I came across a sketch on LinkedIn titled “The middle breaks”. This is inspired by Simon Sinek. The main idea is because middle managers are not trained to be leaders, they found themselves in the “high strain job” zone. And everything goes south for everyone involved from that point on… At least, this is what I perceive when I see this poor middle manager in the middle of the picture. Check-out for yourself.

Well, middle managers must come from somewhere. And yes, in many cases, an experienced specialist will be promoted to a manager role. And yes, at times, it will be tough to become a people leader. But do all middle management transitions need to be pictured as a painful and perilous process?

I was planning to write about the case for leading from the middle this week anyway. So that really came handy.

Let us be honest, even if I am getting a seasoned middle manager by the years, I also fall into the trap of victimization. It is sometimes tough, and once you think you have accessed a new middle management level, you will hit the next one soon.

I played rugby in my younger days. As a kid and teenager, I spent hours playing in the school yard with my friends. It was fun. I grew up watching all kind of games with my father, from the national championship to the European and World competitions. I knew the rules by heart, all the players names. I was a real rugby enthusiast. Later, I moved to a new city when I started university. One evening, while I was running some errands, I spotted a rugby pitch on the side of the road.  A few days later, I stopped by and went to the little building where the local team staff had their office. I had no idea where I was stepping in, and frankly, the staff noticed it. I told them I was interested to play in their rugby club. I remember this big guy – who turned out to be the sweetest nurse, bluntly and without an ounce of empathy or enthusiasm, listed all the basic expectations set to players: show up to trainings, mandatory supper with the team after practice, be available on Sunday for games… I just said: “yes, I’m in”.

Without any experience at that level, I found myself with a team filled with skilled players, with all kinds of background and personalities. I had to earn my place. And to be frank, it got tough, physically, and mentally. I had to prove myself and my teammates that I was up for the challenge, that they could trust me on the pitch, and that I was not there just for the prestige of being a rugby player. The first few months were amazingly tough. Physically, but I did not mind, I enjoyed it. Mentally, this is where I struggled the most.

Playing rugby “for real” requires a certain mindset. You need to be trustful, altruist, generous with your teammates, and mean with your opponents. While I do not think I ever really was a mean player, I certainly became a good teammate. And I had to work hard for it, because this kind of things do not come easy. I still remember more than 20 years after, this very evening. We had a training session dedicated to pick-and-go. This is one of the most physical and aggressive phases of offensive tactics. You basically progress the ball by pounding the opponent line over and over in a very narrow space. This requires extreme cohesion, automatism, and coordination to become one powerful and violent vector towards the opponents. As I was the new guy (most of them got to know each other from an early age and played in this rugby club for years), I really got tested to see if I had what it takes to be a good and valuable teammate. I remember being crushed left and right, bruised, and beaten hard in successive high intensity training sequences. I could see the angst and violence in my teammates’ eyes. I remember feeling scared. We finished training, showered, and had supper together before going back home. As I stepped in my car, I took a moment behind the steering wheel in an attempt to process what just happened. And I suddenly started to cry like a baby. I distinctively remember asking myself why I was putting myself in this situation. It was a tough moment, really. But I quickly decided not to be a victim. These were the “rules” of the game. That is what it takes to be a fellow rugby teammate. It was a learning process. And eventually, I made it through. I was back at the next training session, gave everything I had, and progressively won my place in the team.

To this day, I still consider my years playing number 4 at the Plaisir Rugby Club some of the most formative and fulfilling ones. I could get stuck remembering only all the injuries I sustained. But instead, I am so grateful for the development opportunities I was offered from the moment I stepped into the rugby club office. I learned about leadership, followership, team spirit, self-care and care for my teammates, diversity, communication, strategy, conflict resolution… And yes, I was totally inexperienced when I started, and yes, the learning process was difficult. But I did not stop as soon as it got tough. I found mentors in my teammates, asked questions, did extra physical trainings. And eventually, I earned my jersey.

How does that story relate to middle management?

Any transformative process is difficult. As we saw with my story, it can be painful, physically, and mentally. But is that it? Shall we dwell on it forever? Well, as you may have guessed now, I do not think so.

Yes, leading from the middle is filled with seemingly inextricable and unpleasant situations. But it is also an amazing place in a work organization to grow and develop.

This is the case for leading from the middle.

Whether you are a new or a seasoned middle manager, you will come across multi-faceted opportunities to learn and grow skills. Here are a few…

Strategy

Whether you will be tasked with cascading your company strategy to your organization or producing your own – I call mine operational framework – you will have to learn and work with strategy. If you have spent years in operational and project roles like I did, it is certainly an area that will require some training and a good mentor to help you getting up to speed.

People development

A key role of middle manager is the development of their employees. This encompasses many sub-processes such as hiring, onboarding, training, coaching… It also involves diversity, wellbeing, giving sense of purpose, and my other soft aspects of leading and developing colleagues. In my eyes, this is one of the most fulfilling parts of the job.

Programme & project management

A middle manager will organize the work for their department. This means that work will have to be scoped, planned, distributed, monitored… Depending on the scale of the work to be executed, you may have to set up projects and even programmes to ensure your department delivers value for the wider organization and customers.

Finance & budget  

At a minimum, you will have to set up a budget to run your department following your organization’s business cycle. But if your department delivers projects for the organization or for customers, you will need to go far beyond just looking at your employees’ salaries and travel expenses. This can be complex, but also interesting, as this will require engaging with a multitude of experts and specialists who can provide inputs to your assumptions.

Communication

To lead effectively from the middle, you will have to communicate towards multiple stakeholders, including your employees – first, your boss, your peers, anyone you need to influence – and who might have different incentives than yours. You will also need to navigate and master the different and emerging communication channels and strategize which is the most suitable depending on your stakeholders. As you communicate, you will expose yourself and will have to handle the feedback you receive, and continuously adjust your messaging accordingly.  

Facilitation

When you lead from the middle, you cannot allow bottlenecks or hurdles be on the way of your department. You will have to continuously screen any barriers to performance – either directly or through your organization. You will proactively engage with the relevant stakeholders, and through facilitation – workshops, training, find adequate solutions to the issues you need to address.

Network & interface management

As work organizations are shifting away from traditional rigid and command-and-control models to flatter, more decentralized and flexible ones, you play an essential role in building up coalitions of the most suitable employees – not only from your department – to solve specific problems arising from the ever-unpredictable world of work. To succeed, you will need to know the strengths and weaknesses of your own employees, as well as where the rest of the organization sits. By building strong relationships with your peers and adjacent departments – before problems arise, you will play a key role in ensuring the organization is running efficiently (no gaps or overlaps across), and create exciting opportunities for your team members, matching their skills and the problems to be solved.

Change management

Have you heard about change management? 😉 Leading from the middle, this is your “bread & butter”. Because your company strategy continuously evolves over time – hopefully, you play a fundamental role in making sense and translating those changes, so they successfully materialize and land well in your own organization. Being close to the front line, you are also ideally placed to report any issues and possible needed adjustments to make the change possible.

Performance management

Through your department or function, you are accountable for delivering value to your work organization. To do so, you will need to identify which metrics reflect the performance of your direct reports and employees. You will assign performance indicators together with targets at each new business cycle. You will monitor them and take action whenever needed.

I could have mentioned innovation, negotiation, and many other truly fascinating aspects of leading from the middle. Note as well that the nine topics I listed are a mix of management and leadership skills. Being a leader from the middle, you will have to learn and develop both.

In conclusion

I read too often about middle management as a terrible and bleak condition, for the middle managers themselves, and those above and below.

Through my story, I wanted to give another perspective to this common narrative. Though middle management roles can be difficult and challenging in many ways, they also offer amazing professional opportunities.

In my view, the key is to reflect and be active in leading your development in middle management roles. Find a mentor, talk to colleagues and friends, read books, volunteer and practice… If you take control of your middle management journey, it can be a really fulfilling one.

And if you do not like rugby, there are many other sports to choose from. Keep looking for the one that excites you.

I guess this was an attempt to reframe the topic 😊. Reframing will surely be a topic for a coming blog post.

Get in touch!

I will be happy to get your comments and feedback.

Like on a rugby pitch, it is all about supporting each other.