Understanding The Purpose Of A Manager – What Should A Manager Do
What is the purpose of a manager? What should a manager do to be viewed as really successful by the company that employs them? The great managers – what do they do that is so different from terrible managers?
Most know that both good and bad managers make decisions, organise work, manage communications and look after teams. Yes of course – how well managers do each of these activities is a factor. Fundamentally a company needs to be better than its competition just to survive, let alone thrive. The burden of achieving this fall on managers.
Understanding The Purpose Of A Manager – What Should A Manager Do
- Improving team performance is a fundamental purpose of a manager
- Increasing the Success of the Business in which they work
There are two results or outcomes that any manager or leader needs to deliver to be viewed as valuable to the company that pays the manager’s salary. These fundamental outcomes are:
- Improve the performance of the team they lead
- Increase how successful the business is
Achieving both are essential the manager’s and the company’s success. The greater the manager’s positive impact on both of these results, the more valuable that manager is to the business.
To have a great positive impact on the success of a business and the performance of their teams, the manager has to have a great positive impact on people. People are at the heart of any business and team. People make the decisions. They create and produce what customers buy. People create and maintain the processes and systems that run a company. People are the heart of everything that makes a business valuable.
Watch on YouTube
Listen on Podcast
Great managers have a very positive impact on their team members and the employees they work with. They inspire, care, motivate, help, support, develop, build trust, respect & value team members and so on.
Terrible managers annoy, upset, hurt, demotivate, damage trust, don’t care, treat people like robot. The activities and tasks undertaken by good & bad managers are similar; their approach and intentions very different.
Great managers serve their team. Terrible managers serve themselves. The easiest, quickest and most reliable way to have a very positive impact on your team members is to help them, to support them and to serve the interests of the team. Developing good management skills allows you to be a lot more effective in providing that service.
Improve the Performance of the Team is a fundamental purpose of a manager
The manager holds a huge amount of influence over the success of the team they lead. To be able to use that influence to improve the success of your team, I think you need to be aware of and pay attention to human psychology.
Setting Really Clear Direction
Setting really clear direction is a great example. When the manager sets really clear direction by telling the team
- what they want,
- why they want it
- AND then reinforce what they have said by aligning their own decisions, actions and behaviours with the team direction they have set out,
then team members feel psychologically a lot safer. This increased psychological safety means team members are happy to put as much of their time and effort as possible into tasks and activities that move the team in the direction the leader has set out. They know by doing so they are going to be rewarded by the leader. They know everyone else will be doing the same. The result is much better team performance. [Learn more about setting really clear expectations]
Contrast this with a direction set verbally, but with decisions and action taken by the manager that conflict with this direction. Team members are confused and so hedge their bets, put some of their effort into the direction verbally set out and some of it into the direction their manager’s actions and decisions suggest is important. By splitting their time and effort across multiple different directions, the team does not progress as far in any direction, and team performance is significantly lower.
Setting really clear direction and maintaining it is super important to team success.
Four other really important areas for managers to focus on to increase team performance are:
Creating A Positive Environment
The second area – work on creating a positive work environment that enables and celebrates great decisions, actions, behaviours and ultimately results across the team. Understanding human psychology plays an important role in achieving this. Your working and managing style, the behaviours you display and the actions you take or don’t take are all huge influencers on the working environment. When you are open and honest, your team are likely to follow. When you show your team the behaviours you want and when you praise great behaviour and correct poor behaviour, your team’s behaviour will improve. Focus on how you personally influence the team environment and the team will follow your lead.
Facilitating Communication
Thirdly, work hard at facilitating communication. Knowledge is power – the power to do a better job. The more knowledge and information you communicate to your team and get them to share amongst themselves, the better the teamwork, the higher the trust, the better the co-ordination of activities, the better the problem solving, the collaboration etc. Communicate openly and honestly and your team will too.
Publicly Solve Problems
Fourth – work hard to publicly solve problems that stop the team doing their best. Problems come in all shapes and sizes. Proactively look for problems with people, processes, systems and through organisational conflict. The more you can remove or reduce problems that stop you team members doing a great job, the more they will respect and appreciate you. Plus you will get increased team performance.
Coach & Mentor Your Team
Fifth, commit time and effort to coach and mentor your team members. You have a ton of skills, experience and knowledge that you team members don’t, yet would benefit from gaining. Development and the career progression that comes with it is one of the most valuable ways to reward staff. Make the time to improve their skills and you will get a lot of appreciation, motivation and increased output back from your team.
The purpose of a manager is to increase team performance. With improving team performance, or maintaining current good team performance, the manager is adding significant value to a company. If team performance is dropping or if a manager starts destroying team performance, the manager becomes a liability and large cost to the company.
Increasing team performance starts with the manager providing a great service to their team, to enable and encourage team members to deliver more. Management skills play a part in this. A much bigger part of improving team performance is determined by the approach and self-management skills of the manager. Look after the interests of your team!
Increase how successful the business is – the second fundamental purpose of a manager
Managers in general have a lot more influence on the success of a business than workers. The biggest manager influences on business success, in my opinion, come through:
- Making good decisions that increase the sales, profit and cash of a business over the short and long term. This includes setting better strategies than the competition, taking advantage of good opportunities, avoiding mistakes and reducing business risks.
- Making the best use of the resources the business has
- Increasing teamwork and co-ordination between teams and across the business
- Increasing the performance of the team you look after by helping and supporting the success of the team as whole
Managers at every level are responsible for and able to influence all 4 of these areas. The extent and breath of that influence is different depending on your seniority and role.
Decision Makers
Mangers make better decisions and make better use of resources when they use data to measure, understand and gain insights on the cause and effect of actions, activities and projects within the business. Being able to read and understand financial information is a huge help in understanding how to increase your business’ performance. Better understanding of the cause and effect of actions taken will help you make better decisions and use resources more effectively. Make the time to understand the data available to you.
Co-Ordinator’s
Increasing teamwork and co-ordination between teams and across the business is helped by managers build good working relationships and good communication channels with their peers and colleagues. Anticipating and jointly solving problems, joining the dots to create opportunities, increasing communication and helping other out where you can all help to improve teamwork and co-ordination across the business, which in turn helps improve business performance.
Helping to improve business performance is a fundamental purpose of a manager. If the business does well, so can everyone who works in the business.
In summary
The purpose of a manager is to increase team performance and help increase business performance. I have shared some of the best ways I know – and have seen used in top companies – for how to achieve better performance in any business for any level of manager.
Learn more about developing the mindset, behaviours and skills needed to build high performing teams by taking a look at the performance improvement our management skills accelerator course offers you and managers in your team.
The purpose of a manager is to help improve their team performance. Everything is about the team. There is a huge amount a manager can do to quickly improve the culture, motivation, attitude and performance of a team. Knowing what to do is key and building the skills to enable you to achieve what you need for the team is also very important.
Being a great manager starts with your approach and attitude. Look to helps, support and serve your team and you will be doing the best thing to serve your own interests.
