What Makes a Good Manager Good? Management Field Theory Explains

Good managers get results. But why is it often unclear how they have done it? What makes a good manager good? Why is it difficult for someone else to copy what a good manager does? Why is selecting people for management posts problematic? When we contemplate management we seem to encounter dimensions of the mysterious.

The answers are connected with the complexity of managers’ work and the variety of attributes that are required for success. Real-World Management have developed a model termed Management Field Theory^© to address these issues. The model provides a scheme directed towards an understanding of the deep mechanics of management.

The general concept of a Field Theory was introduced by the American social psychologist Kurt Lewin. He defined a field as the sum of the external forces and influences that interact with people’s traits to cause their behaviour. He said ‘to understand behaviour, the person and his environment have to be considered as one constellation of interdependent factors’. This interdependency gives rise to an organisation’s culture and emotional tone.

Management Field Theory regards managers as working in a field of forces and influences that vary with time. They derive from a variety of sources including the priorities of leaders, the needs of clients, the attitudes of staff, the views of stakeholders, the impact of past organisational events and the wider social and economic environment. They give rise to obligations for managers and workgroups which may include levels of achievement in respect of outputs, profits, turnover, costs, timeliness, client satisfaction, client retention, staff satisfaction, staff retention, and societal contributions.

Good managers and their workgroups meet these obligations. A variety of personal qualities enable managers to do it, and crucially they usually include, alongside direct knowledge and skills, their values and behaviours. Good managers are rare because of the complexity of management fields and the range of attributes needed to fit with them. Particular strengths may enable a manager to engage sufficiently strongly: organisational skills, planning abilities, motivational abilities, the capacity to communicate a vision, an understanding of people, political skills, and the ability to engender trust. Different limited sets of these attributes may be enough for managers to be effective: they can be effective for different reasons.

It is because fits with the field are often highly characteristic of individual managers and because the values and behaviours of managers are often significant ─ attributes that may be recognisable only over long periods of time ─ that attempts to copy their approach often fail. Furthermore it means that some effective managers may not outwardly present characteristics conforming to an ‘authoritative norm’. Managers may succeed in some organisations and situations but not others because of the difference in the fields they encounter. And the dynamic nature of the field means that managers can lose effectiveness over time when their attributes are no longer so well adapted. Field complexity may also mean that managers themselves may not always fully understand how their achievements are derived and so may not be able to fully explain their success to others.

The theory has implications for the selection and personal development of managers. Person specifications should be based around all the predominant qualities needed to achieve a fit with the field. Personal development plans need a correspondingly wide scope.

An understanding of their underlying mechanics is required to allow management roles to be effectively deployed. Such understandings do not widely exist. It is why so many different answers are heard to the question ‘what is a good manager?’. Management Field Theory can help illuminate the management panorama. For managers, every day is a Field Day!