Role Responsibilities

Every role in every organization has specific responsibilities or requirements to complete as part of the job. Many of these are not negotiable; they are vital components of the role. It is crucial to be aware of them. The following example illustrates what can happen if you are not.

Rita was a successful retail technology salesperson who worked for an internationally recognized and highly respected computer manufacturer. With an outgoing personality and an ability to connect with people, she was a natural.

She had a good manager who cared about her development and gave Rita opportunities to train other salespeople, an activity she found incredibly rewarding. Because she enjoyed this so much, she pushed for a sales manager position, and after some time, Rita received the promotion she wanted.

She told me, “I was excited about the prospect of working more closely with my salespeople. I thought I would be spending most of my time doing this. But shortly after the promotion, I was reminded of the other role requirements, like overseeing processes, attending meetings, producing a series of weekly reports, and managing scheduling.”

“With more than a hint of sarcasm, she said, “My absolute favorite, without question, was scheduling! I had to make sure the floor was covered every moment the store was open. I had to coordinate holidays and vacations, manage sick leave, and deal with no-shows. It took up a crazy amount of time! I told my boss this wasn’t part of the deal! I thought I was supposed to be helping my team get better, be more productive, and sell more.”

“She continued, “I told him I spent more time with them when I was one of them than I did now as their manager. And to me, this just did not make sense!”

Rita ended up frustrated and disillusioned because so much of what she was required to do was administrative. Ultimately, she quit the sales manager position and left the organization.

Misaligned Expectations

In our experience working with thousands of managers across the globe, we have found many stories like Rita’s. These managers were doing some of what they expected they would do, but there were additional requirements they were either unaware of, ignored, or did not take seriously.
Misaligned Expectation

Examples
The following illustrations may help you avoid falling into similar traps if you determine that management is for you.

Understanding the What and How

From this point forward, we will refer to management requirements as what needs to be done, those specific responsibilities that define the role. These include the day-to-day transactional work responsibilities establishing the purpose of the position — the reason the role exists in the business.

Good managers know their jobs well, understand what they need to do, and execute effectively on those specific items.

The focus of this chapter: Management Requirements, will be to identify the requirements of the role you are considering: to figure out what must be accomplished and become clear on the many responsibilities you will have as a manager.

In the following two chapters: (Leadership Expectations and A New Leadership Framework), I will introduce you to a model designed to improve how you can complete the requirements of your role in a more powerful way.

Becoming Aware and Willing

Simply stated, you must be aware of the requirements of your role, and you must be willing to change to meet those requirements. Although this might sound obvious, remember the story of Rita, an example of a talented professional with good leadership capability and a promising future. She was not aware of the time it would take to meet the other requirements of her role. Rita’s singular focus was developing her sales team, to the exclusion of many other responsibilities. Once she realized how much time the other requirements were taking, she was unwilling to accept the required changes and opted out instead.

As we consider Rita’s situation, we could make the case that this issue was not entirely her fault. After all, she “didn’t know what she didn’t know.” Does this mean her manager shared some of the blame for this? Probably. But in the end, Rita had to own this. It was her responsibility to understand the requirements of the role that she had accepted.

To help you avoid the mistake Rita made, you should become aware of the management requirements of the role you are considering and strive to understand the purpose of each one.

You can document these requirements and use this information to decide if you are willing to make necessary changes to meet the expected outcomes they are supposed to produce.

You Don’t Know
What 
You Don’t Know

Think about the management role you are considering. Can you define the requirements of the position? I am confident you would give a good description of everything you have personally observed.

But there is a problem with this. Your vision is limited or restricted. Like peering out of a window, you only see what is inside the window frame. Your limited vision constitutes your reality with the role.

Anything outside the frame, beyond your sight, represents additional management requirements you cannot see, leaving you in a precarious situation because you don’t know what you don’t know. You are vulnerable as you sign up for something that may potentially blindside you.

I remember early in my career, joking with my peers as we imagined what our manager did when he was not working directly with us. He was a great boss, but our interactions with him were limited by what we observed him doing through our window. Because he was not with us all the time, we assumed he was perhaps out playing golf, having lunch with his buddies, or sleeping. Of course, none of us sincerely believed this, but the point is, we simply did not know (and technically, we did not need to know).

Since then, I have learned about some of what he did “outside” of our view – things we were not aware of at the time. I discovered he was under a lot of pressure from corporate and upper management. He worked extremely hard and did much more for us than we assumed.

For instance, he did a masterful job acting as a type of firewall, filtering out the noise and corporate flack constantly exploding all around us. Anything he felt would be an unnecessary distraction—something that would divert our attention or keep us from getting our work done – he tried to eliminate, which was no small task.

The Unwritten and Unspoken
Order of Things

An essential part of the work you will do in this chapter will be to identify or uncover the unwritten and (or) unspoken order of things in the organization where the position is located.

What do I mean by the unwritten and unspoken order of things? These are the requirements neither in an employee handbook nor in a job description. They vary, not only from organization to organization but from role to role.

For example, let us hypothetically say that an office equipment and supply company headquartered in Australia has two offices: one in Sydney, New South Wales, and the other in Melbourne, Victoria. They are approximately 900km apart.

Both locations are identical in their branding and in the products and services they offer. They are also remarkably similar in how their various functions operate. You would assume that the same management roles in each location would be nearly identical. To be more specific, you could imagine the credit manager roles in both locations to be essentially the same from a management requirements standpoint.

Yet, there are several differences. For one, the credit manager in Melbourne has tremendous freedom and flexibility to make her own hiring decisions.

The Sydney office is different. Leadership in this location limits the involvement of the credit manager. Instead, they have opted for a more tightly controlled hiring process, including recruiting and interviewing teams, predetermined interview questions, and specific selection criteria.

As a final example, I will share an experience while consulting at a mid-sized manufacturing organization in Pennsylvania, USA. I had the opportunity to talk with Ricardo, a recently hired fabrication assembly supervisor.

The company was operating 7-days per week, 24-hours per day, running three shifts. They employed supervisors to cover each shift.

Ricardo told me, “When I originally applied for the night shift supervisor position, I was under the assumption that all fabrication assembly supervisors had the same job descriptions and responsibilities – based upon the information they gave me for the job.

“However, after accepting the position, I discovered that because production slowed down at night, the night supervisors did not have as many staff to manage. And because of this fact, the night shift supervisors had no administrative help – a benefit the day shift and swing shift supervisors enjoyed.

“This left most of the administrative tasks for me to handle personally.” He shook his head slowly and then glanced over his shoulder.

“Look, I get it. I have fewer employees to manage, so I should be “able to handle some of this stuff. But still, it would have been nice to know before showing up for work the first night? I didn’t realize I had signed up to be my own administrative assistant.”

Not being aware of this undocumented fact was frustrating to Ricardo. He said, “Someone should have told me!” And he was right; they should have. But there are always going to be nuances like this in every organization.

An informed decision will require addition­al research to understand what the role entails. You can often find job descriptions, including role requirements, on job posting sites like LinkedIn, CareerBuilder, Monster, and many others. The company’s website or the Human Resources department can provide valuable information as well.

The data you gather from those sources will be invaluable. But remember, what you are looking for are the unwritten, unpublished requirements – the stuff that can blindside you.

The best information source is the person who currently occupies the position or someone who had the job in the past.

Imagine the difference it would have made for Ricardo to have a conversation with a former night shift supervisor who revealed the additional responsibilities he would have to shoulder. Would he have still taken the job? I tend to think so, but he would have had a much better attitude during those first few weeks.

Consider having similar discussions with other first-line managers or supervisors in the organization, even though they may be in different departments or functions. Patterns may emerge, expanding the size and scope of your window frame. The more you understand the organization’s management requirements, the better.

Hopefully, this will play to your advantage as others see you taking the initiative to understand the role you are considering.

Build Your Management
Requirements List

To begin building your list, apply the window frame analogy to the management role you are thinking about and answer the following questions:

• What do I know about the management requirements for the role I am considering – those I can see through my window?
• What do I not know about the management requirements, beyond the window frame, outside my view?

Remember, you don’t know what you don’t know. Asking this question will likely stir up your memory, which should help you recall some things you may have observed but forgotten. Consider discussing this topic with your colleagues, supervisor, and others, asking for their experiences, perspectives, and insights.

• Is there someone you could talk with to find out more information on the role requirements?
• Try to arrange an interview with someone currently in or who has occupied the role in the past. If this is not possible, find someone who at least knows the role well. If you can schedule some interviews, consider asking the following questions:

• “Once you were in the role, what surprised you or caught you off guard?”
• “What parts of the role did you find particularly difficult to master?”
• “What elements of the company cultural were you unfamiliar with?”
• “What did you like most about the role?”
• “What did you find least rewarding about it?”
• “What coaching, tips, or suggestions would you give to someone new to this role?”

The following table contains a sample management requirements list. Its purpose is to help you create a customized list of your own. Do not assume all of these items should be on your list. Every management role is unique and will have its own set of requirements.

Most of the items on this list could be written or unwritten requirements depending upon the organization.

Content Application Story

“I Want to Be a Manager!” (Part 2)
Part 1 Review

We continue the story we began at the end of Chapter 1 regarding Jacob and Adeline. If you recall, Jacob, an operations research analyst, pushed his boss for a management position. He was certain he was ready for it. His boss, Adeline, was certain he was not.

To provide him with some experience, she committed to construct a development assignment – a project for him to work on to see how he would do.

Part 2 – Continuation

After their initial meeting, Adeline went to work on creating a project for Jacob. She was taking this seriously. Jacob was a great employee who had a promising future, and she did not want to lose him.

Once Adeline had the development plan ready to present to Jacob, they sat down and worked through the details.

The project included an opportunity to lead a high-value project with a cross-functional team assigned to him. This project had the potential of providing good visibility and exposure for Jacob. If it went well, critical people within the organization would recognize his potential.

He would need to work with some key stakeholders, communicating progress throughout the life of the project.

One of the more challenging aspects of this assignment would be motivating his team members to complete the project on time. Each team member had a different direct-line manager, and each of those managers had a list of priorities that Jacob’s team members would need to work on at the same time.

Finally, as part of the deal, he would also be required to complete his regular duties – a daunting task.

Jacob was excited about the new opportunity. He threw himself into the work and learned quickly. Adeline did her best to observe him, receiving permission from the managers of his team to get feedback from them occasionally.

She was impressed by his determination. She noticed he spent a tremendous amount of time on this assignment, knowing he still had to complete his regular duties. It was stretching him in a big way.

Jacob was able to focus and complete the work at an intense pace. He was a quick learner and became adept at each process and management requirement.
Jacob had assumed those who indirectly reported to him (his team members) would complete their assigned tasks. He fully expected them to own these tasks and assignments; this was just how things were supposed to work.

It caught him completely off guard when he realized how difficult it was to motivate people to meet his expectations. He could not wrap his head around how cavalier some of them seemed about their responsibilities. When they did complete them, it was barely on time and, in some cases, late, which impacted other aspects of the project and other teams depending upon them to finish their assigned portion on time.

“This issue became a huge hurdle for Jacob. Of course, he knew each team member reported to a formal manager, meaning—he was not their boss. However, for some reason, he did not process this fact thoroughly. Those managers had different priorities which they expected their direct reports (his team members) to complete. When it came down to what got done, his work was always second in line. He ended up in several confrontations with members of the team over this issue.

Maintaining quality expectations was another challenge. It was vital to Jacob. His name was on the line with this project. The outcomes they produced had to be as perfect as possible and completed the way he thought they should be completed.

Unfortunately, not everyone was as meticulous with the details or shared the same vision as he did. A few of his team members would quickly handle the items they were responsible for, not paying attention to the quality Jacob required, prompting him to do or redo much of the work himself.

When the project was complete and delivered to the client, Jacob was exhausted but satisfied with the results. It was refreshing to him, and he genuinely enjoyed the experience. He and Adeline scheduled a project review at its conclusion.

(To be continued in the next chapter)