Too much is heaped on middle managers, with too little support. The irony is that if companies try to reduce their workload, they start to worry.
This article first appeared in The Straits Times
Ask a child to name something that starts with the letter M and you might get McDonald’s – their definition of a happy place.
But ask a working adult the same question – you could get a different answer, because for middle managers among us, M could well stand for Miserable Middle Management – a far less happy place to be.
Middle managers fall beneath top management in the company hierarchy and deal with individual workers and customers. In other words, they are a buffer between the top managers and everyone else.
In the Leaders People Love Global Survey, which set out to discover how happy employees are and what makes them happy in disruptive times, the findings paint a stark reality.
Over 400 participants were surveyed and divided into groups, ranging from individual contributors to senior managers. Of these groups, senior managers were found to be the happiest, with 26.2 per cent rating themselves as “very happy”.
A significantly smaller proportion of individual contributors – 15.1 per cent – proclaimed themselves “very happy”. And, sitting at the bottom of the pile, only 8.2 per cent of middle managers – less than one-third the proportion of senior managers – said the same about themselves.
It’s safe to say, then, that middle managers see themselves as the most miserable of the lot.
What has plunged middle managers into this valley of despair?
I spoke with Mr Ian Choo, a head of people and culture in the retail industry, in my podcast Agile Leaders Conversations, and here is what he said:
“We’re like the meat in the middle of the sandwich, smacked in the middle. As the ‘meat’, we have to ‘meet’ the expectations of the top, and also ‘meet’ the expectations of the bottom. When things get tough, we feel it the most.”
Listen to our podcast interview with Ian Choo, a Learning and Development Professional who shared about Middle Managers Being the Conduit.
Listen to the episode here.
Done in by disruption
According to Accenture’s Global Disruption Index, disruption has taken off. It was growing at 4 per cent from 2012 to 2017. This rate has tripled in the 2017 to 2022 period.
So yes, it is indeed the era of exponential disruption and transformation. The entire system is under stress. People bearing the brunt of it? Middle managers.
I have tried to help many of them develop competencies to facilitate changes in their organisation. A large number have complained of loss of control.
Ms Maya, a head of communications at a medical device company, told me: “We never get to settle down between changes fully. This is the fourth restructuring exercise we are having in three years. There are already so many unresolved issues from past iterations, and now another change is coming.”
Ms Maya is not alone in feeling the strain of transformations. Many middle managers are in the same boat.
Less than one-third of respondents in a McKinsey research study in 2021 said their companies’ transformations had succeeded in improving and sustaining organisational performance over time.
This hints that transformations are executed clunkily in most workplaces, perhaps because middle managers, who are often left to do most of the heavy lifting, are poorly prepared for them.
A strategy on paper is only good for show. Implementing strategies, when the rubber hits the road, is the real test. If organisations can prepare middle managers better, then they will be setting them up for success, not misery.
The rising competency bar
“Middle managers have to unpack priorities from the top and mediate between the realities of what the bottom can provide. In many ways, they are the conduit who have to coach both upwards and downwards,” Mr Choo said.
It is much harder to do this today, given the diversity of ideas, the need to innovate and a multi-generational workforce.
Middle managers are expected to be well versed in a wider range of hard and soft skills, and operate at a higher level, sooner. The stakes are also too high.
An overwhelming 72.8 per cent of respondents in the Leaders People Love Global Survey say their happiness depends a lot on how effective their managers are.
Workplaces have much to gain from preparing their middle managers to succeed, but still, too little is being done.
A survey in 2021 found that one in four managers in the United Kingdom never received management training. I have met middle managers who were left to their own devices for over a decade before having the “privilege” of working with an executive coach. When managers are given the right guidance and methodology, they can develop competencies that usually take years, in months. This can be a game-changer for them and their teams.
“I wished I had invested in proper development programmes earlier because my own managers were, honestly, too busy to guide me. All we talk about is work and results. We hardly had any developmental conversations,” a middle manager said to me once.
For some managers, perhaps, the help came a little late. Companies should act fast and early to prepare middle managers for the next level. This will make their journey easier and happier.
Poor communications
As strategic changes at the epicentre ripple through the organisation, the shock waves destabilise teams – endless changes to be translated, issues to be addressed, and bigger goals to be achieved.
Middle managers play a big part in restoring stability by filtering out noise and offering clarity to their charges.
But if communication is poor, it is not easy to separate useful information from noise.
Mr Lee Mun Choon, the general manager of a healthcare training institute, recounted his experience.
“People at the top understand alignment is key, so they push down information to staff. But middle managers get bombarded with information. Once they are saturated, nothing else gets through. Things worsen when senior leaders communicate poorly, creating excessive noise that distracts them. Because things change so fast, they communicate again and again, adding to the confusion. People will then ask, ‘What is happening? Why are there so many versions? Which one do I follow?’ The overwhelm on the ground is very real, and with little time and attention to sieve through, it can be distressing for middle managers.”
In 2018, McKinsey studied 18,000 executives on important skills needed for the future. Proficiency in communications ranked near the lowest, as it scored only 52 out of 100.
Some leaders tell me a good strategy needs a robust communication plan. I agree – but only if senior leaders and everyone in the workplace are trained to curate information and communicate efficiently.
Listen to our podcast interview with Lee Mun Choon, Social Enterprise Leader as he emphasizes the Joy of Learning and Courage to be Vulnerable.
Listen to the episode here.
Logic cannot beat a broken system
Many senior managers I work with are aware that work conditions in some sections have become untenable.
Too many priorities mean no priorities. The logical solution is to encourage middle managers to drop irrelevant work, so they can better focus on what really matters.
“Prioritisation, in some sense, is like going to a buffet where you need to choose from the huge feast laid out before your eyes. You have a fixed appetite and just one belly – which dishes will you eat? That’s the question,” Mr Kevin Tan, a public service technology senior leader, told me.
But getting middle managers to drop work and reprioritise is easier said than done.
Mr Tan told me how his middle managers became apprehensive when he started a work reduction movement.
Seeing their portfolios shrink in size – seemingly in importance, too – the middle managers started to feel more insecure. This was frustrating for Mr Tan, who genuinely wanted people to work more meaningfully. But he can understand why middle managers get concerned if their work is reduced.
“People’s behaviours are shaped by the way they are assessed. Are workers rewarded for dropping things, or for taking on more? In our workplace, performance is relative. There is competition with your peers. If someone gets more, you are going to get less. Your decision to drop or take on work would also affect your team’s visibility and perceived value. So everyone is waiting for someone else to drop work first. If no one does it, everyone will cling on, even when it’s painful, because the thought of losing out on your performance ranking and progression could be even worse.”
In such systems, even if senior leaders are empathetic and aware of challenges on the ground, they are limited by the broken system. So, it is a race to the bottom of the pit of misery.
Only so much you can handle
Ms Jane, a millennial middle manager, shared with me that she wondered if her struggles were worth anything in the end.
“I spend so much of my energy dealing with ‘people issues’. I’m depleted every day. Life as an individual contributor was so much simpler – I just had to take care of myself. I actually had a life after work, but now it is only work, work, and more work. With the little pay hike, I often wonder if all this extra effort is worth it.”
Managers I work with often describe their work life as “a hamster in the wheel”.
I kept hamsters when I was a child and was enthralled by these strange little rodents. Every day, my hamsters would get up on the wheel and run. The wheel would spin faster, the hamster would try to keep up. The competition always ended with the wheel as the victor, flinging the hamster off the wheel – only to have it pick itself up and begin the cycle of insanity all over again.
But what if we can no longer find people willing to play this untenable game?
A recent Straits Times article, “What else is left but work-life balance?”, mentioned that one in four millennials shy away from leadership positions in exchange for less pressure.
What will happen to leadership succession plans and corporate longevity if the pipeline of leaders is empty?
That is perhaps the most important question organisation leaders must ask.
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