To construct cultivation standards for rural collective economy managers, this study designed a questionnaire based on Mintzberg’s Managerial Role Theory and Katz’s Managerial Skill Theory. With the multistage stratified random sampling method, we conducted investigations in 24 administrative villages across 12 counties covering five major agricultural economic zones in Anhui Province, including the Huaibei Plain, Jianghuai Hilly Area, Yanjiang Plain, West Anhui Dabie Mountains and South Anhui Mountainous Areas, and finally obtained 160 valid questionnaires with an effective rate of 72.73%. Tested by SPSS, the questionnaire presented a Cronbach’s α coefficient of 0.874 and a KMO value of 0.903, which indicated satisfactory reliability and validity. By adopting the factor analysis method, four common factors were extracted from 12 evaluation indicators ranging from Q1 to Q12, namely strategic planning and decision-making competence, professional operation and management competence, relationship coordination and conflict resolution competence, as well as communication promotion and resource acquisition competence. The cumulative variance contribution rate reached 78.881%, which formed the core competence structure of rural collective economy managers. The research results revealed that rural collective economy managers needed comprehensive competencies to cope with complex challenges in rural operation. On this basis, this paper put forward optimization paths from 3 dimensions, including systematic training, practical guidance and experience communication, and resource integration and mutual trust construction, so as to provide references for the talent cultivation and sustainable development of rural collective economy managers.