Yes, you’re right. Even though pretty often translation is done by other people, like product owners, project managers etc and not people managers. Much depends on specific environment and product.

Actually it is often tempting for a manager to stand out. To say it is others, not me. It works both ways – when the company makes unpopular decisions and a manager has to deliver bad news to the team and when team screws something hard way and someone has to pass it to higher management.

In the old days of MSF 3.x there was this notion of program manager being a team’s advocate in front of business people and business folks’ advocate in front of the team. The same concept works in people management.

Manager are often tempted to criticize ideas of people from their own team. They may think that then they will appear wiser, especially when they do it in front of the company board. But the truth is, that any idea (even a bad one) is a product of the team. If the manager is no eager to defend it, it just shows how disloyal he is.

“Solving conflicts is another thing which fits to the role. So is (helping the team in) problem solving.”

I agree with the value of a manager that can problem solve but not directly as in the manager just fixes it. Rather, the manager facilitates the process by which team members/stakeholders have a voice and ultimately arrive at a consensus decision.

True, it is impossible in every situation to have 10 people all magically agree and support a single way forward when faced with a conflict. But, the ability for a manager to ask the right questions, draw out everyone’s opinions and move the discussion towards an ultimate way forward is a critical component of leadership. Sure, everyone might not go for a proverbial group hug afterwords, but everyone knows something needs to be decided and I’ve seen managers respected for exhausting the options and ultimately getting the group to buy into the least stinky outcome of all possible odoriferous outcomes.

I’m not sure if I’d agree that manager should be esteemed as a worker. Of course their participation is important, but most likely it is done as a collective effort. Taking part in brainstorming is a good example – there are many people who participate and a manager should be the only one of them. Not even the most important one. Actually it is the part of my understanding of the role of adviser.

Solving conflicts is another thing which fits to the role. So is (helping the team in) problem solving.

Fixing mistakes and proposing better solutions would suit well to coaching. I haven’t mentioned directly organizational role of a manager which might be an omission but depending on work environment this role will be spread among team, ascribed to a manager or to senior management.

I would discuss with tasks like writing documentation or coding. If there is nothing else to do and the team can’t cope with these tasks fine, go for it. But these shouldn’t be main, or even important, tasks we expect from managers. I know it is oversimplified answers and it won’t work in small teams but tech writers are here to write documentations and coders to write code. And managers are here to manage.

Sure, it isn’t a healthy situation when a manager doesn’t know how to code at all as it will be hard for them to assess the work of their team. But they have hell lot of more important things to do than to bang out some code or produce some documents.

I like very much your conclusion, even though I read it a bit differently. A manager should be a member of the team. If something bad happens it is their damn duty to be with the team. The same when something good happen – manager shouldn’t get all the praise alone; they should be with the team.

People managers, functional managers or line managers, however you want to call them are here primarily to lead people.

On the other hand project managers or product managers are leading some virtual things called projects or products respectively. They aren’t managers in terms I used in the article.

Actually whenever I use term management alone it is always about managing people. When I talk about products or projects I use full term or abbreviation (PM).

Personally I’m far from fighting with terms. Actually pretty much everyone understands that project management is a completely different thing than people management and I don’t see people confuse these two.

However I think that you forgot about one important role… a worker. Manager should be a worker, too.
I know several managers, and what I noticed is that none of them are so esteemed by their teams as those who actually “work.” Manager should write documentations, resolve conflicts, participate in brainstorming, give attention to mistakes and propose a better solutions, write a code, try to solve specific (actual) problems, etc.

So besides being a manager, manager should also a member of a project team.

I think I am glad I haven’t heard it. Could be too depressing.

Just a random thought: maybe the term ‘manager’ is too overloaded? We are discouraged to use word ‘manager’ when naming classes because ‘it is vague and means nothing’ and I think there is the same issue in non-code world. We have managers who manage people (which responsibility Pawel described), managers who manage projects and these who manage products. In our company there is also a notion of implementation manager.

There are too many ‘manager’ roles with overlapping responsibilities which makes people confused.