We’ve spent thousands of hours speaking with Middle Leaders from many different organisations and industries, about the challenges they face. If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it's that most of the challenges they are facing are similar and evergreen. These challenges are not only common across this group of leaders, they also haven’t changed much in the past few years, despite the upheaval of the pandemic period.
As a result, many Middle Leaders, their leaders, and even the learning and development teams who support them, consider these challenges as unavoidable - part of the context that comes with a Middle Leader position.
Recognising these challenges and articulating how they show up in large organisations makes them easier to understand. It also helps us dismantle the sense of inevitability that robs us of our agency.
In this spirit we’ve identified the top 5 evergreen challenges we see in our work unlocking the brilliance of Middle Leaders in large organisations - and I’m curious: Do you see these too?
Challenge Number 1 – Multitasking
Middle Leaders wear a lot of hats.
They are usually BOTH highly technical, expert individual contributors AND line managers. And it's unclear to them which role is more important.
They are called on to play multiple roles every day - from performing in front of senior leaders, providing technical expertise, being assertive with a team member, to collaborating with peers.
Of course, this is what makes Middle Leaders so crucial to the proper functioning of a large organisation. They have the skills to perform many different roles all at the same time, they are the true multitaskers.
And herein lies the challenge!
Being a Middle Leader requires switching from situations where you feel a lot of autonomy and can exercise your expertise, to those where you feel like an unsupported, insignificant cog in a giant machine.
This constant switching of roles leads to confusion over what the real priority is.
Deciding how to split your time and energy between being a leader and getting your own job done can be frustrating and exhausting.
This constant juggling without proper support often leads to one of two outcomes:
- We default to our comfort zone of technical expertise, leading to a lack of leadership OR
- We micromanage our team, destroying trust and creating a passive culture where we lament a loss of purpose and agency.
Both situations are unattractive but all too common.
Challenge Number 2 – Decision Making
Middle Leaders are important decision makers.
They make not make the big, heroic decisions that go hand in hand with strategy and vision. But they are the ones making the day-to-day decisions that not only ensure the business functions, but also the ones that make that heroic strategy a reality.
Middle Leaders are constantly in the HOT SEAT for delivering both the operational results and executing on the latest strategic priority handed down from above.
They are constantly juggling, fighting front line fires, responding to urgent requests from many different parts of the organisation and having to shift priorities. This conflict of priorities is demoralising and often means their decisions carry less meaning as they can be overturned without discussion.
They make many decisions every single day, and because they are not the big ‘shaping’ or strategic ones that come with a sense of purpose and meaning, they often feel relentless, stressful and even pointless. Middle leaders can be left feeling they can only react, rather than make meaningful progress and whilst they are always incredibly busy, they worry about the actual impact they are having.
Challenge Number 3 – Conflict!
Middle Leaders are often the most well-connected employees with all aspects of the organisation and employees at every level. They need to lead up, down and across the organisation and their positions often come with a lot of accountability for results, but little actual authority over resources and priorities.
Conflict simply becomes a common occurrence in the day of a Middle Leader as they navigate ‘the matrix’ for themselves and on behalf of their team.
If you’re a Middle Leader, you’ll recognise discontent arising from conflicting agendas and interests, allocation of resources, overly bureaucratic processes or dealing with poorly defined, inadequate systems. And because Middle Leaders manage most of the people (and therefore the expense) in big companies, the constant quest to ‘do more with less’ leaves them in the unenviable position of competing for resources daily.
Challenge Number 4 – The Need to Know It All
Middle Leaders are often expected to know everything.
Bizarrely they are the only people put in this difficult position. This is never expected of new or junior employees, nor senior managers who can revel in not needing to know everything (because they manage the people who do!)
The burden is heavy for Middle Leaders who are expected to be deep technical experts, have a foot in strategy and deliver day to day operational performance, all with very little support.
This burden increased during the Covid pandemic and again with the ‘return to the office’. Many Middle Leaders have been thrown into situations for which they are poorly equipped and have had to ‘make it work’ for their team, whilst juggling huge changes to their own lifestyle. Even though they aren’t at the top, they’re expected to act as role models in all areas of their work – often with a lack of investment and sometimes a lack of positive role modelling from those they report into.
Challenge Number 5 - Loneliness
The messy middle can be lonely.
Being in the middle of an organisation can mean that, although you are constantly surrounded by people, you can end up feeling alone and isolated.
Being in the middle makes it hard to be a part of anyone's group.
Middle Leaders can often feel both overworked and under-appreciated, completely out of control of their destiny. With this role often being the target for redundancy in the drive for flatter organisations, they live with constant insecurity. Resentment of outside hires is rife as Middle Leaders feel overlooked for promotion which knocks their confidence and sense of fairness, as they feel they give so much, yet receive so little back.
We know how difficult it can be to be a Middle Leader, fighting constant fires and juggling priorities on a day-to-day basis. At Nkuzi Change we unlock the potential of Middle Leaders to achieve real, positive, lasting behavioural and cultural change - so organisations and individuals can thrive.
I’d love to hear your point of view. Are you a Middle Leader? Do you recognise these challenges? Are you a senior leader with a different point of view? Or are you an L&D professional who cares about supporting those in the messy middle of large organisations?
