An Interview with a Firm Manager - Assignment Example

An Interview with a Firm Manager Introduction: Effective and influential management and leadership in a company require some of the tasks and activities in a coordinated manner. The mangers can be the leaders for their employees if they have some set of capabilities and inter personal skills to carry out the responsibilities of a manager. These responsibilities or the activities are termed as the management functions. Every company has management functions and these management functions are actually the foundation of all the operations and the output performance of the manager in specific manner and company in general manner. These management functions are planning, organizing, leading and controlling. Some of the management experts include staffing as another management function. The mangers first plan then organize and arrange proper resources, then lead all the employees in a positive direction and after that control all the activities and the operations. Some other management experts say that staffing includes the hiring of proper and capable people for the work. In order to clarify the concepts of management functions in practical way, an interview of a local firm operational manager is discussed in detail. Main Body: The interviewed manager is Bill Hicks who is working in a local gym as the general manager. He is not directly appointed as the general manager rather he has struggled and earned this position of general manager with the help of hard work and continuous efforts. He has been working from last seven years in this particular gym. Initially he entered the gym just as a routine member. After the regular behavior, he was appointed as the trainer for other gym members. After enough training, he became the fitness manager and now he is general manager of the same gym. Answering the question of planning for the long term goals, he said that he always plans for the ways, which can satisfy the members at their utmost desire. All his planning rotates around the demands and then the satisfaction level of the members who are the actual customers of the gym. In order to act upon his planning, he needs some of the capable persons, which can work, under his supervision to make the planning successful. In order to organize these capable persons, Bill Hicks announce different rewards and incentives so that employees can feel motivation. The organizing of the employees actually needs the random thoughts of the people. Here it is necessary that these employees have idea in their minds that they are working here to help others. The organizing of the resources and the material is totally dependent on the Hicks, capabilities. After the planning and the organizing of the potential resources, there is always a need of proper and guided direction so that resources can be best utilized. According to Hicks thinking, a leader can best guide employees as compare to the manager. The reason is that a manger is always orders and requires it to be done. Contrary to this, a leader is a person who actually guide or lead by example. That means a leader will practically perform and then ask others to do the same while the managers may ask them to do it on their own behalf. Hicks said that he always try to be a leader and thus set and lead by example. For this reason, he usually trains people by giving services to the members by his own and then the learning trainers may follow him. According to the opinion of Hicks, a manager requires a particular skill set, so that he can better organize and lead the employees or the sub ordinates. In other words, a manager should be multi skills person so that he can take a look at all the functions and areas of the business at a time. As a manager, the person has to face certain difficulties and challenges as a part of management functions. Hicks say that employee turnover is the biggest and the severe challenge for the management. It is most common habit of the people that they do not take their professional life very seriously and thus try to change their jobs after regular intervals. Just for this reason, the manager faces a critical situation sometimes. Another important role of the manager is to control all the functions and the resources so that everything can be streamlined. Hicks said that if a manager is a perfect controller then he could maintain the accountability of the employees. The employees will work efficiently if they have the fear of any accountability from the general manager. Another important aspect of the brilliant output performance is the teamwork, which can be maintained by the help of the general manager and the employees. The teamwork will definitely enhance and push people towards hard work. For a perfect team building, the relations management is very necessary aspect. A manager should be good at making connections and the relations with variety of people. A good relationship manager can convey his message or idea to all the team members in a more influential way because he has the tactics to make every single person comfortable with the environment. The relationship management is also helpful for the manger because he has to deal with a variety of the customers ranging from very young age to the seventy years old people. According to the general manger of the Gym, the lack of time as a potential resource is the biggest weakness of his management. On the other side, the motivation to explore more and the devotion towards the work is the actual strength of his management. In order to perfectly run a management, it is necessary that a general manager should be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of his management so that he can take different steps in order to make the conditions better. For making the smooth running of the activities of the gym, there is a need of time management from the general manger side. If general manager is aware of the proper time allocation to every activity then it will be very easy to handle all the operations or the tasks. If a manger skilled all the above things then surely he will get success. Hicks share his opinion that success is actually the achievement of desired goal while keeping the limited resources in mind. Contrary to this failure is nothing but zero tries. A person will fail for sure if he is sacred or feared of trying for once. Conclusion: It is clear that every manager is bound to apply some of the management rules like planning, controlling, staffing, organizing and leading, so that an effective style of management may appear in the organizations. Irrespective of the type and the style or the size of the business, these management functions play an important role for the success of the manager. Read More