Why We Need Good Managers
Healthy Leaders | Issue 46
Welcome to Issue 46 of Healthy Leaders. In this issue, leaders need managers in their lives, and vice versa.
Hello friends,
Welcome back to our ongoing conversation on healthy Christian leadership and leader development.1
As we seek to establish a healthy understanding between leaders and managers in Christian organizations, we have to start with the way many leadership training programs talk about managers. To some in the leadership space, managers are just obstacles to overcome on the way to realizing the leader’s potential. They get in the way of progress with their insistence on organization and details.
But nothing could be further from the truth! A good manager can provide steady support and essential critique in the journey toward a leader’s vision, as well as essential insight into how to achieve it.
Here’s Malcolm with more on the value of managers:
“Leaders establish the right and powerful vision of the future. Managers keep things going smoothly while we are getting there. Leaders need managers or else they will never get where they want to go, and managers need leaders or else they will often not know where to go. Therefore, one is not superior to the other.” (Malcolm Webber)
Let’s look a little more closely at some of the roles and responsibilities of managers.2
In general, managers are responsible to see that all of the small pieces of the big-picture vision set by the leader move forward effectively and efficiently. This is how they help the organization as a whole fulfill its purpose! In so doing, they take on roles that relate to people, information, and decision-making.3
People Roles
Every manager has relationships with others which require “people skills,” strong communication, and a heart that genuinely cares for people.
As leaders, managers look at the big picture of the organization and make their “piece of the puzzle” function as an integrated whole in the pursuit of its basic purpose. They strategize for the future, give guidance, ensure motivation, and create favorable conditions for their people to fulfill their purposes.
As shepherds, managers must give pastoral care to those under their responsibility – praying for them, seeing that they fulfill their calling in God, expressing concern for them in times of crisis, as well as looking out for their personal and family needs during normal times! In other words, managers have a burden of care for the people they manage.
As liaisons, managers establish and maintain a web of relationships with individuals and groups outside of their area of responsibility, so that the whole organization stays integrated and cohesive.
As figureheads, managers represent their teams and fulfill necessary social and legal duties on behalf of everyone they’re responsible for.
Information Roles
Spiritual managers spend a lot of time talking to people in various contexts.
As monitors, managers know what is going on inside and outside their organization and team. They continually gather, understand, and analyze information to discover problems and opportunities.
As disseminators of this information, managers pass on the information they gather and receive from leaders to their team members, offering interpretation and clarity.
As spokespersons, managers report to those they are accountable to, and transmit information to those outside their own team and often outside of the organization.
Decision-Making Roles
Healthy Christian managers are constantly thinking about the future and how to get there. At the grass-roots level of the organization, they are the agents of change. As they become aware of problems they must search for ways to correct them. Moreover, they must seek to continually improve their team and mobilize others to search for new opportunities and improvements.
As disturbance handlers, spiritual managers deal with immediate crises caused by unforeseen events, conflicts, moral failures, loss of key people, and other events that cannot be ignored. To avoid doing this all the time, a manager should become good at interpreting the reality of the crisis instead of just reacting to it.
As resource allocators, managers take responsibility for allocating resources within the organization to attain the desired outcomes. Conceptual skills are very important here. There are rarely enough resources to go around, so the effective manager must be able to see the big picture – not just his own narrow interests – and prioritize accordingly.
As negotiators, spiritual managers formally negotiate with others, in various contexts both positive and negative, to attain outcomes for their unit of responsibility.
The many responsibilities presented to us in our daily work as managers (and leaders!) would crush us if we were to try accomplishing them in our own strength. But remember: the source of our leadership is not in us, but in Christ! This changes everything about how we approach not only our lives, but also our leadership.
We’ve heard from many about how the shift from dependence on themselves to dependence on Christ has refreshed them in their work – including this pastor from Nigeria:
“The teaching about the nature of Jesus’ leadership has opened my eyes! It has completely convinced me that without total dependence on the Holy Spirit, the work of our ministry will be laborious and fruitless. During my quiet time this morning, the Holy Spirit revealed to me areas I needed to work on in my personal life and ministry, all in line with the 5Cs you taught us yesterday. The Holy Spirit reminded me of the picture of the goal: Christ at the center and at the circumference. He kept telling me that ‘Christ in you must be seen outside you also.’ I must change our strategy. May God help me!"
What about you?
Rate yourself on these eleven roles. Which two or three are you strongest in? Which two or three are you weakest in? If possible, get feedback from your team members.
Knowing this about yourself, whether you are a leader or manager, will not only help you to improve in those areas you have thus far neglected, but will give you insight into the sort of team you need to build to shore up areas in which you are weak. More on that next time.
Remember, if you need more clarity on your orientation as leader, manager, or some combination of the two, check out our free self-evaluation below.
Until next time, we’re with you!
— Chris
Recommended Resources
Book: Leaders & Managers
If you want to go deeper in self-evaluation, take our free 5C Checkpoint evaluation.
For more resources, visit our website.
Thanks to our friends at Fifty-Four Collective for putting together a comprehensive set of video courses for growing healthy organizations, starting with this series of courses on leadership by Malcolm. We’ll be using some of their videos and some of our own. Be sure to check out what they’re doing!
These ideas are pulled from Malcolm’s book Leaders and Managers and loosely adapted from Henry Mintzberg (1973), The Nature of Managerial Work. If you’re a leader wondering why this matters to you, remember that you’ll be working with managers all of your life, if you haven’t already started! Knowing their strengths and characteristics will help you effectively engage with them as you pursue the work God has called you to.
To be clear, management cannot be practiced as a set of independent parts; all the roles interact in the real world of spiritual management – often chaotically so! Thus, the spiritual manager who only communicates never accomplishes much, while the manager who only “does” things ends up doing them all alone.