<\/p>\n
\u200bMiddle managers have long spoken out about the difficulties they face in trying to communicate and enforce directives from company leaders without having a say in or knowing the full reasoning behind those directives.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re often the voice of the top layer toward the lower levels, so they must convince people at the bottom to do things decided at the top, often without full information,\u201d says Zahira Jaser, associate professor of organizational behavior and director of the MBA program at the University of Sussex Business School in Brighton, U.K.<\/p>\n
The pervasive, unflattering image of the middle manager prevalent in today\u2019s corporate\u2014and popular\u2014culture doesn\u2019t help matters. A prime example is the fictional character Michael Scott, a middle manager at a paper company on the popular sitcom \u201cThe Office.\u201d Scott\u2019s bumbling leadership is most often the source of the comic dysfunction that plagues his Pennsylvania-based team.<\/p>\n
The negative attributes of middle managers embodied by Scott, played by Steve Carell, have been reinforced by some notable company executives when their revenues sank. For example, after Meta and Twitter (now called X) made headlines by laying off large numbers of workers earlier this year, their respective CEOs, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, took to social media to characterize middle managers as drags on their companies and to boast about thinning their ranks.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
While Musk commented that Twitter \u201cseems to have 10 managers for every employee who writes code,\u201d Zuckerberg was quoted as saying, \u201cI don\u2019t think you want a management structure that\u2019s just managers managing managers, managing managers, managing managers, managing the people who are doing the work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jaser says this impression of midlevel managers as hapless enforcers of unnecessarily multilayered company structures can be disillusioning for managers who would prefer to inspire and guide their teams, were it not for all the other duties assigned to them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn our culture, we think of leaders as heroes,\u201d says Jaser, who has interviewed hundreds of middle managers for her research. \u201cOften, our imagination of middle managers is that they\u2019re mediocre. This is not right. If top leaders think of middle managers as mediocre, they\u2019re quick to get rid of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Workplace experts who have studied middle managers say that eliminating midlevel positions to increase productivity and profit is not the answer. There\u2019s a more effective solution: The C-suite should give managers the tools, resources and trust they require to take on real organizational roadblocks, and their enthusiasm will inspire others\u2014leading to higher productivity and profits. Experts say the way many companies are currently structured has led to long-perpetuated middle-manager stereotypes and pressures that burn out many workers. Executives can change that.<\/p>\n
Help Wanted<\/p>\n
The plight of the middle manager\u2014the multiple demands, never-ending meetings, administrative overload and lack of company support\u2014is a familiar story. But a McKinsey Global Survey of middle managers released this year paints a picture that\u2019s far more draining and soul-crushing than business leaders may have suspected.<\/p>\n
The survey asked midlevel managers about their experiences at work. Only 20 percent said their organizations help them be successful people managers, and 42 percent said that either their organizations don\u2019t help, or they\u2019re unsure if they do.<\/p>\n
\u201cMiddle managers are absolutely critical to an organization\u2019s success,\u201d says Emily Field, a McKinsey partner and co-author of the survey report. \u201cIt\u2019s time to clean-sheet that role of the middle manager. What do they need? What are they uniquely suited to do, versus others in the organization? How do we remove the things that are burdening them?\u201d<\/p>\n
Post-Pandemic Challenges<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last few years have been a time of macroeconomic and sociopolitical uncertainty,\u201d says Katherine Ullman, an independent consultant in Cambridge, Mass. \u201cCompanies \u2026 have downsized, hired and downsized again. Middle managers have not only themselves, but their teams\u2019 livelihood to think about. This \u2026 pressure can create a workforce that is hard to motivate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Ullman says, attracting and retaining talent in a tight labor market, the growing demands of younger workers, new dynamics between employees and employers, and the rise of pandemic-induced remote work have put additional pressure on middle managers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe effects of remote work on communication were in some cases larger for managers,\u201d Ullman says. \u201cThe switch to remote work caused larger increases [of work] for managers than individual contributors in [the number of] IMs sent, emails sent and unscheduled video\/audio call hours.\u201d<\/p>\n
Denise Hamilton, an inclusion strategist, CEO and founder of multimedia platform WatchHerWork, acknowledges these post-pandemic challenges in a December 2022 MIT Sloan Management Review article titled, \u201cMiddle Managers Are Exhausted. Top Teams Need to Listen.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c[T]hese challenges have required managers to stretch beyond the leadership skill sets that many possess or were trained for,\u201d Hamilton writes. \u201cFor example, managers used to be trained to avoid asking their employees questions about their personal lives \u2026 now, suddenly, managers are being told that they must engage in deep conversations with their employees in order to adjust for their unique work-life challenges. These changes in expectations can add additional stress for managers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Administrative \u2018Time Sucks\u2019<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the remarkable cultural and economic changes that have dominated life in the U.S. over the past few years have joined with traditional management headaches to magnify the pressures that have long plagued middle managers. <\/p>\n
For example, despite the lip service many companies have paid to injecting experimentation and collaboration into employee performance reviews, most remain wedded to stale, periodic evaluations, says Smaranda Boros, associate professor of intercultural management and organizational behavior at Belgium\u2019s Vlerick Business School. Many companies have moved from annual reviews to more frequent\u2014even bimonthly\u2014standardized check-ins.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe talk about moving toward agile forms of organization and cultures of experimentation,\u201d Boros says, \u201cwhile we evaluate [workers] in the same way we always have.\u201d For example, despite increased talk about the importance of soft skills, many companies don\u2019t look at them when evaluating employees.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Few] of these things are [measured] anywhere in our [performance review] processes,\u201d Boros says. This can constrain managers, who often find reviews tedious\u2014even useless\u2014if the process allows them to \u201cgrade\u201d workers only on tasks and goals that ignore a large part of their contributions, she adds.<\/p>\n
\u2018We talk about moving toward agile forms of organization and cultures of experimentation, while we evaluate [workers] in the same way we always have.\u2019<\/p>\n
<\/span> Meetings are another longtime frustration for middle managers. Although companies have known for years that middle managers can increase team productivity by cutting back on the number and length of meetings, regular, long meetings persist, further sapping managers\u2019 time and energy.<\/p>\n Ullman says the tendency to hold multiple regular meetings is due in part to unquestioned company organization and tradition. \u201cMeetings are [about] organizational layers and functional divisions,\u201d she says, explaining that meetings have become the fallback way for people in separate divisions to communicate with one another.<\/p>\n Piling On<\/p>\n Unnecessarily cumbersome administrative tasks such as employee evaluations and mandated meetings take up significant real estate in managers\u2019 already constrained calendars. Middle manager respondents to McKinsey\u2019s survey say they spend 49 percent of their time on nonmanagerial work. Meanwhile, less than a third of their time (28 percent) is spent on talent and people management\u2014purportedly their principal function. Of the many tasks that distract middle managers from actually managing their teams, organizational bureaucracy is cited most often.<\/p>\n Field, co-author of the book, Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work<\/em> (Harvard Business Review Press, 2023), says another often-unnecessary bureaucratic task that eats up managers\u2019 time is the elaborate processes some companies require for managers to approve employee expense reports.<\/p>\n \u201cDo [middle managers] need to be the people checking expenses?\u201d Field asks. \u201cOr are there systems that allow the middle manager to handle only a few expense reports?\u201d<\/p>\n Field once worked with an organization where middle managers had to approve a new company credit card if a subordinate lost theirs. The approval had to go through several senior levels and took a lot of time. They didn\u2019t think to question the process and whether such time-consuming work was necessary, she says.<\/p>\n Referring to findings from the McKinsey study, Field asks, \u201cHow do we perceive the role of the manager when we see middle managers spending 18 percent of their time\u2014nearly a day a week\u2014on administrative work?\u201d<\/p>\n Excessive, unnecessary or redundant administrative tasks can make midlevel managers feel they aren\u2019t trusted enough to go beyond basic management tasks and be a force for real change, Field says. When asked how they most prefer to be rewarded for a job well done at work, respondents to McKinsey\u2019s survey said they want increased autonomy\u2014more so than bonuses, raises or promotions.<\/p>\n Outdated Structures<\/p>\n In a 2018 study published in the Journal of Change Management<\/em>, researchers compared the rate of technological change at companies over the past 70 years with the rate of organizational change that companies made over that same period. While the former increased exponentially, the latter remained almost flat, indicating the structure of middle management has not kept pace with significant changes in the workplace.<\/p>\n Experts say changes to company structures must be \u201cradical\u201d to make a difference for managers\u2014but this process requires a great deal of reflection, observation, research, data collection, expertise and patience\u2014and often, a lot of money. It can be tempting, Field says, for busy executives to retreat to their comfort zones and keep companies organized as they long have been\u2014arranged by levels of seniority, with top-down directives, siloed departments and managers pigeonholed into the same roles with the same tasks they\u2019ve always had.<\/p>\n Field adds that for executives, the prospect of spending money on a restructuring they\u2019re not sure will relieve middle managers in the first place can keep them permanently stuck in their traditional models.<\/p>\n But if updating company structure is the solution to middle-manager misery, Field says, executives must first be able to recognize that their company structure may be to blame for their market shortcomings\u2014not the middle managers tasked with upholding that structure.<\/p>\n If higher-ups can be convinced to overhaul their structures, Ullman says, then such an overhaul must start with more and better communication between middle managers and the people who lead them. Because midlevel managers have the ear of both those at the top and the bottom ranks of a company, executives would be foolish to not solicit their input.<\/p>\n \u201cMiddle managers are in an excellent position to offer insights and advice on solutions,\u201d Ullman says. \u201cThere needs to be clear alignment between middle managers and leaders on what it means for managers to be successful. [Leaders must] ask managers what they believe gets in the way of their success and try to find a solution.\u201d<\/p>\n For example, if managers are navigating too many employee emotional crises, then executives should enable HR to provide better mental health services, Ullman says. And if they find themselves in too many low-value meetings, executives should conduct a companywide audit to determine which meetings are worth keeping\u2014and which result in wasted time.<\/p>\n Progress on the Front Lines <\/p>\n Workjam CEO Steven Kramer says he does see middle-manager workloads easing among front-line workers. These are not employees who sit at desks\u2014the focus of the McKinsey study\u2014but rather those interacting with people at restaurants, distribution centers, retail stores, manufacturing plants, warehouses and hospitals.<\/p>\n Leaders in these industries, Kramer says, are so slammed by the labor crunch; middle-manager resignations; and new consumer demands for speed, knowledge and quality that they \u201care all trying to remove the manager burden because they need those managers to run more efficient and productive businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n For example, Kramer\u2014whose Montreal-based company designs programs to relieve administrative workloads for front-line employers\u2014sees more executives getting serious about giving their managers the technology, training and support they need to support workers. This enables managers to have \u201cmore time to be on the floor, to coach employees, to be with customers, to actually fulfill their job descriptions,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n That commitment to free up managers\u2019 time so they can actually manage can include technologies that not only allow a team to collectively communicate in one space (think Slack), but also assign workers appropriate tasks based on their digital skills, education, training, expertise, experience and even soft skills.<\/p>\n Such technology can enable employees to log into a common digital space and choose among the tasks a manager has posted. Some programs enable managers to flag posted jobs for specific workers who have the needed skills, while others can guide workers through the certification and training processes required to perform new tasks and advance their careers.<\/p>\n Kramer says this \u201cdemocratization of tasks,\u201d which he sees being used largely in companies with front-line workers, puts autonomy and power in the hands of employees and relieves managers of having to assign new tasks throughout the day or think too much about who would be best for a given assignment.<\/p>\n \u2018Very good middle managers have to develop very human skills, such as the ability to connect, influence, explain complexity and understand human dynamics.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/span> Such changes provide another benefit for middle managers, Jaser says: When companies recognize the need to reorganize, the role of the middle manager evolves.<\/p>\n \u201cVery good middle managers have to develop very human skills, such as the ability to connect, influence, explain complexity and understand human dynamics,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you want to motivate, you need someone who tells [workers] why they shouldn\u2019t leave for a competitor. If people burn out, \u2026 managers are the ones who can provide emotional connection and empathy that you definitely can\u2019t get through any algorithm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smaranda Boros<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n![\"ATW_Infographics_marijuanaatwork_Graph1_560x610.png\"](\"https:\/\/www.shrm.org\/hr-today\/news\/all-things-work\/PublishingImages\/Pages\/middle-managers-are-crucial-and-overlooked\/Smaranda.png\")
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Zahira Jaser<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n![\"ATW_Infographics_marijuanaatwork_Graph1_560x610.png\"](\"https:\/\/www.shrm.org\/hr-today\/news\/all-things-work\/PublishingImages\/Pages\/middle-managers-are-crucial-and-overlooked\/zahira.png\")
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