As retirement rates are due to increase significantly over the next decade, according to census data, a void is appearing among middle management talent. This serves as poor timing for businesses as the pandemic acted as a catalyst for organizations to become leaner and more efficient, putting even more pressure on middle-level professionals to produce value.
Heading into the future, one thing has become abundantly clear: to sustain success, companies must double down on developing, upskilling, and empowering the middle layer of their organization. In this blog series, we’ll explore just how you can do it.
Developing Middle Managers to Sustain Your Success
Middle management has always served as a critical foundation to support senior-level direction and strategic initiatives. But as companies fought to survive during the incredible uncertainty of COVID, they emerged as leaner, more efficient versions of themselves. This means that middle managers will most likely have fewer direct reports and are thus relied on more heavily individually for results than before.
For your middle managers to succeed in this environment, it’s time to put some intention into their development. But even with this growing impetus, a SHRM survey showed that middle managers were less satisfied with professional development programs provided by their employers than executives. Here are a few ways you can help bridge the gap:
- Help middle managers connect with a coach: Career coaches provide a bevy of uses for professionals looking to become more adept with their craft, including identifying gaps in skillset and working to overcome them, ironing out clear, attainable career goals, and boosting overall performance.
- Encourage middle managers to become mentors: One of the most often overlooked methods to become a better leader is to help others grow in their own leadership capabilities. Urge your middle managers to reach out to entry-level staff or new hires and take them under their wing; they may identify ways in which they can become better versions of themselves as they help others do the same.
- Promote innovation: To help middle managers summit any plateau they may think they’re in, create a culture that invites innovation and doesn’t shout down new ideas that may be considered “outside the box” or unconventional.
Key Leadership Skills to Develop in Middle Managers
Having established the rising importance of middle managers to the success of an organization, it’s time to establish the skills that are crucial to the success of a middle manager. While the nuances of your particular company may impact which skills outrank others, there are a few major skills that should always be looked for when hiring a middle manager and developed continually once you do:
- Communication: as the linchpin to successful teams, middle managers must be masters of communication. Whether up or down the ladder, being able to communicate effectively, consistently, and clearly is an absolute imperative for successful managers. Be insistent that a culture of good communication is mandatory, not just ideal.
- Resiliency: As the responsibilities, expectations, and importance of their role rises, so too does the level of stress middle managers encounter on a weekly basis. Make sure you are empowering your managers to find tools and methods to develop and sustain their internal resiliency to properly manage whatever setbacks or frustrations that may come their way.
- Influence: As middle managers strive to meet the expectations of their superiors while simultaneously helping meet the expectations of their direct reports, middle managers who are masters of influence separate themselves from those who aren’t. With so many disparate personalities and perspectives within an organization, it’s critical to develop a spectrum of influencing styles to earn buy-in and support at all levels. There’s a wide variety of training courses on influence; be sure your middle managers are aware of and have access to them.
Your leaders at the middle layer of your organization have incredible sway over your success; let them know you’re invested in their potential by helping them develop their critical leadership skills.
Strategies to Keep Your Middle Managers Engaged
For as much as you can help middle managers step into their roles and develop skills fundamental for their success, it’ll all amount to little if you don’t have a plan to keep them engaged and motivated in their day-to-day work. Here are three strategies to help you achieve just that within your organization:
- Identify Key Business Goals Internally From the Start: In order to set up your middle managers for success, you’ve got to do some work on the front end—most likely even before you’ve made a hire. Before a middle manager even starts their first day, senior leaders within your organization should spend time identifying and clarifying key business drivers for success. Once these are solidified, your HR team is now armed with the information required to understand the core competencies your new middle manager must possess in order to be successful within their role. After making a hire with this criteria identified, middle managers will have a strong, clear understanding of their objectives and expectations—key ingredients to healthy employee engagement.
- Support New Hires as They Transition into their New Role: Stepping into a management role at the middle level of an organization can be daunting, even if your new hire has prior management experience in their past. Whether it’s with delegating to a new team of direct reports, communicating effectively across multiple departments, or influencing senior management, middle managers can quickly become overwhelmed—unless you step in to help. To help start off on the right foot, make sure you have a formal, well-constructed onboarding process that explains all of the intricacies of their new position and helps take some of the burden off of their learning curve. Crafting a comprehensive onboarding program also shows your commitment to your new hire’s success, an important ingredient for employee engagement.
- Empower Your Middle Managers to Meet Business Objectives: Middle managers are well aware of how crucial they are to the success of their company; expectations of their ability to deliver results from senior leadership can quickly surpass their own sense of what they’re capable of. To address this, make sure you’re actively motivating and empowering your middle managers to flourish in their new leadership positions. How you do this can take many different forms and is ultimately up to how your organization is structured, but potential ideas could be allowing for autonomy in meeting business objectives, providing opportunities to develop or enhance certain skills, celebrating their achievements, and enabling them to lead organizational projects.
Employee engagement is a buzzword year-round and for all levels of an organization. But as the importance of the middle layer rises, so too does the need to ensure those that occupy that layer are supported, empowered, and engaged in their work.
Strategies to Help Your Middle Managers Succeed
With so much of your organizational success depending on managers within your middle layer, it makes sense to put some intentional effort towards enabling your middle managers for success. Here are a few ways you can do just that:
- Training with a purpose: Middle managers are beset on both sides; they must contend with the expectations of their superiors and the needs of their subordinates. But when are their needs accounted for? To avoid burnout, you can help facilitate training for crucial skills and address skill gaps. Middle managers are expected to help lower-level employees become leaders and to execute the strategies from proven leaders at the senior level; help them add the tools to become leaders in their own right.
- Recognize and celebrate their accomplishments: As their importance has increased, so too have the workloads and stress levels for middle managers. In fact, over the past 10 years, middle managers have 50% more direct reports. Furthermore, they also have the highest rates of anxiety and depression of any work group, according to a study of 22,000 full-time workers. Because of this, it’s critical for your organization to build a culture of recognition, celebration, and support to help show appreciation and respect for the hardworking professionals it employs.
- Connect them with coaches: Career advancement is one of the most commonplace concerns for middle managers. Show your commitment to their professional development by helping them connect with coaches or mentors, whether within your organization or without. Not only will they benefit by having a reliable resource to continually improve their craft, but you’ll also benefit by enjoying increased retention rates and more skilled managers.
Providing a little extra support can be the difference between middle managers that burnout quickly and those that excel in their position and provide value for years. Show yours you care by investing in their success.
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