Judging by the enormous amount of leadership literature, the interest in management training and career ambitions, there are many people who want to become managers and – thereby, they seem to think – leaders. Some claim emphatically that they are leaders – not managers. (At times it seems as though leadership can be captured without a supporting managerial position, but things can become complicated if the leader and the manager in a workplace are two different people. Anyone who thinks that a managerial position means that they will be able to work solely with leadership and not with any managerial tasks will not last long in the job.) But what exactly is the attraction of being a manager? How do people reason about their future managerial role, and what is it that makes them believe they are well suited to management? In this chapter, we meet people who talk about why they wanted to become a manager and their view of what being a manager means. They also talk about why they have the essential qualities for management – none of those we studied appear to have any doubt about that. Many describe management as a stimulating challenge, which carries an element of excitement. Yet it is also associated with a large dose of uncertainty, partly because they do not really know what the managerial job involves. Many ask themselves what being a manager actually involves. One important question is what you actually need to know in order to exhibit credibility when you say you are a manager. It is about how to develop your identity as a manager, or begin to identify with the title and the idea of being a manager, in this transitional phase. How do you start working with this?

We begin the chapter with a discussion of the view of management as a means of self-development. In the section which follows, we address the way in which managers describe different types of personal traits as a natural platform for their managerial work. Most of them see themselves as natural driving forces in some way. We then discuss specific topics which these managers highlight as being important to work with, specifically strategy, change and organizational culture.