The main purpose of the article ‘The Five Minds of a Manager’ by Gosling and Mintzberg is to present a relatively new paradigm of thinking that analyses the mind of a corporate manager. In the article, the two scholars have attempted to describe their paradigm and its effectiveness.
They take the example of models is success as a master’s program at the university of Montreal, where Mintzberg is a professor of management studies. The success of the program in educating practicing managers to attain a new paradigm of thinking is the authors’ main motive in developing the article.
According to the authors, the new paradigm of thinking takes into consideration the difficult role of managers in organizations as the reason for developing and teaching the idea of new ‘mind-set’ to practicing managers.
The authors argue that rather than dropping the idea of management for the sake of new perspectives in organizational leadership, they realize that management and managers play the most crucial roles in running local and global organizations. The purpose of this paper is to review and summarize the article by Mintzberg and Gosling, with an aim of presenting the ideas and perspectives of the authors.
Mintzberg and Gosling argue that the modern concepts of management take leadership as a superior task, while management seems to be both inferior and obsolete. This phenomenon creates an appreciation of the idea of leadership at the expense of management.
They claim that management remains an important area in business and if leaders do not emphasize on management, the organizations are likely to lose the benefits of good business management. With this in mind, the authors argue that the mind of an ideal manager remains complex to enable it execute all the tasks necessary for the organization.
According to the authors, their new model considers a successful manager as having the need of various ‘mind-sets’. In this paper, they introduce the five mind-sets: the reflective, analytic, worldly, collaborative and action mind-sets.
According to the article, the reflective mind allows the managers to execute the task of ‘management of self’, where the mind makes the connections between experience of happenings and the explanation of these.
Managers must gain experience and reflect on them to determine the actions within their organizational management. Secondly, the article takes the analytical mind as that part of the managers’ mind that manage organizations by having an in-depth understanding of the institutions, functions, information flow and their roles.
Thirdly, the worldly mind-set enables managers to manage context, while the collaborative mind-set allows the managers to think of and manage relationships. Finally, the article talks of the action mind-set, which allows the managers to influence, implements, execute and manage positive change in the organization.
In this article, Mintzberg and Gosling have introduced a relatively new perspective of the tasks for managers in an organization. The new paradigm they introduce in their argument is important not only for teaching practicing managers, but also for every member of an organization as well as future leaders in business, public and corporate sectors.
Moreover, it provides the reader with an important understanding that will enable them reconsider the idea of dropping management for organizational leadership, especially at a time when most organizations, scholars and the public are only appreciating the role of leaders at the expense of management and its role in business, public and social organizations.