The following profile is provided to assist management qualifications programme directors and their clients in advising participants in regard to programmes of an appropriate level.

First line managers may still engage in some of the tasks performed by their fellow team members, but this does not constitute their primary function. They are managers who also practice. This means that they will engage much more extensively in managerial tasks which other team members will not engage in.

This may also mean that first line Managers have a wider span of control than team leaders, much more likely to be in double figures and possibly extending to 20 or 30 people. It will also mean having more extensive control, responsibility, authority or power, and a greater degree of autonomy than is the case with team leaders.

This will be reflected in the ability of Managers to make decisions which have some resource implications, initiate actions in relation to the employment of others (eg, be involved in, but not decide about, recruitment decisions or disciplinary matters), and operate with less supervision or control by others. Furthermore, they will tend to work with longer time horizons than team leaders when planning work, looking several weeks or months ahead, whereas team leaders’ time horizons tend to be days or a few weeks.

First line managers can be expected to have a greater knowledge than team leaders of customers or suppliers and their needs, including internal customers or suppliers.

Conversely, they are not likely to be able to make decisions to vary the terms under which customers or suppliers trade with the employing organisation.

They may well be expected to deal with similar problems to those presented to team leaders, requiring some superior technical ability, as well as having sometimes to make more subjective judgements which demand understanding of relationships between people working together. This is likely to extend to the relationship between the customer or supplier and the employing organisation or other market related criteria – ie, decisions that demand some insight into the way the organisation relates to external individuals or organisations.

What distinguishes first line managers from middle managers is that they have very limited budgetary responsibility. They may make decisions about resource utilisation but the budgetary accountability for these resources exists at a higher level. They are also limited in the range of decisions they can make compared to middle managers, with all delegated decision making heavily circumscribed by rules or procedures.