Why Middle Managers Need A Hug

Middle managers are having something of a moment. Long criticized for a range of ills from resisting change to not challenging senior executives’ dictats, they have lately been attracting a certain degree of sympathy. 

The latest example is a report from the U.K.’s Institute for Employment Studies (IES) that suggests that line managers need better support. The Squeezed Middle: Why we should be hugging and not squeezing line managers says that organisations looking to reduce sickness absence and stimulate productivity should pay more attention to an increasingly put-upon section of the workforce.

This ties in with other research into the area. For example, in a 2017 Harvard Business Review article based on a paper submitted to the Academy of Management Review, Eric Anicich and Jacob Hirsh pointed out how being simultaneously the “victims and carriers of change” within an organization, receiving strategy prescriptions from their bosses above and having to implement those strategies with the people who work beneath them, led to middle managers often finding themselves stuck in between various stakeholder groups, which could produce “relentless and conflicting demands.”

Anicich and Hirsh add: “On the emotional side, conflicting roles lead to increased feelings of stress and anxiety, reflecting the tension between incompatible social expectations. Physically, the high stress levels that accompany such conflicts are risk factors for a large number of health problems, from hypertension to heart disease. As if that weren’t enough, conflicting roles can disrupt cognitive performance and the ability to focus on a task without getting distracted.” 

So, while middle managers are often the first point of contact for employees who have mental or physical health problems, they themselves are often suffering similar symptoms. Indeed, the IES report cites further research showing that employees managed by line managers with poor physical and psychological health were also likely to report health problems.

But being caught between the demands of senior management and the needs of those reporting to them is not the only cause of middle managers’ stress and unhappiness. Increasingly, line managers are performing tasks previously associated with human resources or personnel departments — carrying out performance management and appraisals and dealing with rewards, learning and development and training. On top of this, middle managers also increasingly implement discipline and grievance procedures and handle budgetary responsibilities. They also face pressures from external clients, needing to maintain a suitable level of customer or client satisfaction, present a positive brand and be aware of competition, says the IES.

Research by the CIPD, the U.K.’s professional body for HR and people development, has suggested that 40% of organizations reported inadequate lack of training of line managers and that 26% of organizations did not prioritize line management training.

But Zofia Bajorek, author of the IES report, argues that rectifying this “training gap” is not going solve the problem. “There is still an increased bandwidth of tasks and this reduction in both time and support to complete them can lead to managers feeling ‘dumped upon’. As a quick fix, line managers may just complete measurable outcomes, letting the more complex and time-consuming ‘people management’ duties fall to the wayside,” she says.

The HBR article referred to an analysis by Ethan Mollick of the Wharton School of Business of the computer game industry that found that the behaviour of middle managers accounted for more than a fifth of the variance in revenue, while the Boston Consulting Group surveyed thousands of employees about the drivers of success in their enterprises and concluded that middle managers were a “neglected but critical group.”

Bajorek added: “Organizations need to recognize that ‘good line management’ matters – and how employees are managed is crucial to organizational success. More thought may need to be given into how line managers are recruited or promoted (taking into account both personal and technical competencies); employers need to be very clear about good line management skills, what good behavior in the organization should look like, and provide appropriate support to managers to obtain these.”