Middle
Managers in a Squeeze
We often find that
middle managers in an organisation see themselves as victims.
They're squeezed between the demands of their bosses and the
demands of their team who work for them. So often they end up
behaving as "messenger boys (or girls)" having to deliver to
their teams unpopular instructions received from on high,
absolving themselves of any personal responsibility in a vain
attempt to gain "brownie" points with them. They're also prone
to deliver messages up the line in which
they absolve themselves of all responsibility for not
achieving targets, passing the buck to their teams similarly
in a vain attempt to gain "brownie" points with their
bosses.
Middle managers'
strategy of avoiding responsibility, while being perfectly
understandable, garners them little respect with their bosses.
Similarly, passing the buck up the line for difficult
decisions generates little credibility in the eyes of their
team members. On the contrary, it tends to dilute their power
and authority.
Senior managers need
their middle managers to become true
leaders.
Middle manager must
take responsibility for organisational performance both UP and
DOWN the line. They need to identify and align with the
organisation's goals and objectives and take ownership of
them. And it is their responsibility to get everyone on board
to achieve them.
We don't believe for a
moment that middle managers have any conscious desire to
frustrate the organisation's goals. What we often find,
however, is that middle managers are themselves under a lot of
pressure and do not always have the appropriate skills,
attitudes and experience to be effective.
Solutions that may not
work particularly well
Senior management and
HR and Training departments often think the solution is to
send their middle managers on a course, or perhaps run a
training programme in-house. While training can
often be of value, we believe that learning skills out of
context or in a vacuum is not the most effective course of
action.
We believe an effective
solution needs to meet these criteria:
-
The whole team be
involved
-
Changing attitudes
should be regarded as just as important as imparting new
skills
-
The team needs to
take responsibility for the design of the
solution.
-
Senior management
need to be involved
-
The focus needs to be
on the real issues facing the team
-
Individual needs need
to be addressed
-
The solution needs to
more than produce abstract learning - it needs to produce
actual, quantifiable results for the organisation
quickly
Click here to learn about a
strategy used by several of our clients which has produced
some very impressive results.
"It's uncanny, your
report really spoke to us - at last someone understands what
we're trying to do." This is what a director of a high-profile
international aid organisation - said to us
recently.
Click here for more
details.
