What are the three broad roles that managers spend their time performing?

Between their own work, daily meetings, special projects, and reporting to leadership, many managers wonder how much time and effort they should allot for performance management.

What are the three broad roles that managers spend their time performing?

A recent HBR study shows managers spend:

  • 54% of their time on administrative work
  • 30% on solving problems and collaborating
  • 10% on strategy and innovation
  • 7% on developing people and engaging with stakeholders

Doesn’t that sound a bit backwards? How can managers drive high performance if they’re only allocating 7% of their time to people development?

Managers need to strike a balance in their roles, and all that performance paperwork isn’t helping their cause. In one study, when asked about satisfaction with their time allocation, only 9% of managers were very satisfied. And only 52% felt that the way they spend their time matches their organization’s strategic priorities.

The most satisfied and effective group of managers in this study identified four key activities that take up 2/3 of their time:

  • Making key business or operational decisions
  • Managing and motivating people
  • Setting direction and strategy
  • Managing external stakeholders

When managers can devote the majority of their time to coaching, mentoring, and developing their employees, everyone wins. With all these responsibilities, it's not difficult to understand that managers are busy people. But in order to make performance management a seamless fit for them, you need to introduce it in ways that don’t feel like energy-draining exercises. 

Here are some tips to help your managers make time and space for performance management:

1. Have a simple and agile system.

If your system is complicated, managers will spend endless hours trying to navigate the system. Keep it simple, efficient, and agile. Identify the details of each stage in your performance management process.

Break the system down into bite-sized steps and make sure your people managers understand the process and their role in each step.

2. Encourage them to get out of the office.

Gearing up for performance conversations can be a little awkward when your direct report sits right next to you. Not to mention the office is typically full of distractions. Encourage managers to take some time out of the office to work heads down on important people matters.

A change of scenery can help remove any emotional triggers related to the employee or potentially tough-to-talk-about agenda items. Giving your managers time to focus specifically on these conversations might improve their overall willingness to do them well and better prepare.

3. Create micro moments for performance.

Performance management does not have to be—and should not be—a long and drawn-out process. Coach your managers toward behaviors that easily fit into their daily workflow, such as:

  • A 30-minute weekly check-in with each direct report
  • A 5-minute feedback session to wrap up the latest project
  • A quick shout-out at a team meeting to recognize great work
  • A gift card to an employee’s favorite place to say thank you for stellar effort

Adding brief opportunities throughout the workday for managers to check-in with their employees will keep their performance efforts top of mind.

4. Leverage the right cadence for your performance management conversations.

While finding time for performance management is difficult amidst your ever-growing to-do list, doing so is crucial to your employees’ success. But how much time should a manager spend on these growth opportunities? 

Employees prefer weekly sit-down performance conversations with their manager. And these weekly conversations pay off, as 71% of employees who have them are highly engaged. 

Use your discussions to provide feedback, uncover roadblocks, outline expectations, and give recognition for hard work. Don’t forget to prioritize the frequency of your conversations to stay updated on employee performance. When managers are constantly aware of their talent’s performance levels, they can better guide professional growth and development. 


Prioritizing performance management among managers is tough. Download our ebook, Making Time for Performance Management, to get 8 solutions to help them overcome those obstacles.

Managers shape the culture of their teams and workplaces in countless ways. They have to play both an administrative and leadership role. And they require a diverse set of skills to be successful. But what exactly does a manager do? These are the fundamental requirements of the manager's job and why these skills are critical for success in today’s organizations. Management continues to be a viable career option.

The Manager’s Role Inside the Organization

Organizations are hierarchies of titles. The organizational chart or the structure of the company and the relationships of the jobs and responsibilities, from the top down, may include CEO, vice president, director, then manager. Each of these people performs separate and critical functions, enabling the organization to function, meet its obligations, and turn a profit.

The higher you climb in the organization’s ranks, the further away you move from the day-to-day operations and work of the firm’s employees. While the CEO and vice presidents focus more of their efforts on issues of strategy, investment, and overall coordination, managers are directly involved with the individuals serving customers, producing and selling the firm’s goods or services, and providing internal support to other groups.

Note

Additionally, the manager acts as a bridge from senior management for translating higher-level strategies and goals into operating plans that drive the business. In that position, the manager is accountable to senior executives for performance and to front-line employees for guidance, motivation, and support. It is common for managers to feel as if they are pulled between the demands of top leaders and the needs of the individuals performing the work of the firm. 

The Work of the Manager

Have you ever witnessed the "plate spinner" at the circus? This performer places a breakable dinner plate on a stick and starts it spinning. The entertainer repeats this task a dozen or more times, then runs around striving to keep all of the plates spinning without letting any crash to the floor.

On many occasions, the role of a manager feels a great deal like this plate spinner. The manager’s functions are many and varied, including:

  • Hiring and staffing
  • Training new employees
  • Coaching and developing existing employees
  • Dealing with performance problems and terminations
  • Supporting problem resolution and decision-making
  • Conducting timely performance evaluations
  • Translating corporate goals into functional and individual goals
  • Monitoring performance and initiating action to strengthen results
  • Monitoring and controlling expenses and budgets
  • Tracking and reporting scorecard results to senior management
  • Planning and goal-setting for future periods

The daily work of the manager is filled with one-on-one or group interactions focused on operations. Many managers use early mornings or later evenings to complete their reports, catch up on email, and update their task lists. There is never a dull moment, much less time for quiet contemplation, in the lives of most managers. 

Types of Managers

Managers are most often responsible for a particular function or department within the organization. From accounting to marketing, to sales, customer support, engineering, quality, and all other groups, a manager either directly leads his or her team or leads a group of supervisors who oversee the teams of employees. 

Note

In addition to the traditional role of departmental or functional manager, or what is generally known as a line manager, there are also product and project managers who are responsible for a set of activities or initiatives, often without any people reporting to them. These informal managers work across functions and recruit team members from the various groups for temporary and unique initiatives. 

Span of Control

The phrase “span of control” relates to the number of individuals who report directly to any particular manager. Various trends have existed over the years, but the current approach to creating a proper span of control in an organization involves an analysis of what the organization and its employees need.

When you think about the span of control, a small number of direct reports creates a narrow span of control and a hierarchical structure in which decision making frequently resides at the top of the organization. Narrow spans of control are more expensive, but they allow managers to have more time to interact with direct reports. They also tend to encourage professional growth and employee advancement because the manager knows the employees well and has time to spend with them individually.

According to the Society for Human Resource Management. "What factors should determine how many direct reports a manager has?" Accessed May 15, 2020.

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