The Real Role of Middle Management
“So much of what
we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.”
-Peter Drucker,
After years in the business of being managed and managing
people, I have recently had an epiphany. Simply put, the idea of middle management
is either a contrived and bogus concept put forth to justify another level of
oversight and/or to keep the average ‘Joe or Josephine’ on task--believing that
they are irresponsible big kids who need ‘adult supervision’. The fact of the
matter is that middle management is misunderstood.
Pure and simple, most so-called
mid-level managers are ‘individual contributors’ or subject matter experts who,
probably, deserve recognition for their contributions over time to the
enterprise. Sadly, however, traditional career ladders are stuck on vertical.
As a result, we tend to promote these stellar performers to their “level of
incompetence” as articulated in the Peter Principle.
Many argue that mid-level managers are
responsible for “organizing, directing and controlling” work. Yet, too
frequently, these managers are the very reason that work is unorganized,
chaotic and out of control. To avoid taking the fall for a work unit’s
performance shortfalls, middle managers often introduce complexity, drama and
politics into the workplace. Rarely have I seen a mid-level manager’s job
description that emphasizes the importance of strategic goal setting, people
development and performance management. Their role, simply put, is to deliver output
--with little more than ‘lip service’ being paid to how important it is to the
bottom line to bring about employee ownership, engagement and development.
While it may appear that I am suggesting the role of manager
is not needed--nothing could be further from the truth. What I am advocating is
that we ‘re-purpose’ the role of mid-level manager. We need a new type of
mid-level manager. We need someone with high emotional intelligence or EQ, with
the ability to connect to people and transfer knowledge--while spotting and
developing talent. We need middle managers who recognize that they are
responsible for both business results and people development. We need to
acknowledge that the middle manager is the real human resources professional.
We need to promote the ideals of real servant leadership and not the undercover
mentality of a ‘snooper visor”.
Hence, the purpose of this short blog is to start the discussion around what middle managers should be doing. As
such, I want to put forth a new model for this role. I want to emphasize a
role that taps into the manager’s deep experience along with his/her untapped potential
to develop and create business leaders.
Exactly what is the role of middle management? Is “middle management’s”
role to show people how to do the work correctly; to insure that the work is
done correctly—or both? And, let us
assume that it is the former—i.e., show people how to work correctly. Once that task is accomplished, what is left
for the middle managers to do vis-à-vis the people doing the work? Historically,
the record shows that what these middle managers have done after showing the
worker how to correctly do the work is to interrupt the process of getting work
done correctly. Both these tasks are necessary, but not sufficient to develop
talent.
Development of talent should be the most important role of
the middle manager. Development of talent involves honing and enhancing the
technical skills of the employee, creating a climate of performance accountability
and being responsible for sharing insights regarding how things get done within
the larger organization. In other words, the middle manager should be a role
model for how to work cross functionally in a cooperative and collaborative
way. Unfortunately, too often, the middle manager is the “keeper of the gate”
for their functional silo. In spite of the lofty statements printed on
laminated cards and posted on bulletin boards, middle managers intuitively know
that they will be held accountable for one thing—measurable unit outcomes. How they treat, grow and develop their direct
reports is, often, of secondary concern.
Rarely does the middle manager want or get upward feedback
from their direct reports. As I have been told and observed, most middle
managers are ‘stuck up’. In other words, they are concerned only with what
their superior wants them to deliver. And, usually, their superior only wants
to “own the number and relentlessly charge to the quantifiable and stated
objectives.”
Pity the middle manager who goes to his/her superior and says that
“morale is low.” In fact, if they want to get the attention of the superior
regarding employee engagement, they would say “productivity is low.” In the
minds of too many middle managers, the people part of the equation is
completely outsourced to the Human Resources function. Instead of giving
struggling employees constructive feedback, they call in their HR hit man/woman.
The HR hit man/woman, who by the way has not observed the employee’s
performance, parrots what they have been told by the middle manager.
Consequently, when the employee is placed on a performance improvement plan
(PIP), he/she is told. “HR made me do it.” This failure to own up to the
performance management part of their job is the critical disconnect between the
manager and the employee.
For any organization to go from ‘Good to Great’, the middle
manager must be viewed as the key variable. Now is time to move the manager
from being ‘stuck up’ to becoming a bit more ‘stuck down’. Put another way, let
them know and reward them for not being a custodian of talent—but, more
importantly, becoming a developer of talent. The successful organization should re-calibrate for the middle manager what is really important for its survival and
success—that is an engaged, empowered and developed workforce.
