why i try not to use the word “manager”

“Manager” is a word that I prefer to never use. It's one of those words like “professionalism” or “unprofessional” - what we value most about them is their ambiguity. When we say, for example,
“we need you to manage this problem,” there's some reason why we’re not saying “solve the problem.” In organizational leadership, when you're talking about a supervisor, a person who is responsible for the work of another, we miss conveying that responsibility entirely by saying “this person manages somebody else.”

“Manage” is softer, broader, and vaguer than “takes responsibility for”, “supports”, “coaches”, “improves”, “develops”, or “even supervises”. It obscures those concrete responsibilities.

Some would argue that “lead” instead of “manage” is just as ambiguous. But for me, leading someone profoundly implies that you are changing this person's behavior to make them more effective. 

I sense that a lot of the people who seem to want me to use “manager” are looking for a way to talk about a leadership job without acknowledging the power inherent in such a job. The pro of that is that they're not letting that power go to their head. But they’re inviting a different, classic problem. It is a mistake to ignore that you have power when you legitimately are given it over another person's workflow and decisions and therefore their psyche for a good portion of the week and to some extent their life path as a result. Anybody reasonably new to a leadership role would want to avoid thinking of all those things. It’s intimidating.

A shrewd leader will assume that everybody new to leadership will want to avoid the full scope of that responsibility. So perhaps by default, we should assume that anybody who has not been a leader before who is given responsibility to supervise another person will want to be and identify as a manager, rather than a leader.

And it’s probably wise for those who are put in those positions to recognize that  perhaps coming with the desire to be a manager is a privileged avoidance of what is very clear and unavoidable on the supervisee side. The supervisee know that the supervisor has startling amounts of structural and informal power over them.

-ben