In organisations, managers need to play a wide variety of roles to accomplish their assigned tasks. This study used Henry Mintzberg's classification of ten work roles of managers which are most frequently performed by managers at various levels. Mintzberg's ten managerial roles are divided into three sections, namely, the interpersonal, informational, and decisional. It was used to answer the question: "What different roles are played by Strategic Business Unit level managers in private and public banks and how they play these roles? This study attempts to assess the relevance of the ten managerial roles identified by Mintzberg to present day managers and to determine if performance of certain roles by managers leads to more success than the performance of other roles in terms of growth. The study discusses some major issues like the impact of these roles on factors such as employee turn over, job performance etc.