middle management

Beth SchaeferApril 1, 2025Most Recent Blog, Professional Development and Career Advancement Blog

Support Middle Management | Middle Management Blog

6 Key Activities That Support Middle Management

By Beth Schaefer

6 key activities that support middle managemnt april 25 blog

My research from Forbes suggests, “Middle Managers have the potential to drive growth specifically because of their unique position with a company… middle management binds purpose with execution.”

In the second article in the Middle Management Series, I discussed the research supporting the importance of middle managers to an organization. Because of this role’s importance, organizations should intentionally and directly support the people in those roles rather than view them as a “layover” position.

Here are 6 Key Activities organizations can take to build up middle managers and build up their organization’s potential:

Listen to them

And, even better, empower them. Daily, middle managers observe who and what is working… and who and what is not working. Ask them to weigh in on decisions and listen to what they say. Provide them with some latitude to make decisions or execute the organizational goals in a manner that makes sense for their team. Provide them with training beyond the check-off-the-box meant to save the organization insurance and legal costs and instead pay for professional development that helps them lead their team.

2. Give them credit and respect

Recognize that there isn’t anything wrong with someone who loves their job and does not want to move into C-Suite. The best leaders are sometimes followers; the best followers are sometimes leaders. This appears to be a relatively easy concept on the surface, but one that is difficult to juggle within the power dynamic or political climate of an organization. Middle Managers do this every day. The best middle managers have the confidence to listen to their team members and to challenge their superiors. Knowing how and when to do both is a nuanced skill that should be respected.

3. Quit measuring success by the number of direct reports

In America, we tend to be about big and bigger: “Value price meals” with extra-large servings; Gawdy stats of individual athletic achievements over the team success; giant SUV’s to transport 1 or 2 people. It is hard to escape that in America, more equals better, and that quality is often an afterthought. The bigger is better concept is often applied to how middle managers are rewarded. Someone who has 55 direct reports is paid more than someone who has 34 direct reports who is paid more than someone who has 12 direct reports. Of course, the natural reaction is, but the 55-report person is doing more work. The question to ask is, what kind of work? “Paperwork” and reporting could take most of the time for someone who has 55 direct reports with very little time spent on the actual managing – coaching, communicating, and collaborating. And, most would agree, it’s the “people work” that requires the greater skill. Put in success measurements that are more than the number of boxes on an organizational chart.

4. Pay for expertise and experience – not organizational chart status

In article 1, I talked about how much I enjoy middle management. With several years left to work, I have reached my financial peak as a middle manager. So, unless I choose to move up the organizational chart, my salary will stay the same even as my experience and contributions to the organization grows. The next layer of leadership shifts into strategy. While I enjoy using value streams, capability mapping, and the SIPOC to solve problems, I do not want to do hypothetical risk cases and projections all the time. Reward middle managers for the work they love to do and for their experience of doing it well.

5. Find ways to reward outstanding employees instead of promoting them to management

Most organizations provide one path of financial reward, and it goes through official leadership roles. This causes people who are experts in research, or selling, or creativity, or coordinating, or engineering, or accounting, or (fill-in-the-black) to leave behind the work they love to do and become a middle manager. Contrary to this career pathway, being an experienced expert in a specific skill does not necessarily make you good at leadership. Being a good leader is about collaboration, coaching, and communication and often has very little to do with the actual skill and expertise that is valued in the current role. Every day, somewhere in America, an organization is promoting people into leadership roles as a “reward” when, in fact, they are setting up many of those people for failure, and, indirectly, their teams and organizations for failure too. Do not use Middle Management as a reward for those who do not really want to be leaders.

6. Pay for Professional Development

I know; I work for an organization that sells professional development. The reason I do this work is because l believe in its value, but you do not need to go by me – plenty of research will tell you the same thing. Providing professional development for leaders is critical because leadership challenges are not static. While some challenges, such as team collaboration, remain perennially relevant, new leadership issues do surface. For instance, most workplaces now have 4 generations of workers. Or the latest leadership challenge of when and how to incorporate Artificial Intelligence (AI) and train your team to use it effectively and ethically. Learning about leadership is not just “one and done.”

Ideally, organizations will look at how they structure and support middle management roles so that they can contribute to growing the organization. However, judging from the number of people I have heard from since starting this series (Middle Managers Part 1), it appears that middle managers find themselves in situations with difficult choices. The next set of articles will explore common middle managers’ dilemmas and some action suggestions that middle managers can take to navigate them.

Middle Managers Are Like Oreos | Middle Management Blog

Importance of Middle Managers

Middle Managers are the crème in the Oreos® of the workplace. They are the delightful, yet functional, filling that connects the two cookie wafers: workers and leadership.

Think about that classic cookie without the filling. That is what an organization is without Middle Management – two cookies that are disconnected. You can press them together, but… they will not stick, and might even crumble.

Here are the Top 6 benefits your organization receives through middle managers:

1. Middle Managers Drive Growth.

Middle managers provide purpose to their team. Feeling connected to the purpose of the organization is one of the best ways to engage a productive workforce. Middle Managers pace work for consistent production that builds resiliency against stress and prevents burnout. A respected Middle Manger can request extra from their team when needed and get it. Middle Managers can foster worker relationships and create high-performing teams, or teach employees how to slack off and not get caught, or be a jerk and create a disenfranchised workforce that results in mediocre products and customer service. That is why it is important to support Middle Managers (strategies to do this in the next article).

2. Middle Managers Set the Tone of the Work Environment.

Some organizational culture trickles down from the top, but it can be reinforced or undermined by a savvy Middle Manager. They set the expectations. The best Middle Managers model respect, kindness, and grace. They coach their teams to do the same. They find the right time and place to address bad behaviors that can infect the team, nipping them in the bud. Ultimately, their treatment of employees makes the organization either a desirable place to work or one that workers want to leave.

3.Middle Managers Provide Reality Checks.

Timelines, projects, and processes often look good on paper, but they do not tell the tale of the unintended consequence: the fallout when someone who makes a decision is unaware of all the stakeholders or processes affected. An unintended consequence could result in a process hiccup or an epic fail. An effective Middle Manager can diplomatically push back on the organization when administrative decisions come with unintended consequences, keeping their organizations on track and running smoothly.

4.Middle Managers are the Organization’s Moral Compass.

While organizations often hire consultants to facilitate leadership’s writing of mission, vision, and values statements, it is the Middle Managers who live it and model it for all employees. The true culture of the organization is not in the written words, but in the everyday living. Employees watch middle management for how closely their behaviors align with the espoused values. They listen to Middle Managers explain how the administration’s decisions are connected to (or disconnected from) their mission statement. Middle Manager’s actions can reveal their feelings about the organization. Are they trusted leaders or a bunch of phonies who say one thing but do another? Middle Managers guide the moral and ethical decisions of their entire team.

5.Middle Managers Put the Human in Human Resources

Administration writes policies about human resources or human capital. These policies provide necessary governance of humans in the workplace, but it is the Middle Managers who put the humanity into the workplace. Effective Middle Managers take time to listen to individual workers and address their challenges. They are the ones aware of workers who are sick or grieving or struggling for any number of reasons. They know which resources to offer and provide assistance at the moment it is needed.

6.Middle Managers Build Succession and Loyalty.

Middle Managers coach, mentor, and nurture the next generation of leaders. Through the delegation of work, they can provide low-risk opportunities for their workers to practice leadership. They can model decision-making, using clear communication, and accepting responsibility for their actions. They can give credit to their teams instead of making themselves look good. They can build trust with the workforce by being authentic with problems and not being trite or flippant when work is challenging.

The daily decisions and interactions of Middle Managers are the brushstrokes and colors that compose an organization’s painting.

Provide Leading Teams Through Change to your organization to support your Middle Managers.

Stuck In the Middle

Hello, My name is Beth Schaefer, and I am in middle management.

This may not seem like a terrible admission, but… for those of us who find our passion in middle management, we can also find ourselves on the receiving end of sideways glances and whispers…

What is wrong with her? She has been in that same role for 10 years!
Why haven’t they been promoted?
I thought he was going to apply for the next level once his kids were in school, but he still hasn’t made a move.
Why would anyone want to stay in that job instead of going for more money?

I cannot answer that last question for everyone, but for me, I like the combination of leading and mentoring still mixed with project work and task completion alongside regular communication and relationships with the people who benefit from our products and services.

And, I believe, there are others like me.

For those of us in the American Middle Management role who say, I like what I do. I do not want to be constantly pursuing the next level, there is a danger of being labeled a “slacker” or an underachiever. Middle Management is often viewed as a bridge from beginning supervision to Leadership. It is not considered a career goal; it is seen as a means to an end. So, when I, and others like me, make no attempt to apply for the next rung on the ladder, it raises eyebrows… and suspicions.

The question Stuck in the Middle? is not self-help to move out of middle management, but rather questions if we need to see being in Middle Management as being stuck at all.

I say Nay. (Cue your own patriotic or inspirational music here).

I say it is time for Middle Managers to stand proud and be respected. Because, frankly, we are important to our organizations, and we navigate really difficult and complex situations that benefit the organizations we work for. This past week, I have mentioned this topic and the challenges I believe middle managers face to my neighbor and walking partner, my bar trivia partner, my friend who is a high school department chair, and one of my IPD instructors. They each gave me additional challenges they thought should be addressed based on their personal experiences with managing in the middle! It seems the complexities of middle management are a shared experience – as I suspected (based on this small anecdotal sampling).

This series, Stuck in the Middle? will focus on the specific dilemmas faced by middle management with strategies to navigate them and will wrap up with what upper management can do to support the essential work of middle managers.

When will this series wrap up? Who knows? It depends on how many more middle management challenges pour in.

And Kudos to all you middle managers out there. You have my respect.