In recent years, many businesses made significant organizational shifts to survive and adapt to the upheaval of the COVID era as well as subsequent hiring, retention, and organizational performance challenges. Now, as we are grappling with inflation and a potential recession, companies are fine tuning their focus on improving margins and operational efficiency. Mid-level managers perform an important role in our companies: they are the key conduit for aligning strategy, culture, and operational performance. They are pivotal in balancing strategy and operational goals and bringing them to fruition. However, according to a recent Korn Ferry article, over 25% of them report that they are overwhelmed, and research shows they “are the most stressed management group” with historical job satisfaction ranking in the bottom 5%. Many mid-level managers are now considering roles where they would no longer supervise people, just when we most need them to bring people together.
We expect middle managers to cover a lot of ground. We expect them to help manage and implement major change initiatives, create and manage return to work and hybrid schedules, improve employee churn rates, manage operational firefighting, hire workers into open positions, and keep employee morale and performance high even though employee job demands are more complex than ever before.
As a case in point, over the summer I was helping a client implement a major organizational change. In discussing roles and responsibilities related to the implementation, I noticed the planners wanted to assign more and more tasks and responsibilities to mid-level managers. I told them, “It sounds as if you foresee a major role for mid-level managers in this initiative. Let’s take a few minutes to list all the current roles and responsibilities for these managers.” Within minutes, the group had generated three pages and they were still on a roll. Everyone at the table saw the obvious—their mid-level managers were already beyond overwhelmed, and now the organization wanted to add to that. I agreed that managers should play a very important role in implementing the new change, but we could not keep dumping unrealistic expectations on them.
General, overarching roles and responsibilities for mid-level managers encompass the following:
- Act as a liaison and major communication conduit up and down the organization.
- Execute performance management. Bring organizational goals to fruition “on the ground.”
- Hire and develop employees, some of whom may have no relevant experience.
- Bring together employees who may be working across various locations.
These four general roles are not simple, especially in light of increasing pressures, roles, and responsibilities. We need strong mid-level managers in well defined, well-structured roles. The client case, highlighted above, demonstrates three key challenges for current mid-level managers:
- Mid-level managers are spread too thin.They have been facing increasing pressure to retain employees, hire and develop employees who may have no relevant experience for front-line jobs, manage the complexities of hybrid scheduling, increasing efficiency of operations, improving quality and throughput, keeping employee productivity up in the current, very “lean” environment, making the workplace more emotionally intelligent and flexible, meeting the increasing demands of post-COVID employees—all while holding people accountable while being a compassionate leader.
- They are expected to manage both up and down the organization. They communicate and liaise up the organization, influencing leadership, while also leading those who report to them. There is very little (if any) training or development provided for managing up the organization or for balancing these very different and distinct roles.
- We expect middle managers to play important roles in implementing various organizational or cultural changes such as DEI, Lean, Safety, AI, etc., yet they are frequently not included in initial training or in creating realistic deployment plans that they will be expected to implement. Likewise, they are not adequately trained or supported to lead complex change initiatives.
Middle managers are burned out and are being pulled in many directions to satisfy competing priorities. Since middle managers are vital in implementing change and bringing strategy into operational reality, our organizations need to do a better job in developing and supporting them by:
- Clearly defining their roles
- Defining and communicating priorities realistically
- Becoming creative in providing resources
- Developing clear expectations and standard work
- Creating training and development programs that address their wide-ranging responsibilities
- Implementing support programs to help them deal with stress and complex employee issues
Future blogs will share more specific guidance related to these solutions, so that organizations can better align strategy, culture, and performance.
If you’d like a complimentary 60 minute strategy session to discuss how your organization can address management and leadership challenges, please contact me or message me in LinkedIn.