Meaning – A card holding manager is one who directly manages his/her employees. The speciality of a card holding manager is that he/she doe not require an intermediary and as such, he/she takes note and follows the progress of the employees in their purview, personally.
This kind of manager is different from a program manager or a regular manager, where they need to assign an intermediary to manage the employees, while they themselves take care of the more business oriented tasks.
Example of usage – “The company appreciated him as he was a card holding manager, and monitored the activities and growth of the employees on his own.”