What Can You Do Right Now to Help the Middle

What can you - the middle manager, the senior leader, or the HR partner - do to improve your own experience and that of the people around you … right now? 

An offer for this community - I really want to get "The Middle Matters" into as many hands as possible. If you are thinking about getting a copy for yourself or for your team, I dropped the price on the paper book to $9.99 and am offering the Kindle edition for $0.99 today (7/29/24) until 2pm ET. Here’s the amazon link - check out the reviews so far, they have been awesome or you can find an interactive preview of the book here. 

Perhaps the most common misconception of leadership is that it’s all about doing the work through others. I call this “marionetting” - manager as puppeteer, directing every move. 

There are many reasons why people “marionette” - sometimes it’s all they’ve seen. More often, they are really great at doing something - marketing, accounting, data analysis - so they exact that level of excellence out of their direct reports by brute force. 

Basically, “marionetting” is a sort of default mode for those untrained in leadership. And it stifles growth and productivity. 

I’ll admit that I’ve done it myself. I suspect most people do. 

So what’s the root cause?  

Organizations often just don’t train leadership skills. Instead, they mostly focus their limited training dollars and time investments on compliance.

Training people is expensive, and then they might leave, so why invest? 

It’s a vicious cycle: It’s too expensive to train them, so we don’t. Productivity suffers which means less money for training.

I was thinking about this cycle when I originally outlined “The Middle Matters: A Toolkit for Middle Managers.” 

• Are there basic skills for being successful in the middle that aren’t hard to learn yet are currently not taught or are taught inconsistently? 
• If we give managers a broad range of tools to apply, rather than only looking for behavior compliance, can we create stronger managers, teams, and companies? 
• Is there a way to make skills for managing up, leading teams, and influencing organizations more accessible and affordable? 

A book, I thought, is a good place to start: Break down middle management into its component roles and then offer a toolkit for each role. For a few dollars - you can change someone’s (or your own) mindset and understanding of the middle leader role. 

And of course I’d love as many people as possible to check out the book. I want to get it in the hands of senior leaders and HR partners because I think they’ll agree it provides a simple, accessible, and actionable approach to managing up, team leadership, and influencing skills. 

But that said, here’s what I am thinking of to really drive lasting change:

• Assess the middle: Dig into your organization. Where do middle managers need the most help? Where do their leaders see gaps? And where do their teams feel they’re being held back? 
• Educate the middle: Bring the toolkit to life. Apply it, first to case studies and then to real life challenges. Make sure managers leave with a new set of tools.
• Coach the middle: Go beyond the classroom. Reinforce the learning. Create opportunities for middle managers to share their experiences. What trips them up? What happens when they try new tools? What can they learn from each other? 

Assess, Educate, Coach. That will ensure that the right problems are identified and addressed, and that there’s a real lasting impact. 

So what can you do right now? Here's one thing ... Get the book and read it. Put a copy of it in the hands of your team, your boss, and your HR partner. Then use it to start a dialogue about the importance of training the middle managers. 

And I’d love to talk about how to partner to help make your middle layer more successful. I’m looking for a few companies that would be interested in piloting a program. Send me a note at jeff.sigel@proprioceptive.io if you’re interested in discussing.