What makes a leader?

What does a manager really do?

Yesterday, I went to one of my favorite burger joints for lunch and sat down to read a copy of Harvard Business Review's Leadership Insights. One article really popped for me titled "The Manager's Job" by Henry Mintzberg (the guy who arguably wrote the book on business and management).

Here's the excerpt that hooked me:

"If you ask managers what they do, they will most likely tell you that they plan, organize, coordinate and control. Then watch what they do. Don't be surprised if you can't relate what you see to these words.

When a manager is told that a factory has just burned down and then advises the caller to see whether temporary arrangements can be made to supply customers through a foreign subsidiary, is that manager planning, organizing, coordinating or controlling? How about when he or she presents a gold watch to a retiring employee? Or attends a conference to meet people in the trade and returns with an interesting new product idea for employees to consider?

These four words, which have dominated management vocabulary since the French industrialist Henri Fayol first introduced them in 1916, tell us little about what managers actually do. At best, they indicate some vague objectives managers have when they work."

When I first started my career with Porter Novelli, the corporate world was still very new to me. I had spent years as a researcher in a laboratory that had at most, 10 people on staff - an assistant professor, a handful of doctoral students and about three researchers including myself.

Then I spent a year working on the applied side of the equation in the field of behavior analysis. I had a boss I saw maybe six times a month, usually during our Saturday group meetings where we presented updates on the autistic children we served and explained our data and the methods we were using to shape behavior. We then received feedback.

After a couple short stints in small teams on the client side - Wet Seal and Anna's Linens - I landed a gig at a boutique agency that pretty much had one team of about 7 people. Management was pretty much those four words - there wasn't room for anything else.

But at Porter Novelli, a company with 60+ offices around the world, I noticed that a manager's job was complicated. I observed one colleague and became utterly obsessed with studying her every move. Let's call her Susan.

Susan was above the VP-level and always seemed to be busy, but she always had time to listen to you. Her track record and responsibilities included running global programs, yet she spearheaded office initiatives every chance she had. She managed her employees, but she also celebrated their achievements with long-winded speeches riddled with anecdotes about client wins and spectacular service and initiative. She wrote communication plans and designed messages with a watchful eye, but she also guided her clients through unforeseeable crises and penned bridges, flags and statements with the seamless ease of an Improv comedian being asked to act out a situation in front of a crowd.

Susan did a lot, and that was only the beginning. Susan approached potential clients on a near-daily basis. She attended new business pitches and sold prospects on her team's ability to advise and guide clients across every avenue they wished to travel. She wrote creative briefs and held brainstorms, discussed concepts with creative, planned budgets and worked together with finance, spoke at events and wrote articles to drive visibility. The list went on and on.

So, I ask you, what does a leader really do?

Mintzberg offers an idea:

His description of managerial work suggests a number of important roles and skills - developing peer relationships, carrying out negotiations, motivating subordinates, resolving conflicts, establishing information networks and subsequently disseminating information, making decisions in conditions of extreme ambiguity, and allocating resources. Above all, the manager needs to be introspective in order to continue to learn on the job.

Say what? Well, that was a mouthful. But it makes sense.

There are a lot of things that make a leader, from responsibilities to skill-sets to even character traits, but there's no evergreen answer - the concept is always going to change because of the nature of the job. In reality, a leader's job has a lot to do with evolving and determining whether our social institutions are going to serve us well or whether they're going to squander talents, hack away at resources and waste our time.

I'll leave you with a few bite-size nuggets from the article. Here it goes.

• Folklore: The manager is a reflective, systematic planner.
• Fact: Managers work at an unrelenting pace, their activities are characterized by brevity, variety and discontinuity, and they are strongly oriented to action and dislike reflective activities.

• Folklore: The effective manager has no regular duties to perform.
• Fact: Managerial work involves a number of regular duties, including ritual and ceremony, negotiations, and processing of soft information that link the organization with its environment.

• Folklore: The senior manager needs aggregated information, which a formal management information system best provides.
• Fact: Managers strongly favor verbal media, telephone calls and meetings, over documents.

• Folklore: Management is, or at least is quick becoming, a science and a profession.
• Fact: The managers' programs - to schedule time, process information, make decisions, and so on - remain locked deep inside their brains

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Eduardo Lopez is a digital strategist focusing on bridging the gap between social psychology and marketing. He helps brands create content that increases traffic and conversions. Before working in marketing, Eduardo spent two years researching social cues and coercion in a social psychology laboratory. 

Blog: www.NomadStrategist.com
Twitter @NomadStrategist.