The following peculiarities of the administrative work were specified on the basis of theoretical and practical analysis. The interpretation of the unique role of an executive is emphasized here. A manager should possess such features as humane, moral and ethical values. A competent leader must manage people and their distributed collaborative activity. The semantic peculiarities of effective management activity have been outlined. They are explicit achievement-oriented, pragmatic, constructive and informative meanings, which can exist and develop meanings of social initiative and leadership (domination), humanism, empathy and cooperation, affiliation, spirituality and morality. Ethical issues are especially relevant for the contemporary Russian society, the period of complete restructuring of social norms and values. The article shows the necessity of purposeful study and reliable diagnostics of the personality of the manager which allows modeling the personality, to realize its moral or spiritual pivot.