the organization. While taking these decisions he
performs four different roles to handle four different types of situations.

·         An entrepreneur: A manager needs to initiate new ideas for organizational progress. He/she must
try to bring in change in product design, organizational process, and business model from time to
time to stay abreast of competition. For example: Ross Derrick, owner of The Table Café at Cod
fathers switched to takeout only, and his revenue dropped by 40 per cent, He was losing revenue
on high profit items like alcohol sales and lobster. But his fish and chips and fish tacos were still
popular, so he started using those as a promotion to bring in new customers. He ran a campaign
so people could buy themselves a meal and buy a meal for a health-care worker for $18. Now,
most of his customers are buying from the restaurant for the first time, which is helping him
broaden his customer base*.

·         A resource allocator: A manager must decide who will get what in the organization. According
to Mintzberg () the most resource that a manager allocates is his or her time in the organization.
A manager is in charge of deciding his/her unit’s structure, the pattern of formal relationships,
how work will be coordinated and distributed.

·         Negotiator: Managerial studies found that a manager spends considerable time in negotiations.
On one instance, a manager needs to negotiate with a supplier about the price, quality and lead
time of supplies, on the other, he or she needs to negotiate project deadlines and required
resources with the team members.
·         The fourth role under decision-making is the role of a disturbance handler: In an organization
there will be a lot of events where a manager needs to handle both internal and external
disturbances. For example, a major customer going bankrupt, or a strike by the employees
demanding increasing wage, or maybe a supplier wanting to reneges the contract. In each of
these cases the manager needs to come to term with these parties in way that brings about the
best outcome for the organization.

In order to perform the managerial roles identified by Professor Henry Mintzberg, a manager
must possess 7 essential skills. These are the skills that an organization looks for in a manager.
Before assigning the managerial tasks an effective organization will see whether or not the
chosen candidate has these skills and does he/she has the ability to effectively implement these
skills. The seven necessary skills for an effective managers are explained below:

1.      Conceptual skills: this skills is usually possessed by the too manager after gaining
years of experience and insights into the business practices. This skill develop over
time as the managers goes through various experiences of failure and success.
Conceptual skill gives the manager an ability to think in an abstract and visualize the
‘big picture’. By developing this skill an effective manager can see the implication of
a decision on whole organization at once. As a manager grown from the junior
positions to more and higher level positions they develop conceptual skill. For
instance, Zaber and Zubair Fabrics Limited, the largest textile manufacturer in the
country, have very proficient top management who hasthe ability to understand how
COVID-19 may impact the ready-made garment industry, so they invented ‘corona
block fabric’. Their claim is that this fabric will kill the coronavirus
(www.observerbd.com). 

2.      Interpersonal Skill:It is the skill that a manager need to effectively communicate,

interact and work with individuals and groups. Managers who possess good
interpersonal skills are said to be good communicators and are good with people.
Interpersonal skill is much more than just receiving or relaying information. It is
about an individual’s overall body language, gesture, tone of voice, patience,
dependability etc. A manager is said to have good interpersonal skill when he/she will
have good acceptability among the team members. A manager must be an active
listener, he must know how to motivate his people and how to facilitate team work.
Managers with good interpersonal skills can take responsibility of their actions and
are flexible and possess good leadership qualities. For example, imagine a situation
where you see that your team members are about to miss an important deadline, what
would you do? Will you go and shout at them, point out their lacking and criticize?
oryou will try to know about their challenges , empathize with them and give your
best advice and motivate them that they can do the work on time. Obviously, a
manager with good interpersonal skill will choose the second option and show
positive gesture towards the team member’s effort.

3.      Communication Skills:
 The communication skill is not same as interpersonal skill although it is one of the
interpersonal skills that managers must possess. Communication skill refers to the
ability of a manager to convey ideas and information to others and also to
receive  and understand ideas and information from others. It is the skill where the
manager must listen and understand and also get heard and understood. For example,
in a meeting a manager must convey information related to the new project plan. He
must explain the goals and expectations from his team members get feedback from
them to see whether they understood the information. He must also listen to their
ideas, challenges and inputs and provide realistic suggestions. 

4.      Time Management Skills: Now that you know that a manager performs so many
different types of task, roles and skills in an organization he/she needs to prioritize
and divide their time carefully so that he can work in the most efficient and effective
way. A good time-management strategy helps a manager to perform his tasks smarter
than harder. For example, a manager may need to give feedback to his team members
on a presentation and at the same time needs to go to a seminar outside the
organization. He can review the presentation on his way to the seminar and this way
both the task can be completed on time.

5.      Decision-making Skills: A manager have to take many decisions in his day's

work.  For example, a manager many have to take a decision on which packaging
materials to choose from, which products to launch next or how to resolve conflict
between team-members. Therefore, making careful and effective decisions are one of
the most important skills of a manager because it is a fiduciary responsibility of a
manager to increase shareholder's wealth.

6.      Diagnostic Skills: The skills that lets a manager to identify and solve a problem refers
to the diagnostic skills. The conceptual skill may help a manager to visualize the
problem but diagnostic skill helps a manager to find a solution to the problem as well.
For example, when first learned about the global impact of COVID-19 crisis an
effective manager would predict how it might hamper their previously laid out
production plan and to prepare the entire organization to deal with the crisis situation.
The good news is that diagnostic skill can be learned through training,
experimentation and practice.

7.      Technical Skills: The skills that shows a mangers expertise in specialized areas is
called technical skills. This is the skill needed to perform specialized tasks, like
programming a computer, preparing financial statements or developing new products.
The supervisory level of managers need this skills more than the other two levels
because the product development or other field level activities are executed by the
employees who are directly supervised by the first-line managers.

The art and science of management

Management is both an art and science. The art of management begins where the science of
management ends. The technical aspects of the business is considered as the science of
management, whereas the artistic application of managerial skills in light of realities of a
situation is call the art of management. Modern managers, nowadays, can do both by achieving
technical expertise through formal education and training and can learn the art of management by
learning in workshop, seminars, team-work and experimentation.

When managers use knowledge, concepts, theories and methods, they are using science of
management. However, sometimes managers take decisions using their gut feeling or intuition
and they need to show their empathy towards their subordinates, resolves conflicts and use
creativity. The art of managing involves visualizing a concept of an orderly whole created from
chaotic activities. It is not only an idea generation  but also communication and achievement of
an idea.

The manager's job is not only to use art of management but also to use "art of arts" because
he/she leads, organizes and controls other human talents. Elements needed in the art of
management are practice or application of knowledge, creativity, personal skills, goal-orientation
and perfection through practice. For example, simply knowing how to sing does not make a
musician, you need to know all the composition and how to use them. Similarly, a manager may
have all the technical knowledge needed to run an organization but if he does not know how to
apply them then he will not be able to excel in running the organization. Managers across
competing firms may have acquired similar set of technical knowledge or science of knowledge
but each of them will use art of knowledge in their unique style which is why the organizational
performance of competing firms different from each other.

Becoming a Manager

A manager can acquire his or her knowledge and skills from his formal education like achieving
a BBA degree, and his life-long experience. As soon as an individual starts a formal job he or she
starts gaining experience in various assignments and projects which keeps on adding value to a
manager's knowledge. Continuous practice and application of all concepts, theories, knowledge,
and blending it with personal unique propositions and creativity makes a manager become
successful.