Ask small children what they want to be when they grow up and you'll hear answers like "a fireman", "a ballerina" or, more likely these days, "a winner on X Factor". You will rarely here a child proclaim, "When I grow up, I want to be a middle manager."
And yet most successful professionals find themselves in management roles with managers above them and managers below. It is what one of the managers I interviewed for my latest book, What's Wrong with Work?, called the
"Bow Tie Effect". Like the knot in a bow tie, middle managers are in a tight spot. They are responsible for the wellbeing, the results and the continual improvement of their own team (and, if they manage managers, they are also, to an extent, responsible for the performance of their team's teams). And they in turn are answerable to managers above them who have, in turn, to answer to their bosses.
Having spent more than 8,000 hours with middle and senior managers over the last ten years as an executive coach, I have been
privy to some very honest conversations about middle managers, what makes their role so challenging and how the best have capitalised on the pivotal position in which they sit.
Stuck in the middle
Most middle managers enjoy their job. They
are on an upward trajectory in their career and middle management is a necessary waypoint as they head to the top. Identifying and solving problems is what motivates them and there are plenty of opportunities to do that every day. They want to stretch themselves and the people who work for them and they want to delight their own manager by exceeding expectations.
But there are numerous obstacles to being successful at all of this. The first is the way middle managers are perceived by those above and below them. Many middle managers I have worked with observe that they are the easy scapegoats when information from the top does not filter down and when information from below does not filter up. They sense that they are seen as protective of their status and power and even threatened by talented people. And they are often first in line for a cull when their organisation is losing money or losing its way.
At best, they are seen only as a talent pool from which the future leaders of the organisation
will be plucked. In and of themselves, they aren't seen as adding great value.
The second obstacle is the way middle managers see themselves and their ability to influence. Most can see that there are problems with the way their organisation is run — the endless meetings, the silos, the lack of clarity about, or adherence to, the vision and, sometimes, the questionable behaviour of
some of their colleagues.
One manager I interviewed for my book described himself as the meat in a sandwich. He told me, "You know what the right thing to do for your team is but you have a clear message from above that you can't do that." His role had become about constant negotiation, trying to sell ideas and solutions to different populations who didn't want to buy and making hard» »choices about which battles to fight and which to surrender.
For middle managers these ongoing obstacles to doing what they feel is right become huge frustrations because they get in the way of the smooth, efficient operation of the business. But they feel they lack the influence and authority to radically change the business for the better. They find themselves working within the limitations they see around them, doing the best they can under the circumstances and taking the rap when, inevitably, something goes wrong.
The final major challenge of middle management is that the role combines conventional management — dealing with the problems of today and ensuring the machine ticks over — with leadership — visionary thinking and inspiring people.
Middle managers must, minute by minute, move quickly from fighting today's fires to planning the strategy for the next three years. Continually flying up to get the helicopter view and swooping down to deep-dive is enough
to make even the most stable manager feel travel sick.
Of course, not all middle managers are
willing to accept this state of affairs. By changing their perception of themselves and using their position at the heart of the business to their benefit, some managers are rewriting the rulebook about what middle management in the 21st century means. And they are able to do that because they recognise the business case for exceptional middle management.
The Business Case
Great middle managers make or save their companies money. Poor middle managers cost money. While the financial director may look
at sales figures and cost savings for a clue as to how the business is doing, it might be far more valuable to calculate whether the business is making the most of its middle managers.
Take staff turnover. At any one time about
two-thirds of employees are actively looking for a new job or planning to do so within the next year. That amounts to a great many people
who are not fully focused on the job in hand. Some of those could even be described as "the walking dead" — they turn up to work (most of the time) but they are just looking for a way out.
When employees leave a company, it can cost that company as much as £9,000 in recruitment costs. That's the bottom line, but also part of the equation are the cost to morale of high staff turnover, the energy-zapping impact of unhappy workers who want to leave but can't and the length of time it takes a new recruit to learn the ropes.
And the number one reason people cite for leaving their job? Their manager. People leave bad managers and stay with great ones, so it
is vitally important that the quality of middle management is taken seriously. Middle managers are far more than layers of bureaucracy. They are responsible for the input and output of the people who do the critical jobs in the company.
They also have huge influence over staff engagement. It is said that the culture of an organisation is created by the people at
the top. However, most employees respond positively or negatively to the company
based on their relationship with their direct manager. Research by Marcus Buckingham
and Curt Coffman shows that teams who
have a positive relationship with their manager also report higher levels of productivity, profit and customer satisfaction.
In their study, different units within the same business had recognisably different cultures
and those cultures were created by the individual manager of that unit. Middle managers wield huge influence over their people, for better or worse.
What's more, the factors that dictate
whether employees will contribute their illusive discretionary effort have far less to do with
the bonus scheme and performance-related pay and far more to do with — you guessed it — their relationship with their manager. Money
is not an innate motivator. Once people feel they are being adequately paid, a high salary does not improve motivation. The innate motivators include recognition (not monetary), sense of achievement, opportunity to grow
and responsibility.
Clearly, middle managers can enable their people to experience these... or can withdraw the opportunity. A middle manager who doesn't help his or her people to learn and grow, or
who rarely shows appreciation and recognition or who doesn't trust people with responsibility will soon zap the motivation of even the most dedicated employee. And de-motivated employees do not invest discretionary effort.
Many companies today are still operating a recruitment freeze, making redundancies and exploring the option to reduce the hours their remaining employees work. Yet at the same time they need their staff to achieve even more challenging targets than ever before, with fewer resources, in order to survive. If managers are able to tap the discretionary effort of staff it can make all the difference to a company's chances of survival or success without additional cost.
Ultimately, the best middle managers
take care of the people in the business. They recognise that it is only by doing what is right for those people that they can deliver the business results.
Reinventing Middle Management
There is a strong case to argue that middle managers are a secret
weapon in the battle for business success. There is also a strong case that few companies fully utilise that secret weapon.
Management training has been seen as one way to liberate the latent talent of managers and help them become more coach-like, visionary and participative in their management style. However, most leadership programmes focus very much on models, academic research and classroom-based learning that does not translate into a real shift in management mindset or a noticeable change in leadership style once the programme has ended. From
my time spent coaching managers I know that few lack the skills or the knowledge to be great managers. They know exactly what to do. They just don't do it.
A combination of external obstacles (the frustrations I referred to earlier) and the dominant leadership culture, which espouses the importance of coaching and enabling rather than directing but fails to walk the talk, means that managers struggle to achieve their full potential. So, if conventional management training isn't the answer, what is? What does
it take to bring about a change in the way middle managers are seen and the way they see themselves?
In my view, it really is up to every individual
manager to take the initiative, even in a very small way. Waiting for your organisation to suddenly change the way it sees you, or
waiting for your company to invest in a
more revolutionary approach to leadership development, means putting change on hold. You may get lucky - your company may be
just about to announce a change of approach. But don't hold your breath.
The managers who have rewritten the rules have not waited, hoping their company will change or that they'll get a better boss one day. They have used their own initiative to find ways to bring about small changes, which eventually gather momentum and are often taken on in other parts of the business. For instance, one manager I work with takes her team for lunch every week at her own expense. There is no budget for this — she works in the NHS. But she believes her people deserve the reward and
will feel more committed the next week if they are recognised by her.
Another manager I know has reorganised team meetings, separating operational issues from strategic ones and building in a daily check in for five minutes a day (held standing up). Now his team are clear on the objective of every meeting and know what their individual contribution is. They still spend the same number of hours in meetings but those meetings are productive and result in real decisions that stick.
A further example is a manager who set out to break down silos in his organisation by inventing a project entitled "Almost Famous". Every week he met or connected with someone in a far flung part of his company, offering to share some information about his part of the business in exchange for information from the other
part of the business. At the end of the six month project he and his team were one of the best networked in the organisation and their reputation had been noticeably strengthened.
What these managers have done is challenged some of the limiting assumptions about themselves and their role and, as a result, found opportunities to influence beyond the authority afforded them by their job title.
If you are a middle manager, you have far more influence than you may realise. On a daily basis you may feel quite powerless and believe that your only option is to work within the system or leave the system. But many managers have chosen an alternative - to bring about change from the middle
of their organisation. Some have done this in small ways, barely perceptible to anyone else (except that their team is the best performing in the business). Some have brought about radical change, impacting the company culture far beyond their own team or function.
And successful managers see this as their
job. It isn't what they do in their own time. They don't feel they are paid to meet their targets and just as a hobby take an interest in their people and the way their organisation is run. They see this as a fundamental part of their job. They recognise that change is a fact of life and they don't only want to be swept along by that change, but to influence and even direct it. They want to leave behind a legacy that is more than just the share price on the day they retire.
If middle managers choose to take the initiative and persist, despite the obstacles
that lie in their way, the workplace can really work. With determined effort middle managers can make it inspiring and fulfilling as well as profitable and successful. If you could help
take the dread out of Monday mornings for
your staff, you could certainly say you had made a difference.
Middle managers are the secret superheroes of business. Surely it is time they flexed their muscles and saved the business world?
Blaire Palmer is author of What's
Wrong With Work? (John Wiley, £12.99), and managing director of Taming Tigers. Visit tamingtigers.com
blog comments powered by
