Squashed in the Middle by You - the middle manager's nightmare By Charmaine Weeks, info@changechampions.com.au

Orange in the Middle

Picture yourself as a pulp perfect navel orange, lazing in the afternoon warmth of an early

Sunraysia spring. It’s a good life. Every orange in every tree in your orchard is on message to

ripen as evenly as you can. There’s no pressure except for the odd nudge here and there from a

branch hopping wagtail. Each developing orange is equally nurtured with a careful balance of

water+. Each is protected from birds, bats, fruit flies and two legged poaching varmints by a

vigilant avuncular orchardist. Each receives a word of encouragement, an approving nod or a

proud smile from their avuncular orchardist. All you have to do is deliver the juice. It can’t get

much easier than that.

In the bigger picture of oranges and juice, unnatural predators, those fiercely competitive

supermarket giants despatch B Triples that rumble like earth tremor aftershocks toward your

orchard. Your tree branches vibrate through the trunk and into the tree’s roots. Suddenly, your

stem loses the better half of its hold on its twig. You are left swinging in mid air, not sure what is

going on.

You are not quite ready to drop your vitamin filled goodness and the thought of being plucked out

of the cosy protection of your tree fills you with trepidation. The big B Triple driver from the city

pulls out his clip board and pen and financially and emotionally squeezes the orchardist for more

and more oranges for less and less return. Panicked about the future sustainability of their

livelihood, the orchardist tractors through their inherited rows of citrus trees, churns the ground

willy nilly with growth enhancers so as to keep up with big city demand. Careless backpackers

snatch half ripened fruit for the cash on offer.

Perfect as you, you become one of the first to be backpacker plucked from the tree. You find

yourself slam dunked into the murky depths of a canvas bag with other oranges of similar calibre

and a swage of leafy debris. Confusion reigns. Then, you are all tossed into the wash, conveyed

through grading, boxing and finally labelled, “Premium Juicer”. When all the cartons are packed

and stacked, you are trucked off to some mystery city supermarket conglomerate.

It’s not exactly the ideal career progression; to be crushed between the citrus producer and the

KPI driven supermarket executive. There you are powerless, in the dark, not sure what you can

and can’t do and with others determining your fate.

But that is what happens to many middle managers, even to those with tertiary qualifications in

management.

Premium Oranges Can Survive With Their Juice Intact

Every day middle managers seesaw between the demands of those above and those arising in

their teams. It takes balance and emotional intelligence to manage competing pressures while

continually making adjustments to maintain stability, productivity, positivity and your own sanity.

You are working in a landscape that, by necessity or design, is constantly changing, perhaps

only subtly.

Some adapt more easily than others. That’s life. Some emerging middle managers will feel

squashed in between the top and bottom plates of a manual vice juice extractor. Without

resilience and support, pulp, juice, pith and skin could be squashed out and sprayed everywhere

but in the catch cup.

There is a plethora of leadership and management development courses on offer, delivered by

all manner of institutions. There appears little evidence between having an EMBA and being a

great manager as there is the converse ie having no qualifications while becoming a brilliant

manager. What appears to be widely agreed is that organisations commit to provide

development opportunities, some lavish, for executives. They willingly invest as necessary in

training for the front line. But, very little attention is dedicated to delivering training that addresses

the expressed immediate needs of those in the middle. Most of what they need to learn is not in

the book. Their questions often start with, “What do I do if...”. And the answer isn’t always on the

Internet. In fact, sometimes it lies within and just needs a little help to surface. Many middle

managers learn from their own manager. And while some of those managers provide wonderful

guidance, there are others who deserve a magnifying mirror to facilitate a little self reflection.

No wonder some middle managers burn out and retreat to the comfort zone of the front line.

Could middle management be the litmus test for career progression and the acid test of

resilience? There are fewer executives on the rungs above you and competition for promotion is

often fierce. Those ambitious few who cope best and show greatest ability are those who are

most likely to be promoted or poached. That is not to detract from the courage and tenacity of the

career middle manager.

Putting the Juice into Middle Management

1. Put Your Own Wellbeing First

This is not about becoming self obsessed about your ability/inability or letting your ego run riot

about your promotion from the open plan work benches to a cupboard office. Just like anything

you take on for the first time, tandem parachuting, driving lessons, getting married, having a baby

or rescuing a puppy, it is reasonable to feel a little anxious. If you feel that you might become a

runaway bride/groom, choose to not take the middle management role until you feel ready.

“Choice” is an important word. We all always have choices.

Many new middle managers commence their role by coming in early, staying back late and, can

you believe, showing up for work on weekends to make up for what they may perceive as

conscious incompetence. Mathematically, it doesn’t work to accept a promotion with a salary

boost and then volunteer your time in the same organisation. If you are one of those people,

check your salary now by dividing the hours you usually work in an average week and see how it

looks. Some of you may discover that, in real terms, you are actually earning less now than

before you were promoted.

Staying back may make you look dedicated but it also makes you like highly visible. Everyone

who comes into work after you and leaves before you sees that you are still there. That makes

other people feel guilty and creates a source of wash basin gossip. Worse, it sets an unhealthy

precedent for all of your direct reports. And it’s VERY unhealthy, not just for you, but for the

organisation as a whole.

Some of you will say that working extra time is expected from managers. Your manager does it

and they expect the same from you. Check your contract. If it’s written into your contract that you

are required to donate additional hours...well, whoopsy. Perhaps it would have been better if you

had checked the fine print first. But, all of that following the old culture is phooey if you want

happy staff, happy organisation and a successful organisation. You are not your job. You have a

life and if you don’t have a life, create one.

Set your working hours. Leave a little flexibility for anything that is genuinely urgent. And spend

the rest of your time on healthy body, healthy mind activities.

2. Get Clear About What Is Expected from You and What You Expect from Others

Middle management is about matching demands and expectations from above and with your

team.

Your job exists to help your organisation, via your senior managers, to translate strategy into

action. As a middle manager, you are the bridge between the big picture and the detail. You are

the conveyor of information to and from senior managers and to and from your team.

It makes sense then to have some idea about what your actually boss does, to whom they report,

their KPI’s and challenges, and broadly, how they like to work. More importantly, try to get a

handle on their communication style and preferences. This will help you to see where and how

you fit with their role and to understand their priorities and pressure points.

By the way, whether you approve or otherwise of your boss’s communication style, people will

always do what people do. Try not to be judgemental. No one is perfect, not even you. One good

choice is to learn to anticipate your boss’s behaviour and adapt your own behaviour to become

appropriately accommodating. That will help to free you to be able to propel yourself forward and

may be even share with your boss some of your skills, knowledge; emotional intelligence etc that

you have and they haven’t that inspired them to hire you in the first place.

Once you have clarified priorities and deliverables with your boss, take the time to learn about

the people in your team. Who are they? What makes them tick at work? How do they things are

going or could be improved? What are their future career plans? Discuss your own role,

communication style etc as you did with you own boss. Let your team know who you are and

what makes you tick. What leadership/management style do they consider motivating? Who do

they admire as a leader and manager and why?

It is amazing how many people still think that the best way to motivate their people is to cut them

down, in the belief that it will inspire them to do better. They are the managers who

communication commences with what you did wrong, with or without mention of what you did

right. Or the first answer is always, “No” or if you are lucky, it’s “No, but...” And they wonder why

you are shocked when you hear via someone else that they have a high opinion of your work.

Please.

A better way to motivate your people is to see the good in them and treat them with respect and

courtesy. Saying please, thank you, well done and treating them with respect also helps. Sharing

information always helps to dispel concerns. You are aiming to create a continuous improvement

team where individuals respond to constructive feedback and feel confident about their ability. As

a team, your internal mission is to “do it better”.

3. Keep Mould at Bay

When things aren’t working quite the way you had hoped, open up a calm, constructive

conversation early. Avoid the blame game. Sentences that commence with “You did...”, “You

said...” or “You told me...” demonstrate a culture of blame and abdication from responsibility.

Going off your rocker in anger erodes trust and confidence among your team members and gives

them a license to talk about your bad behaviour. Blaming and shaming serve only to build anger,

resentment and apathy in your team; none of which are

conducive to a high achieving, collaborative workplace. It’s

inexcusable to imitate anyone else’s blame game behaviour

toward your own team. If it happens to you and you are brave,

it might worth nudging your boss in the direction of your priority

to find ways to solve the problem, rather than bear the brunt of

what went wrong. They may glare at you or come back with an unwelcome retort. But some

people just have to have the last word. So let them.

Taking a proactive approach to dealing with issues with your boss or your team helps to keep

you on the front foot. The stability and predictability in your own behaviour helps to build

everyone’s confidence and resilience.

Waiting for mould to bloom before drawing attention to it is tantamount to letting management

happen to you. In the absence of information and/or direction, people find ways to speculate.

Before you know it, a tiny solvable problem transforms into an emotive bonfire. You have a

choice to be brave and close down the wash basin clap trap that sometimes has only the

flimsiest relationship with the truth.

When management happens to you, the juicer is extracting from you from top and bottom

simultaneously. Your personal resilience may become compromised. That is concerning when it

flows onto your team and then you take it home to your family.

Take a look at this video by Kathryn McEwen if you are thinking about your resilience at work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg_x1dy9KCU

4. What If You Think the Top Orange is a Half Mandarin?

There are some middle managers who feel frustrated when they believe that their boss is inept,

less intelligent or just sitting it out for a retirement in a job they believe they should have. As

frustrated as you may feel, you have a choice to act professionally by keeping your toxic lips

sealed. If you spray cynical comments about your boss over your team like pesticide, you are

setting a new low in behaviour precedents.

You can choose to help your boss to learn just in a similar way that they have a responsibility to

help you to learn. And you can decide to demonstrate more broadly that you are ready to step up

to the next level by supporting your boss so that you ALL look good.

5. You Need Your Juice To Manage Unpopular Changes From the Top

All too often middle managers are directed from way above to deliver to their teams messages

for unpopular change. For even the most experienced middle manager, this can be confronting,

especially when they don’t agree with or understand the changes or what is actually changing

remains a mystery.

Remember, that it’s the role of the top echelon to envision and strategise. Sometimes, in the very

early stages, the executive has little idea how vision and strategy will translate into

implementation, action and outcomes. Often times, team members, perhaps, mistakenly interpret

that management keeps them in the dark. “They don’t tell us anything”, is a frequent catch cry.

Sometimes, executive can’t tell you because they neither know yet nor have assessed

organisational readiness. It’s that simple.

If you are a middle manager who has been asked to share information about change, here are a

few tips that might help you through:

ask your boss to help you to craft some key messages about what it is, how it will benefit

the organisation and the team and what is the likely impact on the team.

be clear that you and your team are keen to be involved in the consultation process. After

all, no one knows more about what you and your team do than you and your team.

be open about not having all of the answers but be willing to commit to keep the

communication lines open

share what you know when you know you can share information

if there is no update, that is information for sharing with your team. This will help to dispel

any “They know but they are just not telling us” twitter

avoid saying or even giving an air of knowing what is going on but being not in a position to

reveal. You can lose trust by creating a power differential in your team if you have the

temerity to make statements like, “I know but I can’t say right now.” Remember, no one likes

surprise parties.

keep in mind that a good change strategy has flexibility and the change may need to

change to make it more workable. So its best not to present information from above as set

in stone until it’s actually set in stone. Otherwise, you will hear and perhaps say, “It keeps

changing and we don’t know what is going on.” Of course, it keeps changing. It’s on the top

echelon’s head to get it right and they will do whatever it takes to get it right.

invite questions and discussion among the team members while discouraging cynicism and

speculation, especially your own.

make yourself available for your team member’s personal concerns about the change,

especially if it impacts their job or their personal circumstances.

Remember, that you may be delivering the message that change is coming, but you are not an

orange parked on head of William Tell’s son.

Finally, be confident, believe in yourself and remember your career comprises many journeys

each with a beginning and an end. Middle management offers its own series of journeys. It’s not

a destination. Enjoy those journeys.