Managers Only do 4 Things

Sometimes my head spins with the many and varied duties of a manager. How can anyone be a competent manager in the face of so many skills needed? Must we be good at everything, or just the important things? How can we be confident that we know what the important things are? Do the important things change with time? It is like a nightmare.

Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman write, in the book First, Break All the Rules, that a manager only performs the following four tasks:

· Select the right people
· Set expectations
· Motivate the people
· Develop people

What are Buckingham and Coffman missing? Can everything a manager does fit into one of the four categories above? Where does conflict resolution fall? How does encourage/build teamwork fit?