Middle management plays a crucial role in implementation of a business vision and strategies defined by executives. Their job is to align people around a shared purpose, transform objectives into specific plans and actions, help their teams to learn, grow and win. The impact of the mid-level on employee engagement, total productivity, and organizational performance, is enormous.
Despite their challenging spot in between C-suite and front-line employees, with a constant pressure from both top and bottom, middle managers make a real difference. While the upper level is focused on mapping out the general direction, tracking the overall target attainment, and communicating sufficient pressure for an organizational shift, the task of the middle management is to convert the tension into a positive energy, and to prevent freezing their people in times of change. They are supposed to help employees in rationalizing the pressure coming from the top and create a meaning out of it.
Of course, it is not always the case, especially if conditions for productive collaboration between the senior and the middle levels are not there. Such a gap can have plenty of forms, starting from communication failure and ending to competing inter-level priorities and agendas. This might lead to unreasonable squeezing of the middle management and to raising one or few of their typical dilemmas:
What should I do when C-level expectations are in conflict with my leadership purpose and (or) with my values?
Should I be a servant leader, helping my team(s) succeed, or a “corporate soldier”, executing on what I am asked to do?
How can I empower my team(s) if I am not empowered myself?
How can I inspire my team(s) if I am burned out myself?
The weaker the collaborative institutions, the tougher the pressure, and the greater the dilemmas.
Below we are going to review four key criteria, which might improve and institutionalize interactions between the “C” and the “M” levels.
The first and the foremost criterion is related to an alignment of an organizational structure with company’s mission and strategy. It enables the enterprise to operate effectively and efficiently as well as to stay focused on achieving the long-term objectives. Having no such alignment leads to conflicting priorities for the middle managers, reducing their autonomy, and generating communication breakdowns.
Yahoo, Kodak, Blackberry and many other relevant examples of such misalignment led to quite tough implications, including but not limited to the loss of their competitive advantage and multiple rounds of layoffs.
The second one is a productive cross-level distribution of a power, which contributes to required transparency, reasonable flexibility, proper compliance, and necessary speed in the decision-making process. When power and authority are distributed in a way that empowers middle managers to make meaningful contributions to a company, this leads to their greater engagement and abilities to empower their teams too. However, when the power is concentrated at the top or roles and responsibilities are unclearly defined, it brings frustration, confusion, and unhealthy conflicts within an organization.
General Motors and Nokia were highly centralized in the early 2000s. They both gave lack of decision-making to the middle and encouraged micromanagement at all levels. This led to an inability to respond to changing market conditions, and ultimately to a decline in market share and profitability.
The third criterion is an authentic leadership presence as a source of engagement and meaning, which adds significant value to organizations by building trust and increasing resilience. The beauty of authentic leaders is in their high emotional intelligence and clear leadership purpose, which comes from crucibles and from reframing of their life stories. They direct own ambitions away from themselves to a bigger goal of serving their people and building great companies. It is worth to mention that quite a few of CEOs, being appointed due to their high IQ and a proven track record, are ultimately fired because of their moderate emotional intelligence and self-centric leadership purposes.
Elizabeth Holmes, the former CEO of Theranos is one of the most striking illustrations of the ego-centric leadership purpose of the past decade.
And last but not least is a culture of collaboration, learning, and feedback, which allows organizations to strengthen their competitive advantage and maximize productivity. If a culture meets the most profound human needs, such as acceptance, belonging, psychological safety, and having a voice, it is programmed to transform human fears into constructive strategies for success. It helps both senior and middle management to foster teaming, enhance accountability, attract, and retain grade “A” talents. If a culture cultivates dominance, discrimination, and thus silence, people will hardly bring their passion, creativity, curiosity, and accountability needed to accomplish challenging goals.
The given four criteria are the basis for productive cross-level collaboration. They create necessary conditions to resolve the middle managers’ dilemmas, and support C-suite in fixing emerging issues at the mid-level too.
In the meantime, since the development of the criteria lies on the executives, the question remains of what the middle managers should do, if one or few of the described criteria are missing. How are their dilemmas to be handled then?
The following recommendations might be of a help:
I. Practice in giving feedback to your manager
This kind of feedback is considered to be one of the most difficult, and many middle managers struggle how to get started with it. Good if your manager solicits a feedback from you. But what if not? You can drive it successfully both in proactive and reactive ways.
If you approach your manager proactively, you can say, “I have some information which might be important for you” and then briefly explain a rational behind what you are going to say. Be empathetic, well-prepared, and precise. Take just one, the most challenging behaviour you are concerned about. After presenting a short summary of facts and consequences to your manager, stop and check if she or he understands what it is about, and agrees with your assessment. Unlike with your direct reports, you should avoid going into the last two feedback parts, i.e., a solution and defined time for improvement. Of course, you cannot ask about a strategy for progression or about a time period for further assessment. A feedback to your manager should be cropped to behaviour and impact parts only. Your task is to help her or him to see what the manager cannot see, letting their face to be saved. Remember that by helping your manager, you are helping yourself, your teams, and your organization as a whole.
The reactive form presumes that your manager wants to solicit a feedback from you. In this case you should always start with the following question, “How would you like me to present feedback to you?” and then listen carefully to the answer. Act in a way asked by your manager, but keep in mind the recommendations mentioned above.
II. Immerse C-Suite into your reality
“The truth is generally seen, rarely heard”, claimed the famous Spanish philosopher Baltasar Gracian. Since CxOs are less aware about the context at the front lines and thus sometimes set unreasonable performance expectations to the middle management, you should do your best to immerse your CxO smartly into your reality. Using bullet-proof data and facts is definitely important, but facing the reality by senior managers themselves might give you much faster result. Direct conversations with front-line employees, meetings with prospects, customers, and partners, add value into changing a performance dialogue to more compassionate and motivating. At a certain point of time, those CxOs, who did not ask you questions about how your teams are doing before, might start doing it now.
The sensitive immersing detail which should be taken into account, is that a CxO must be well briefed before meeting your reality. Otherwise, the step could bring more damage than value.
III. Keep serving your people
By serving your people and by overcoming leadership challenges, your character is built, your self-awareness is deepened, and your leadership purpose is sharpened.
In the times of growing tension and change, be even more concerned about helping each of your team members to succeed than in quieter times. Remember that you have the most profound effect on success or failure of your people. The roots of one or another outcome lie in aligning by you their business goals with three key elements – individual aspirations, competences, and personal development plans.
Your people do not need you to become their friend. They do not need you as a function too. Your people need you to coach, teach, and motivate them. They need you to help them reaching their personal goals, growing and winning. They need you to create a meaning of what they do at work, and thus of their life too.
IV. Do not let yourself being burned out
We measure our key performance indicators, understand them well, work on their control and improvement. However, we do not usually do the same with our stress or with an external pressure coming on us. What would happen if your KPIs are not managed well? Most probably it will lead to a failure. What would happen if your stress is not managed well? The answer is the same.
No manager is able to effectively help their employees if she or he is burned out. And the nature of a burning point is that we usually hardly notice how we reach it. We are totally blind along the way of accumulating our stress till we are at the top of it.
In order to prevent it from happening, start practicing meditation every day. This great mindfulness practice, which came to us from the East, has become a golden standard for the modern leaders in the recent years. By means of adding some body tracking technologies, you will be able to keep an eye not on a progress of your physical activities only, but on a cadence of your meditations as well.