Manager's Duties

Manager's Duties: A Lesson Beyond the Office Door

The first time Laura Hastings walked into the glass-paneled office of Veridian Tech, she wasn’t a manager. She was an overworked, overlooked assistant who knew everyone’s coffee orders but never dared to order her own. Five years later, she was promoted to Project Manager—and that’s when she discovered that “Manager’s Duties” meant far more than leading meetings or ticking boxes.

Her first Monday as a manager started with a broken espresso machine, a missed deadline, and a visibly frustrated team. Brad from Development mumbled something about “pointless meetings,” while Sasha from Design seemed determined to work silently with her headphones glued on.

Laura tried to stay upbeat. After all, this was the dream, right? The office with a view. The nameplate. The authority.

But by Friday, the dream had cracked.

A software bug had delayed a product launch, the design team was clashing with marketing, and her boss had just emailed her one line:

"Fix it."

A manager leads, she told herself. So lead.

The following week, Laura brought donuts to the morning huddle. No one smiled. She tried asking for input during meetings. No one offered any. She suggested a team lunch—half declined, the other half made excuses.

She sat alone in her office that evening, watching the rain drizzle against the windowpane. Her title said Manager, but her team clearly didn’t see her as one. She didn’t just feel like an imposter—she felt invisible.

Scrolling through LinkedIn in a quiet panic, she came across an article titled “The Manager Who Cleaned Bathrooms”. Curious, she clicked. It told the story of a tech manager in Berlin who, during a major conference, found the venue’s janitor missing and quietly cleaned the restrooms herself. When her team found out, their respect for her skyrocketed—not because she cleaned toilets, but because she stepped in where needed without hesitation.

Laura stared at her screen. Could leadership really be that simple?

The next day, she arrived early. She noticed Brad still using the outdated task-tracking system. Instead of ordering him to update it, she sat beside him and asked what frustrated him about it. That ten-minute chat turned into a breakthrough—they redesigned the workflow together.

Later, she found Sasha’s email buried under a dozen others. Sasha had actually offered design suggestions last week but was ignored due to the noise of team conflict. Laura pulled her aside and said, “I saw your mockups. They’re brilliant.” Sasha blinked, then nodded—maybe surprised someone finally noticed.

Over the next month, Laura changed her focus. Not just on what tasks needed doing, but who was doing them—and how they felt doing them.

She initiated weekly check-ins—not to track progress, but to listen. She shadowed her team for a day each, learning what their jobs really looked like. She defended her team in client meetings, giving them credit instead of hoarding it. She stopped acting like a boss and started serving like a leader.

Then came a bigger challenge: a client called to say they were considering pulling out of a major project. The product wasn’t meeting expectations.

The old Laura would have panicked.

The new Laura pulled the team into a room and said, “This isn’t just my responsibility. It’s ours. Let’s fix it—together.”

They stayed late. They argued, collaborated, laughed, revised. And in a week, they restructured the pitch, improved the product flow, and presented it with unity.

The client stayed.

On her one-year anniversary as manager, Laura received a card. It wasn’t signed by her boss. It was from her team.

Inside, it read:

"You don’t manage us. You lead us. And we see you."

REMEMBER:

“Manager’s duties” are often mistaken for authority, delegation, or control. But true leadership lies in service—listening, adapting, and being the first to stand in the gap. The modern workplace, especially in the West, doesn’t need more bosses. It needs more humans in leadership—people who understand that management begins with empathy and thrives on trust. Titles open doors, but actions build bridges.”