4 - The manager as change agent, strategist and networker

Summary

In the previous chapter, we described our managers’ view of what it means to be a manager – in some cases a more senior manager – and pointed out that many see it as something deeply personal which allows them to express themselves and to work with leadership that is positive and develops their co-workers, as well as with cultural change and overall strategic questions. The themes highlighted seem important and prestigious. But how do they view what they do and what they want to do once they have reached a managerial position? What do they think influences and controls their work, and how do they see their own opportunities to form their managerial work?

In this chapter, our managers talk about what they want to do and what they actually do as managers. What they say they do does not always correlate very well with what they actually do. Here, we will return to the roles that attracted them to management, but also relate these to authenticity and morals. As we will see, the people in our study stress the latter in their managerial work. We saw in the previous chapter that the managers see management as an expression of their natural behaviour – self-view and management go hand in hand. The management styles discussed in this chapter are an expression of how they view themselves. The managers do not describe the managerial job as something neutral, but as strongly value-charged, with moral overtones.

We begin by discussing the fact that many managers who are at the beginning of their managerial career highlight the importance of managers for the organization, in particular in questions to do with change, values, strategies, visions and networks. This is followed by a section on the manager as change agent, with a particular significance for the organizational culture and also the importance of the manager as a role model. We continue with two sections on the manager's significance as strategist/visionary and networker, respectively. In our cases, many of these views of management can be seen as strongly value-charged expressions of transformational leadership, which we described briefly in Chapter 2. This is a style of leadership which the managers believe has a moral foundation; they frequently state that it is right and proper that they work with overall questions while not bothering co-workers unnecessarily by intervening too often.