One of the categories of manager roles that has a significant impact on a team’s work is decisive roles. This category includes such roles as Entrepreneur, Disturbance Handler, Resource Allocator, Negotiator (Mind Tools Editorial Team, n. d.). At the same time, essential skills for a manager are communicating with staff, distributing tasks, delegating responsibilities, making independent decisions, and maintaining a balance of all roles.
The decision-making process requires the manager to understand the problems and capabilities of the team. For this reason, communication is an essential skill to build teamwork and involve employees in decision-making. In this case, the manager’s style can be characterized as participative (Lloyd, 2011). However, in this case, it is also essential to understand in which situation it is necessary to involve the team, and in which it will only complicate the process. For example, the decision to change the work schedule should take into account employees’ interests, but the choice of partners for cooperation lies with the leader.
Moreover, it is also vital for a manager to be able to delegate responsibilities and give freedom to employees. However, he or she should not put tasks on them above their competence (Feuer, 2012). At the same time, the manager should take responsibility for the team’s mistakes but monitor the rules’ fulfillment, solve conflicts, and apply sanctions for violators (Powers, 2014; Mind Tools Editorial Team, n. d.). Another responsibility that requires high emotional intelligence is the allocation of tasks and resources, which depends on the characteristics of the employees. For example, a manager can give a new employee more time to complete a task but attract more material resources for an experienced employee’s initiatives. At the same time, as Gross (2011 )notes, a manager must have a balance of skills of an Entrepreneur, Integrator, Administrator, and Producer to effectively make decisions by taking into account the team’s capabilities, member’s relationships, resources, and its development potential. Thus, in fact, the manager must have sufficient soft and hard skills to carry out the decisive roles.
References
Feuer, M. (2012). Does your management style help or hinder employees? Smart Business Atlanta, 9(4), 22.
Gross, B. (2011). Complementary skills for management teams. [Video]. eCorner.
Lloyd, J. (2011). Management style important to results. Receivables Report for America’s Health Care Financial Managers, 26(5), 9–10.
Mind Tools Editorial Team. (n.d.). Mintzberg’s Management Roles: Identifying the roles managers play. MindTools.
Powers, E. L. (2014). Innovating our thinking about management: A new model. SAM Advanced Management Journal, 79(1), 40–47.