World knows that girls do the gossiping but very few people acknowledges that guys also loves to gossip.  Most interesting fact is that every employed guy has common person about whom he gossips. This common person is mostly portrayed as a monster, sometimes as a savior also but that is very rare. He might be a good human being but his position makes him vulnerable to the constant criticisms in the eyes of the people working under him. The name is “MANAGER” for this person which every resource aspires to become. We hate him, we love him, we nickname him, we gossip about him but he is the one person in our professional life with whom we have to make cordial relations at any cost.

I didn’t have a long career in the industry but I have seen some managers which inspired me to categories them. I was looking for a foundation to categories managers, for which I did lot of search and found that management gurus have already done it very well. So, my dilemma was to use some different standard which no one has used till now. I will be using standard set by Manusmriti for defining “Varnas (classes or categories)” for Hindus. The Varna system was originally evolved for the classification of human duties in a healthy society. On the basis of a manager’s action, I will try to divide them into traditional Caste system.

Manusmriti defines four castes which are namely

  1. Brahmins – the clergy, teacher, religious authority

  2. Kshatriya – the warriors, administrators, political authority

  3. Vaisyas – the merchants, farmers, the business persons

  4. Shudras – the servants, laborers

Let’s try to classify managers purely on the basis of their actions. They may fall into different varna’s from time to time bases on their work.

A)     Brahmin Manager – He is someone who always believes in the power of knowledge and knows what he is doing. He never follows some process blindly and is always ready to question it on the basis of his knowledge and helps in improving process through his contributions. He is ready to accept suggestion from his sub ordinates and never tries to silence them purely in the name of his position. He treats his resources with respect thus gets respect from everyone. People don’t fear him but they admire him because everyone gets to learn something from him. He will never take credit from your work and also he will show you the path for growth but will leave you to move on your own on that path.

 B)      Kshatriya Manager- He is someone who might not be as knowledgeable as a Brahmin manager but he is quite well versed in his work. He always leads the team from front and is ready to take the failure of his team on his shoulders. He will challenge you to do works that may seem tough but he will help you in completing the assigned task and will fight for the recognition of your work which will help him getting his own recognition also. He is very quick in recognizing the talent and will do anything to retain the talent with him. You can expect to grow with him in the organization. His resources are always friends to him.

 C)      Vaisya Manager- He knows the language of money and talks in the terms of monetary loss or profit. He will always try to attract your attention by talking some monetary incentive which he believes can get the best work out of you. He is very average in his knowledge and risk taking abilities. He can complete the work assigned to him but one can’t expect much help in the terms of knowledge from him. If you are working under him then you have to find your own ways to move up the organization ladder. He can only appreciate the end result and not the process of doing work. He believes that by giving some financial incentive he can make anyone do any work.

 D)     Shudra Manager- He is worst kind of manager but he always thinks that he is best. He doesn’t understand logics and is a firm believer in the strict hierarchy. Never try to put any logical thoughts into his mind because he doesn’t believes in taking anything from his juniors. He is there to follow the instructions from higher management in letter and spirit. He will shout, yell and use abusive language in front of everyone if something goes wrong in your work. He will take credit for your work. For him, his resources are his servants, bonded laborers. He will go to extremes to ensure that you never grow. Even if you have completed your work, he will not allow you to get up from your seat and interact with others.

These categorizations not based on caste, creed, color or sex of any person. One manager can belong to two different classes on the basis of his work and action.