Considering transformations faced by public services, managers are both actors and objects of managerial changes. The empirical and qualitative research conducted in two French public communities describes and models the managers’ role consisting of making sense (“sensemaking”), sharing sense (“sensegiving”) to be used for the legitimization, the realization and the appropriation of change. It makes it possible to explore the two dimensions – context and process – that the construction of the manager’s role calls for. It opens the way to further research on the specificities of change in public communities.