Why we love to hate the middle manager

This is an audio transcript of the Working It podcast episode: ‘Why we love to hate the middle manager’

Isabel Berwick
Hello and welcome to Working It with me, Isabel Berwick.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Today’s episode is an ode to the often-maligned middle manager. Despite their prevalence in organisations, middle managers have had a bad rap for decades. Back in 2001, the Harvard Business Review published a damning report saying the very phrase “middle managers” evokes mediocrity. So today we’re throwing ourselves into the debate and asking, “Who are middle managers anyway?” Here are the two current hottest takes: number one, middle managers are nothing but blocks in the road of corporate success and innovation; or, number two, middle managers are actually a deeply needed ally and the vital links between senior management and the needs of an increasingly demanding workforce. So joining me to chew over this sticky debate is Andrew Hill, the FT’s senior business writer and a former management editor. Andrew, hello.

Andrew Hill
Hello.

Isabel Berwick
First, rather obvious question, but what exactly makes someone a middle manager?

Andrew Hill
Well, I tend to think of it being anybody who is in between the frontline workforce and the executive level. And actually middle managers, you’ve already said, it can be a bit of a disparaging term, and I don’t think anyone has ever aspired to be a middle manager. So I prefer to think of it about anyone who’s leading a team, really.

Isabel Berwick
Perhaps “team leader” is the word we need instead of “middle manager”.

Andrew Hill
Yeah. “Team leader” is a word I’ve used in columns synonymous with middle managers because I think it’s not the same as being the head of the division or the executive in charge of the whole operation or part of the operation. But it does cover some quite small teams obviously, which throw up similar management problems to quite large teams actually.

Isabel Berwick
Yeah. And what do you think are the structural problems that make the term “middle manager” just sound so boring?

Andrew Hill
Well, I mean, I never went back to trace the origin of middle management, but of course, anything in the middle tends to get squeezed by the top and the bottom. And as I think we’ll go on to discuss — I think actually the “middleness” of middle managers makes them a vital part of the structure. But clearly, in anyone looking at middle management begins to think, well, here’s a “layer”, a word we’ll come back to, that we don’t really need. And they may challenge the fact that there are people in between the top leaders and the worker drones.

Isabel Berwick
And has that trend been accelerated by this sort of trend towards flat management or holacracy, as the term might be?

Andrew Hill
Yeah, well, holacracy is slightly different. But the flat management, that’s something people have been saying they’re going to do. It’s usually used in the context of taking out a layer of management. And as I once wrote, you know, there is a danger there because as soon as you take out managers, you’re essentially saying that the people above that middle management layer have to have more direct reports. That could either be, a) overwhelming; suddenly you’ve got 35 people reporting directly to you and bringing all their issues to you. Or it could be an excuse for giving yourself more power, which might be a dangerous thing and actually not what the organisation wants.

Isabel Berwick
No. We’ve never heard of a manager trying to accrue power . . . 

Andrew Hill
Oh!

Isabel Berwick
Goodness me.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Andrew, a few months ago you wrote a column about the importance of good management, and actually I think it was your last column as the FT’s management columnist. And within it you defended the role of middle managers. So what’s your take on this?

Andrew Hill
Well, I think that the middle manager is somebody, as I say, who links the executive team to the front line. And obviously you can — and we have seen this happen during the pandemic when everyone was virtual — the ability to connect directly with the people on the front line was suddenly open to executives in a way that, when they were buzzing around the world or constantly in in-person meetings, was harder for them to do. But I think there’s a vital part between the executive sort of strategic level and the front line, where middle managers are the intermediaries; they’re the interpreters of what the executive team — their bosses — are doing. And they are also the conveyors of information back from the front line to the executive team. That makes it sound all a bit too hierarchical, but I think even in a world where they are taking on more of a sort of “coach role” as managers, there is something important there in the way in which managers — good managers — can work to provide communication, clarity, to be the intermediary for difficult messages from above and indeed difficult messages from below. Of course, it can be very stressful because they may not be the ones taking the final decisions, either on the frontline or in the strategic . . . 

Isabel Berwick
Yeah.

Andrew Hill
Discussion.

Isabel Berwick
You get flak from above and flak from below, you know, the emotional capital that you have to put into the role of manager. But I think that’s something that people are thinking about a lot more now, isn’t it?

Andrew Hill
Yeah, they are. Although it’s not new. I mean, the great Peter Drucker, the management writer, started thinking about management as a human role. Managing humans, managing people is what managers do. I mean, he was also very clear, though, that the main role is to make people capable of joint performance. So he never shied away — and I don’t think managers should shy away — from the fact that actually what you’re trying to do is make people working together effective. You are trying to hit targets. You are trying to make the organisation more profitable, more agile, all those good things. So it’s not pure therapist. I mean, I think one could get misled into thinking I’ve just done my coaching thing and I’ve been a good person to these humans in my team and actually lose sight of the fact that actually they do need to perform at the end of the day if the organisation is gonna move forward.

Isabel Berwick
And just for the listeners, can you unpack a bit who Peter Drucker was? When was he writing and practising?

Andrew Hill
So Peter Drucker was sort of late 20th century wonderful management writer. Above all, you know, still very relevant insights, even though he more or less predated the internet age and certainly the later digital age, and somebody who worked as a consultant to big companies in the United States. He was Austrian-born, but whose insights I think are still pretty relevant to a lot of what managers should now be doing.

Isabel Berwick
OK, so if you’re a manager, he’s someone we could still look to.

Andrew Hill
Yeah, absolutely.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Isabel Berwick
So underneath your column, there are loads of comments that really got the readers interested. And one commenter said this; I just wanted to share with you and get your reaction: “The good manager is a rare creature in my experience. Bad ones proliferate, usually put in place by senior bad managers. They’re very good at inventing criteria against which to measure themselves, which — surprise — they always seem to do well in and award themselves a pay rise, while cutting salaries for other staff.” I mean, that’s a pretty stark comment, but it goes to something that I think is true. Why are so many managers bad? Everyone’s got terrible stories to tell. Have you ever had a terrible manager, Andrew?

Andrew Hill
Well, given that I’ve worked at the Financial Times for my whole career . . . 

Isabel Berwick
Ha! Ha!

Andrew Hill
Some of those . . . 

Isabel Berwick
No, obviously not!

Andrew Hill
Some of those managers work here. No, but I mean, I think there can be under-management. I think there’s a danger of neglect if managers don’t decide to do the management part of their role. I think the other thing that that reader comment suggests is the downside of middle management is that if that middle becomes truculent or difficult, or is just bad at what it’s doing, it can be a terrible blockage in an organisation. Messages not getting from the front line back to the executives and vice versa. Empire-building going on and sometimes resistance in some of the areas of, for example, improving diversity. For example, there’s often a discussion about the sort of permalayer, the permafrost layer of management, that prevents some of these reforms happening because they’ve got to where they’ve got and they don’t want others to compete for the top jobs. So there are dangers in the middle management. I think one of the reasons why you get bad managers, though, is that often they’re promoted to management accidentally. They’ve done a good job in their operational role perhaps, and then they are given a promotion. And there’s lots of examples of people saying, “I didn’t really want to manage a team, I just wanted to go on being a consultant or go on being an engineer. I didn’t want the responsibility of management and was never trained for it.” That’s another missing link that can lead to bad managers.

Isabel Berwick
In a lot of organisations, career progression doesn’t really happen unless you go into management, does it?

Andrew Hill
People are beginning to recognise that in areas such as professional services. They’re recognising, for example, that a top lawyer, the firm is not going to be well-served if that lawyer has to go and do management all day, particularly if they’re not keen to do it. And so there’s beginning to be the emergence of a sort of managerial class in some of these firms that allows the professionals to continue doing what they’re good at right through to the end of their careers.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Isabel Berwick
One of your readers thinks there’s a sort of golden handbook that we can have to be a good manager, and they got a lot of likes from others for this comment, and I’m gonna read it in full ’cause I think it’s really excellent and then I’m gonna ask you about it. “There’s too much written about management theory, but not enough about the practical part of helping a team perform to the best of its capabilities. As a short article in the Harvard Business Review called “Impressive Middle Managers” and a book by Gareth Jones, sadly no longer with us, and Rob Goffee called Why Should Anyone Be Led By You? After 30 years of trying to get it right, my own advice would be — apologise if this is stating the bleeding obvious — one, recruit good people. Two, be as clear as you can in setting out goals and be consistent in applying them. Three, let people get on with their jobs. Four, remember people have lives outside work and understand what’s going on. Five, make sure your team has opportunities to innovate and collaborate. Six, have your team’s back, but deal quickly with any problems, even if doing so can impact on your own short-term prospects. And seven, make sure systems are in place to allow all of the above while giving you the information you need to see where things are going. So I’ll put links to that article in the Harvard Business Review and that book in the show notes. And Andrew, I know you rate the work of Gareth Jones and Rob Goffee. What is it about their approach that works and have you got anything else to add to that reader’s rather insightful comment?

Andrew Hill
Goffee and Jones also worked on authenticity. Authenticity can be quite often mocked because people say, well, why would you have to try to be authentic? If you act like you need to be a good manager, then you’re not really being authentic. But their point was be yourself but with skill. We don’t want to have managers who simply vent their deepest prejudices. You want them to be presenting a sort of refined version of themselves in work. The other things that they have touched on, which I think are relevant, you know, it’s not about the position. I mean, frequently I think people feel I’ve been given the title and indeed there’s some fun research that I often refer to, which shows that if you take a random group of people and you give one of them a badge saying leader, they start to behave as though they are a leader, even though they may not be the best person for it. Just the title gives them airs and graces that they didn’t have before, and which can be dangerous. So it’s not about position, it’s more about what you do. And I think very relevant for now and relevant to what we were discussing about the therapist role of manager or the coaching role. You need to know when to encourage sort of warmth and loyalty in your team and when to step back. And particularly that’s the contrast, I think, between the early pandemic, you know, I’ve got to be compassionate for my team’s, look after my team’s health and mental wellbeing and so on. And what we now going to experience, the recessionary backlash of that and the war in Europe, when to step back and start having to take sort of tough decisions. That’s a kind of key determinant, I think, of whether you’re a good manager. Are you able to know when to calibrate that sort of warmth and “I’m a friend to all” into a slightly harder “Look, if we’re gonna meet our performance targets or indeed keep this company alive, we’re gonna have to take some tough decisions”.

Isabel Berwick
So to throw it forward and summarise, actually what you’ve just said there about being a bit tougher is something that we haven’t seen much in kind of management features and, you know, spoutings from CEOs in recent times. It’s all been much more about that authenticity and touchy-feely stuff.

Andrew Hill
Yeah, that has been a fact of the last two years, is that even CEOs who are not naturally empathetic have had to find their empathetic side. We may be switching now to a situation where, you know, managers who are not naturally hard-nosed about the decisions that they take have to find that side of themselves and downpedal the empathetic side. But my inclination is that you’ve got to be able to toggle between the two things depending on the context. And of course, that goes to the whole question of adaptability and agility and flexibility and being aware of the situation. It’s a complex job.

Isabel Berwick
It’s a pretty tall order actually. I think for listeners, what their key takeaways might be that you need to be authentic. You also need to be tough, you need to communicate and you need to not empire-build. And you know, as humans we’re all quite flawed and we’re not very good at doing any of those things. What’s the most important one, do you think?

Andrew Hill
I think it comes down to adaptability, as I mentioned, and being aware of the situation that you’re dealing with and learning how to adapt to those differing situations. And also, frankly, to the fact that every single person in your team is going to require some different approach. When I was a manager, I remember that stuck with me from a training session that I had, which was — you may think that you know how this meeting should turn out, but you are gonna need to adjust your approach depending on the person in your team that you are meeting, because they are gonna come with different priorities, different concerns and also critically different skills that you want to make the most of. So you need to find a way as a manager to be a bit of a chameleon and adapt yourself to that person and how you can get the best performance out of them.

Isabel Berwick
Ooh, I like that. So “Karma Middle Management Chameleon”.

Andrew Hill
(Laughs) Yeah.

Isabel Berwick
Andrew (laughs), thank you so much.

Andrew Hill
My pleasure.

Isabel Berwick
I’ve had a bit of a thing about bad management since a performance review quite a long time ago, where my manager didn’t really say anything about my performance, but just asked me when I was going to be leaving cause she’d rather that someone full-time did the job and who was paid less money. So that was really motivating. So as a middle manager myself, I’ve always really tried hard to do the right thing. But as we’ve discussed today, it’s a really complex job! You’re the kind of sandwich filling between senior management and your team members. And quite often, that sandwich filling is not very appetising. You know, sometimes it’s better to be the bits of bread on either side. I totally get why middle managers get a lot of flak. There are some terrible ones. But honestly, I think these points about authenticity, learning to adapt, being a chameleon, learning to adapt to the person you’re talking to, learning to make your messages stick with your team, and basically being an interpreter, because senior management can speak in riddles, frankly. And so if you can be the person that tells your team what that really means and empowers them, as that reader comment said, to do their own thing and feel engaged with their work, then your work is done. Because let’s not forget, the number one reason for leaving a job is not that you hate the job, it’s that you hate your manager.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Isabel Berwick
Thanks again to Andrew Hill for this episode. If you’re enjoying the podcast, we’d really appreciate it if you left us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And please do get in touch with us. We want to hear from you. We’re at workingit@ft.com. Or with me @IsabelBerwick on Twitter. If you’re an FT subscriber, please sign up for our new Working It newsletter for some behind-the-scenes extras from the podcast and work and careers stories that you won’t see anywhere else. Sign up at FT.com/newsletters. Working It is produced by Novel for the Financial Times. Thanks to the producer Anna Sinfield, executive producer Jo Wheeler, production assistance from Amalie Sortland and mix from Chris O’Shaughnessy. From the FT we have editorial direction from Manuela Saragosa and production support from Persis Love. Thanks for listening.

[MUSIC PLAYING]