This may sound like a dumb question to someone who carries the title. But many folks carry some version of the title — manager, assistant manager, co-manager, — yet actually manage nothing at all except a daily workload assigned to them by someone else.

So, to officially be considered as doing a manager’s job, two essential requirements must be present.

First, there must be some small piece of your organization’s purpose, service, or mission for which you are solely responsible and accountable. For example, servers in a restaurant wait on customers, while the Restaurant Manager is responsible and accountable for how well all the servers are doing their jobs. A flight purser manages an entire cabin crew and is responsible for how well the individual flight attendants deal with the passengers. Construction workers carry out specific challenging building tasks under the direction of a Site Foreman who manages, directs, and assigns them all and is held responsible for the quality of the final product.

Second, managers have some subset of employees who answer directly to them and for whose collective performance they alone are responsible. They assign individual tasks, direct activities, and are responsible for ensuring that all employees entrusted to them are sufficiently trained, knowledgeable, and able to perform effectively. Employee questions are directed to their manager who either has or is responsible for finding an answer.

Looked at another way, managers are not directly responsible for the daily tasks in an organization, business or service, although they may chip in from time to time. Getting the daily work done is the responsibility of line employees. A Manager’s job is to ensure the line workforce are trained, able and motivated to perform at the highest level they can.

So, how does your management title measure up?

Categories: Exercising Responsibility, Managing & Leading, Managing People

Tags: advice for managers, ai, business, leadership, management, management advice, productivity