A manager has to perform numerous tasks in his/her day to day routine. These are collectively called as Role of a Manager.
There are so many different roles of a manager and many scholars have come up with their theories for this. We are going to study the most popular and widely accepted classification by Mintzberg.
Roles of a Manager
Mintzberg published these 10 roles in his book “Mintzberg on Management: Inside our Strange World of Organizations”. This book was published in 1990.
He classified the roles in 3 broad categories and assigned each role to a category. They are shown in the table below.
| Category | Role |
| Interpersonal | Figurehead Leader Liaison |
| Informational | Monitor Disseminator Spokesperson |
| Dicisional | Entrepreneur Disturbance Handler Resource Allocator Negotiator |
Meanings of these categories are self-contained in their names themselves. Let us study every single role in each category.
Figurehead Role of Manager
A manager is the point of contact for most of the tasks in the unit. He should be a source of inspiration to his teammates. People should look him a source of knowledge, authority and as a figurehead. The figurehead is a symbolic head. Figure in figurehead has the same meaning as in figure of speech.
Leadership Role of Manager
All managers are required to perform this role sooner or later. This role includes training, development, inspiring, disciplining, etc.
Liaison Role of Manager
A manager must communicate internally or externally in order to get the job done. For this, he/she has to look for favors and information from various people from various ranks.
Monitor Role of Manager
Consuming and processing information to get an overview of the present market scenario etc. Studying competitors, looking for changes in consumer behavior etc are the tasks of this role. Here at RBI Guru, we have come up with an acronym that makes it easy to remember and understand.
MRP -Monitor the market, monitor the resources, monitor the profits.
Disseminator Role of Manager
This is all about communicating the previously gathered information to the right people who can benefit or do good for the company from that information.
Spokesman Role of Manager
In the outside world, the manager is the representative of the company. There are situations where a manager is treated as he is the company itself. In internal and external communications, he is made responsible to speak for (on behalf of) the company.
Entrepreneurial Role of Manager
This role involves, looking for new problems, looking for innovative and efficient solutions and implementing them productively.
Disturbance Handler Role of Manager
Disturbance handling, as well as conflict resolution, is a critical role of a manager. This includes taking corrective measures for unforeseen problems. Situations like strike, declining sales, declining profits, dissatisfied customers, etc come in disturbance category.
Resource Allocator Role of Manager
This involves the best usage of time of the employees, raw materials, capital, and machinery. Which resource fits best to what situation, is the call to be made by a manager.
Negotiator Role of Manager
A manager negotiates, inside or outside of the organization, for his/her own unit. Negotiations with peers and subordinates are for increased cooperation and loyalty.