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https://www.bbc.com-By Alex Christian
Managers caught between the highest and lowest ranks often get a bad rap. But most middle managers aren’t ‘evil’ – in fact, they’re usually battling lots of tough forces at once.
Matthew has been in a middle-management role at an online education centre for seven years. Having awkward conversations is an everyday part of his job.
“I often have to end up begging or sweet-talking teachers to cancel their plans or time off, so we have cover: ‘I know tomorrow is your day off, but we’re really short-staffed’,” he explains. “I can be put in a really difficult spot, especially towards the end of the month when we’re approaching sales targets.”
Originally hired as an English teacher, Matthew, who is withholding his surname for job-security concerns, was thrust into a supervisory role when his Taiwan-based company asked him to create a Japanese-language department. “I majored in Japanese, so that was that,” he says. “I began training and recruiting employees, and reporting back to supervisors and the boss. I wasn’t given any training: I had to learn the ropes on the job.”
Matthew is one of the many mid-ranking bosses who are somewhere between the top and bottom of an organisation. They’re often pushed by leadership to execute business goals, while pulled by employees who may have different expectations and needs. “I don’t know if I’m unpopular, but I occasionally have to put my foot down – and leave some people annoyed or disappointed that they have to fill in for a ton of shifts.”
In many cases, high-performing employees simply end up in supervisory roles as the default next step on the career ladder. Sometimes, they receive little training or organisational support for this promotion. These in-between managers face pressure from both executives and lower-level colleagues, and can find themselves feeling powerless and ill-equipped to satisfy everyone’s demands. Because of this, middle managers are frequently cast as the villain: the bureaucratic, ineffective ‘yes-man’ that embodies corporate dogma.
Realistically, however, most of these bosses aren’t actually trying to make workers’ lives miserable. Instead, they’re caught in a difficult place, having to manage their team’s requests, personalities and workloads, while also attempting to hit their own goals and satisfy their bosses.
Deconstructing the myth
Middle managers are at the crux of an organisation, sitting at a natural point of tension between executives and employees.
“It’s they who are responsible for making the strategic imperatives of the organisation happen,” says Jim Link, the chief human resources officer at the Society for Human Resource Management (Shrm), based in Virginia, US. “They’re expected to execute tasks set by the organisation, which are often committed to shareholders.”
Middle managers can often be seen as an envoy for a company’s big bosses, rather than the employees they lead
Alongside pressure from their own bosses, these supervisors are usually the first to field employee requests like holidays, flexible working and pay rises – and therefore the first to reject them if needed. Matthew agrees that the hardest aspect of being a middle manager is managing people – both up and down his organisation. “You end up being the person standing in the way of an employee’s next vacation, or their sister’s wedding,” he says. “Not only do you need to know how to manage your colleagues, but you also need to learn how to manage the people above you.”
This friction can create conflict between mid-ranking bosses and the workers they manage. “Their job is responding to demands from competing stakeholders, not necessarily aligned with one another,” says Christopher Kayes, professor of management at the George Washington University School of Business, based in Washington, DC. “It means being a middle manager can be very unmanageable.”
Tasked with ensuring workers do their jobs effectively, middle managers can often be seen as an envoy for a company’s big bosses, rather than the employees they lead, adds Kayes. “One employee told me they’d never go into management because it would mean they’d have to act unethically. The narrative can be that managers are part of the ‘system’: what could be an individual trying their best to fit leadership goals within the day-to-day of the organisation might be considered a set of unethical behaviours by an employee.”
“In effect, they serve multiple masters: their superiors who set the goals, and those working for them in helping to accomplish the tasks,” adds Link. “The construct itself is a little damning for middle managers.”
Stark contrasts
For these reasons, middle management is a hard job: mid-ranking bosses are expected to juggle vast organisational issues while catering to people with conflicting agendas – and trying to get their own tasks done in the meantime. It’s a role made tougher by the fact that they’re often left without the support or resources to thrive.
Employees, highly adept in a technical role, can be promoted to management without necessarily having the required skills. “In tech, someone could be an excellent coder and be rewarded with a promotion to middle management,” says Kayes. “However, their coding abilities won’t help them. Instead, they need to know how to coordinate a team, motivate and influence others – a completely different skillset versus being a technical expert.”
Many employees promoted to supervisory positions don’t receive any training in soft skills like emotional intelligence and empathy, and might unintentionally stoke tensions among junior workers whenever an issue arises. “It’s expensive and takes years to develop an employee into an effective manager,” says Kayes, “and most companies are focused on immediate results.”
The focus of a middle manager’s direct reports, however, is almost entirely on people skills. In an August 2020 survey of 457 US workers by SHRM, 84% said poorly trained people managers created much unnecessary work and stress. Workers cited effective communication (41%), developing and training teams (38%) and managing team performance (35%) as areas that managers could improve upon.
Managers are often treated separately from the workforce, yet they experience the same issues – and perhaps even worse than those who aren’t in supervisory roles – Christopher Kayes
Of course, not every manager is perpetually unprepared, and some companies do provide management training. And many managers who are expected to learn on the job do just that – something Matthew says he’s been able to do. “I’ve only received some organisational support – it’s ultimately a fast-moving environment, so it’s hard for the company to keep teaching you,” he says. “Nearly all of it has been just doing it myself, trying things out and learning from mistakes.”
However, even for supervisors who have been able to improve their skills with experience, the new shape of the workplace moulded by the Covid-19 pandemic has posed novel challenges, which can often create friction. Many middle managers are underprepared for the demands of remote- and hybrid working. In a changed world of work, supervisors are often relying on old practices, say experts. “A leader now needs to apply their skillset in a completely new way, without their teams being physically present,” says Link. “The expectations of managers are different following the Great Resignation, alongside evolving labour-market trends and a mental-health crisis among the workforce.”
This means that middle managers – who are already in a difficult place by nature of their jobs – may be struggling to keep things together even more than before.
Additionally, Kayes says managers have also been unfairly omitted from conversations around burnout following the pandemic. “Managers are often treated separately from the workforce, yet they experience the same issues – and perhaps even worse than those who aren’t in supervisory roles. Their job is a recipe for stress and anxiety.”
And unless managerial positions are filled by employees with strong people skills, or organisations invest more in leadership training, the narrative that frames middle managers as villains will likely continue.
Kayes says issues like the ongoing hiring crisis, the difficulties in leading hybrid teams and dealing with flexible working requests have created unsolvable problems for managers to fix; bereft of organisational support, they instead face the wrath of junior employees. “We’ve never been in a scenario where it’s so difficult to hire and retain workers, while increasing employee demands only adds to the challenge. Most organisations aren’t equipped in their policies and procedures to deal with these requests – let alone middle managers.”
It might be time to cut the office’s resident bogeyman some slack: middle managers, after all, are often much less powerful than they might appear. Some empathy and collegial goodwill could help make everyone’s work lives a bit easier. “It’s they who are asked to be responsible for how things are run,” says Kayes, “yet they don’t necessarily have authority or the resources to control, fix and change longer-term problems.”