This middle management expert’s guide gives you the key strategies to foster engagement and happiness in staff.
It’s a fact: whether you like it or not, middle managers are the lifeblood of your organisation. But, like most organisations, you’re probably neglecting them, or at least underutilising them.
I can hear you thinking, “yes, and there are plenty of perfectly sound reasons for that”.
Middle management challenges
You’re busy. I get it. And after all, middle managers are experienced leaders, so they don’t need hand-holding. Then there’s the fact they are a large cohort, so it can be hard to know where to start.
Plus, the development they need tends to be individualised, so it doesn’t come cheap. And then there’s the things you’re already doing, like greenlighting work-from-home options and lunchtime yoga sessions.
But the truth is, I think deep down, most CEOs and senior leaders undervalue middle managers such as HR managers, leading to their underutilisation in your organisation.
The problem with this is, when a CEO’s primary concerns are attracting and retaining top talent, developing the next generation of leaders, and engaging a fragile workforce (DDI Global Leadership Forecast 2023), you can’t afford to keep neglecting them.
No other single lever is as effective at mitigating these risks, but currently, middle managers are twice as likely to quit their jobs as individual contributors. You are more likely to lose them than to unleash them.
While this is not news, it’s something that too many organisations continue to neglect at their peril. Google’s project Oxygen experimented with doing away with middle managers – and it didn’t go well.
Strategising middle management
One way of re-examining middle management, is to think of it in the context of a military operation, like the Australian Army. In the army, a Major is curiously undefined, yet still considered essential, commanding a company, squadron or battery of up to 120 officers and soldiers. Training, welfare and administration of their soldiers, as well as management of their equipment, falls within their responsibility. Without them, the entire unit could be compromised. Your middle managers are the same – undefined, yet essential.
I define high performing middle managers as ‘B-Suite Leaders’, and I challenge you to enable them to have C-Suite impact so you can benefit from their unrealised potential. There are a number of reasons for this.
- Firstly, middle managers are the key to successful transformation. According to a study conducted by INSEAD, 80 per cent of transformation projects initiated by senior management will fail. In comparison, 80 per cent of projects initiated by middle managers, or your B-Suite, succeed. Middle managers can bring the rest of the organisation with them. They know what makes their teams and individual staff members tick – and no, it’s not free pizza.
- In other words, middle managers are the heart of your organisation. Precisely because they know their teams, and each team’s individual members, they can help unlock, drive and significantly improve performance. According to Visier’s research, highly effective managers drive 48 per cent greater profits than their more average counterparts.
- Middle managers own staff engagement and retention. DDI tells us that B-Suite Leaders are 10 times more likely to have high engagement from their teams, are six times more likely to be able to retain top talent and are five times more likely to prevent employee burnout.
Given this, tapping into the potential of middle managers is a ‘no-brainer’.
And you may not have a choice. Because, as businesses continue to move more quickly and become more complex; strategic decision-making, risk taking and culture creation is devolving – by sheer necessity – to the middle.
If your organisation is going to survive the shocks of disruption we’ve seen in the past five years, then middle managers need to be empowered to lead with agility and pace; as Disney learned when cinemas momentarily died, and as Airbnb learned when travel and accommodation ground to a halt during the height of the pandemic.
This will mean rejecting the traditional separation of roles that you may have been taught in your MBA (and is still taught in most MBAs today): that of a visionary leader (executive) and a strategic administrator (manager).
Operating in the grey area between executive and workforce, your B-Suite is uniquely positioned to get the results you need. They are the only ones sitting on the intersection of corporate strategy and workforce capability, so leveraging that is to not only look after them, but to unleash their full potential for your organisation.
Here’s how you can start:
Give them more autonomy and more responsibility
Involve your middle management in decision-making… and then step back. It may sound counter-intuitive if you have little faith in your B-Suite. But this will create a more engaged and more capable cohort. This will mean spending time with you, which will also allow you to observe their potential for promotion.
Focus on your bench-strength
DDI tells us there is a significant shortage of leaders who are prepared to fill key leadership roles. Just 12 per cent of firms have a confident succession plan. Even boards are starting to show concerns about this looming leadership crisis.
Ensure middle managers receive regular clarification
Middle managers may have their own ideas about what takes priority – particularly when they’re juggling so much at once. But regularly updating them on their priorities from your perspective will help to keep things fresh.
Middle managers still have a tendency to dip down into individual contributor work at the detriment of leadership work, which means talent development and outcome management suffer.
Create a community
Mid level leaders are neither workforce nor executive, so their roles are, by nature, ambiguous and fluid. For them, leadership can be truly lonely. O.C. Tanner tells us that fostering this sense of connection increases the odds of your culture thriving by up to 18 times. It’s part of the reason I lead a global B-Suite Leaders Community, dedicated to middle managers.
Remove organisation bureaucracy
Middle managers suffer the ‘slinky effect’ of policies and procedures. Refined for frontline efficiency and simplified for top-line clarity, what’s left in the middle is a people administration hangover from personnel days.
It’s why many B-Suite leaders wryly call themselves the ‘chief admin officer’ of their function. You pay them too much for this to go unaddressed.
Final words
If untapped middle management’s potential were a new significant revenue source or a game-changing innovation, we’d have CEOs scrambling to boost their balance sheets by capitalising on it. The opportunity is here. Ignore middle managers at your own peril.
Rebecca Houghton is a middle management expert, the author of ‘Impact: 10 Ways to Level up your Leadership’, and founder of BoldHR. Rebecca builds B-Suite leaders with C-Suite impact by working at an organisational, team and individual level. Get in touch with Rebecca here: www.boldhr.com.au
