Sara and John - The Plight of the Middle Manager
The pressure is on our middle managers and PI's recent study confirms it! Be sure to download the study and see for yourself. This is why so many of our organizations are dealing with managers getting forced into The Bosshole® Zone.
Links and Resources from the Episode:
Click here to download the PI Report on middle managers
Click here to learn more about pulse surveys from Lattice
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The Bosshole® Chronicles
“Sara and John - The Plight of the Middle Manager”
Original Publish Date: 10/17/2023.
Hosts: Sara Best, John Broer
John Broer: Okay, I've got a question for you. How are your middle managers doing these days? Recent studies would suggest that our middle managers, if they're not suffering from burnout right now, they are on the verge of burnout. Hi everybody, this is your co-host, John Broer. Welcome to the Bosshole Chronicles. This week, my amazing partner and co-host, Sara Best, and I are going to be digging into a report recently released from the Predictive Index about the issues facing middle managers these days. The data is great. We're going to pick it apart and look at the four warning signs and red flags that our managers are experiencing and start to talk about some very practical things that your organizations can do to keep your managers from suffering from this burnout and making sure that we are elevating our managers and keeping them out of the Bosshole Zone. So let's listen in. The Bosshole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode, Sara. How are you? Good to see you.
Sara Best: You too, John, I'm doing real good. How are you?
JB: I'm great Good to be back in the studio. I see studio air quotes because we're both in our offices. Our studio is anywhere we want it to be.
SB: That's exactly right.
JB: Yeah, which is kind of it is a bonus. That's right. We've got a really cool topic today, and what's even cooler about it is that it is consistent with the last two episodes we had with Dr Bill Schaninger and his book Power to the Middle. What are we going to be talking about today, and how does this theme continue?
SB: Well, john, to sum it up into one sentence, we could say our topic today is the plight of the middle manager. I think. To just set the table for it a little bit, there was a great study conducted by Predictive Index and a partner firm, hrdive. They studied managers and one of the taglines in this study that actually grabbed my attention it reads employers who value their future leaders have a problem. It's like tell me more. The next tank line said hey, middle managers don't like managing. I thought, gosh, we could do so much with that and there's so many ways that people want to spin that. I thought it would be valuable, john, for us to just unpack some of the key takeaways from this research. It is consistent with what our guests have been talking about what's out there in the world. Let me just start, john, by saying this this study, which included about 22% of the participants, were executives, 78% were middle managers. We're speaking specifically to middle managers, those people who report to executives and have a team they have to manage and develop. I think what was most interesting is that 70% of the people in this study, which was about 376 people, said they indicated they would covet the idea of being an individual contributor again if they could keep the same pay.
JB: Just as a reminder to everybody, go into the show notes because this study will be in there. You can download it and look at all of this data yourself. To provide some context and Sarah's set the stage really well. What I thought was to the point of employers have a problem is that within the study, what they realized is that 74% of executives already knew this about their middle managers wanting to move back to being individual contributors, keeping the same pay. I thought that was fascinating for a couple of different reasons. Number one it didn't surprise me that middle managers wanted to go back to being individual contributors because we have heard time and time again, we are oftentimes putting people into management who would prefer to stay in individual contributing roles, but there's no way else to increase their compensation unless they go into managing people, which is that narrow pathway that we always tell people. They need to break from that and have that big individual contributor pathway. But the fact that their managers know this, that's alarming.
SB: It is, it is.
JB: I don't know, Sara. We've been talking about this, we've been talking about this for decades and yet it still is pervasive. Anyway, I found that amazing. Go ahead.
SB: It is amazing, and I think it's worth noting, that executives who agree that yes, 70%, a lot of our managers would love to be individual contributors if we could keep them at the same pay. It says a lot, but it also says hey, maybe executives aren't exactly clear on how to diagnose what's really wrong. Maybe they're attempting solutions that don't necessarily bring about resolution to the issue. So, just bearing in mind, too, that executives are under a lot of pressure, I'm not making excuses, but it's telling for sure. John, there are four red flags kind of identified in the study. What's the first one?
JB: Okay. So the first one is lack of support from the top, and so it's talking about again directly from it. Executives may think they actively listen to middle managers, but the data is saying something totally different. So middle managers just do not feel supported. So, from that one, what were you gleaning from that one?
SB: I thought it was interesting that and I think this has been a common concern in organizations Employees and managers will say you know, they ask for our input but they don't listen. And leaders will say, yes, we heard their input but we're not moving in that direction. And I'm sorry that they don't like that. But here's the reason why we can't do that. That sort of dynamic has been at play for a while, but it's telling to know that six out of 10 managers, for example, are feeling unheard, whereas six out of 10 leaders the exact same number believe that they're actually listening to their employees. So there is a disconnect there and it might be helpful, if you're a people manager, to just go back and chronicle hey, what is the feedback I've received lately and what did I do with that feedback? Did I acknowledge it? Did I communicate a response in some sort of way? Did we take an action? I was meeting with an executive this morning and it was seven months. This person was sharing an example of I don't want to say it was a promise made by their CEO, but the CEO said hey, this is what I think should happen and this is what's going to happen next. And that was seven months ago and of course, this person kind of thinks about that issue and that promise each and every day when they walk in the office. I'm pretty confident the CEO has totally forgotten and didn't intend to not follow up on that. But my challenge to this person this morning was did you say anything? Did you? And I'm going down a rabbit hole. But there are a lot of reasons why those perceptions don't align. I'm listening, I'm not feeling heard. That's problematic and I don't think it's that hard to fix. A quick hack would be. I should go sit for a few minutes with each one of my employees and even ask are you feeling heard? We have a lot of opportunities for you to offer input. I'm just curious what's that like to be in your seat?
JB: Yeah, exactly, and we have a lot of episodes, Jason Lauritsen, that so many episodes that have encouraged that regular, consistent discussion and getting that feedback and asking those very powerful questions. But, to your point, even in this part of the study, what would it say? 51% of managers said that it can take anywhere from a month to a year for important issues to get resolved. And I'm pretty sure that upper management is leaning into middle management pretty heavily to say we need results. It's like okay, but this isn't being reciprocated, at least according to the study. And one other thing that really stood out for me here, sarah and this goes back, I mean, over the years that I've done management training and leadership development and you've had so much experience in this too. One of the most frustrating things is the lack of empowerment. Or, as a middle manager, you have all the responsibility but none of the authority and the inability to make decisions and have authority. And, as said in there, I feel like I'm going to my parent to ask permission and it's like, okay, why do you even need this person in this role if they have no authority and yet they have all that responsibility? That's just a no win scenario.
SB: Well, and sometimes we are so blind to the forest, we're so in the trees that we don't even recognize that's a dynamic at play in our workplace, so I think that's one that we need to open our eyes to, for sure. One of the areas where managers feel that lack of support is with staffing. So we know we're in a very unique and challenging job market. But in the spirit of that, how could, in your opinion, how could executives support managers in these areas of staffing? You know we may not have the most expansive candidate pools, but there are people out there. What can they do?
JB: In our world. I mean we would talk about talent optimization and using behavioral and cognitive data and job alignment to make sure that the people that we do have one are optimized in their role. And we find, consistently with people that you know, when they start to use predictive data and job targets, they got a lot of people that are misaligned. It doesn't make them bad people, it just means that we're not optimizing them. So, okay, let's optimize job fit and that helps manager fit Takes a lot of pressure off the manager. I actually believe that when you have optimized job fit, the demands on your needs are probably moderated to a degree. But let's use our hiring dollars far more effectively and let's face it, if we're not doing that well and we're losing people. We have high turnover. We're already spending those dollars. Just spend them in a better way on the front end by optimizing job fit. That's a way to take pressure off managers.
SB: Two other little hacks I think I like to call them hacks. They're simple things that I think executives can do without a lot of effort to ease the sense of, hey, I don't feel heard. So just kind of circling back to that One is communicate the why you made a decision, why you went in the direction you did. I mean, it sounds so simple and so trite, but it's so powerful when people get their head around the why. It takes some people, john, as we know. It takes some people a little bit longer to understand the why. But what's the timeline? Certainly. And then do you keep in touch with people? So if they don't feel heard, one way to make sure they feel heard is to say, hey. Thank you everybody for your input. All your suggestions and your concerns were thoughtfully considered. Here's the action we're able to take right now. Here's why we believe this is the best action. Here's the timeline for that action, and be assured that we'll be coming back with updates throughout. This is a conversation that will continue.
JB: Okay, so for the second finding in the study, I'm gonna bring up the B word that we talked about with Dr Michael Leiter what do you?
SB: I think it is.
JB: Sara, yeah, Bup, bup, bup, burnout. You got it. I think we should. I think there should be a song.
SB: We should have a song Bup bup burnout Reminds me of that Chia Pet song Ch-ch-ch-ch-chia.
JB: And we will be right back ["City of the World"].
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JB: Okay, let's get back to the program.
SB: Burnout yeah, burnout is real.
JB: Oh yeah.
SB: And I go back, john, to the Gallup studies, the consistent for last 20 plus years Gallup has been measuring engagement and burnout and it was very clear that during the pandemic, especially those two years where we were at home for a long time and then trying to figure out how to come back to work, managers were impacted most significantly, middle managers, the ones who bore the burden, the bulk of the stress there, if you will. So that hasn't changed and it probably hasn't really been addressed in a lot of important ways, has it.
JB: No, not at all. Well and again, the study shows that 79% of middle managers say they're at the risk of burnout and 81% of their managers acknowledge it. So, we're not talking about it. Yeah, we acknowledge it, but we are not having the really critical conversations. But this all goes back to Sara. I'm not saying this is all avoidable, but it is manifest when we don't go back to the leading indicators of making sure that we're even looking at the right people for management and equipping them from the very beginning. So if you have so many people that say I'd rather go back to be an individual contributor at the same pay, the system is broken, our system for promoting and moving people into management and supervisory roles and then what happens is we put them in a stage of burnout and we all know it. They all know it, but we're not doing anything about it. So let's dig into this one a little bit. What did you take out of the study that really stood out for you?
SB: Well, I think it's like there's a line in the study that says middle managers are not okay. Yeah, we can't debate this anymore, we can't wonder or speculate about it. We have to believe the data, we have to believe the managers, the middle managers, who are saying the workload is too much, and I'm not necessarily saying the physical workload, although there are some managers and this kind of ties in John with the next issue or red flag, which is lack of development or deficient development opportunities for managers. So one example that's highlighted in the study is if managers had training around delegation, then they wouldn't necessarily have to work incredibly long hours because they're trying to support their own employees, their director reports and having to do their own work. And I can't help but think about there's some people that have very specific tendencies toward perfectionism and they like to dot all the Ts and cross. I'm sorry, they like to cross all the Ts and dot the Is and it's really hard for them to let go of responsibilities. So even in those cases, without post pandemic market and political crazy world, these things are stressful for people. So Bernata is real. I harken back to an episode we did recently, john, about the return to work, and we talked about some research in that episode that indicated it doesn't matter if you're hybrid or in person or totally remote. It's really about connection. That people are lacking connection and there's gotta be some connection, no pun intended, between the dynamic of feeling a sense of belonging and connection and feeling less burnout, along with what you said earlier no authority, all the influence in the world, all the responsibility in the world, but no authority and what our friend Aaron Dignan would call an operating system that's like a traffic light. You can't go until you get the yes. You gotta stay in this lane, you gotta wait for the light to be green to move. It's that roundabout mentality or that roundabout operating system that really builds upon trust and autonomy. Now there's no one simple fix for burnout. It's complex, it's comprehensive and we can't step over it anymore. We have to address it.
JB: And this is where I think a lot of executive, not a lot of executives maybe that is unfair. I mean, there are people that think of wellbeing as kind of one of those squishy HR-ish sort of things. It's absolutely a legitimate space and we need to be paying attention to it. How do we measure, gauge wellbeing of our people and then do something about it to make sure that we are not crushing them and debilitating them and putting them on the verge of burnout, cause that's where disengagement, active disengagement and turnover come from. And, by the way, to your training point and as somebody that came from the world of you know corporate university executive learning, l&d, and you've had experience in this too on a in a down economy, first thing, first thing that gets cut. We're not. You know training development, we're gonna. We got to pair that back. Big mistake, especially for your managers. They need to help. So in the burnout side, I think it's really interesting. The study actually offers a tip about really getting a pulse at the end of every week how are your managers doing? They happen to recommend a platform called Lattice, but understanding just getting a visual or some visceral response to say how are you doing and using that to get a measure of where they are at the end of that week on a regular basis, and there are a lot of tools to be able to do that. But I think that once again, that goes back to regular intervals of authentic feedback.
SB: Well, and that platform sounds pretty awesome. I read about that. There are others, and a lot of our HRIS systems have now features like that where you can you know you have that interactivity, or if your company has an intranet, you know there's a way to keep that front and center? I think about when my son was in college. He played sports and he was required to tap an emoji this was, like you know, a few years ago too every week to say where he was you know, in terms of his own well-being. So it's not a new idea, simple that of course you have to do something with the information and we have to take that data and do something. But, John, as you pointed toward the deficiencies in development, the lack of opportunity to develop managers. I know some companies would say, oh my gosh, we throw millions of dollars at training and it doesn't seem to be successful. There's a few of those anyways, but more often than that, maybe the learning and development isn't set up the most effective way. But if your company's future depends upon your future leaders and your future employees, we have to be thinking more creatively and more intentionally about how to get from here to there, how to get this group of individuals equipped in such a way that they can effectively function when we get there. Does that make sense?
JB: Makes total sense and I think we look at it through an old lens, or sometimes we have a tendency to look at it through an old lens. And one of the other things I love in the study that they referenced the research that Deloitte did, and while I don't like to talk about, you know, gen Z or millennials, it did call out to say 29% of millennials, 29% of Gen Zers, left current roles for new jobs to pursue better learning and development opportunities. So they'll just go do it, they'll find it, and if you don't have it, they'll find it. Go ahead, sorry.
SB: Yeah, I'm not sure why you don't like to talk about Gen Z. Are you saying, John, that you don't like to stereotype?
JB: Yes, yeah.
SB: And I get that about you because, we need to treat individuals regardless of their age or gender or race, etc. We need to treat them as individuals and understand them as individuals their unique drives, needs and behaviors, but it is safe to say that collectively these two population groups value growth and development. They will seek it. You're right, they'll seek it and they'll leave pretty quickly if they don't see a pathway to learn more. So it's worth noting. I think the other interesting thing about development is the chiefest complaint or argument is not enough time. I mean. I don't know any one person I've worked with in the last year that wouldn't go. Yeah, I mean I don't know how to solve for that problem. There just seems to be a lack of time, but I don't know if you have any specific ideas about that, John.
JB: We talk about and again, I don't know that we can draw it out of the study, but I know from our standpoint when we say that, that the problem with Bossholes essentially is systemic, is because we create that Bosshole zone, because we give managers way too many people to manage. They don't have any time. So I would say to this, going back to say, when we promote somebody to a management or supervisory role, are we keeping it a manageable size of three or five, six, seven people? right that they're able to invest time with and have those Conversations, that regular cadence of discussion, and understand what this person needs to grow and train. And actually the manager and supervisor Is in, it has been equipped to coach and that's a whole nother thing. But Since I brought a Bosshole, I think one of the interesting Findings in this study, in this particular section and I'm just going to read right from it is 58% of middle managers say they tend to manage in the same way as they are managed. Okay, so you were very you know, you were clear to say now, that's not always bad, and I, when we were talking about this before. That's true, but let's face it Bossholes be get Bossholes be get Bossholes. So we're back to having bad, in some cases bad role models and bad management practices that are just pervasive Generation to generation and it doesn't fix anything. That to me, I think, speaks directly to why we even started this podcast.
SB: Yeah, I mean, there's so much more in this short little read that I think, john, you indicated will be in the show notes. I think the last red flag, the last challenge area, was shortness of team resources. Interesting way to package that to shortness, yeah, resources.
JB: We'll say more about that.
SB: Well, it definitely highlighted, on something you already said, that the heavy heaviness of the workload, the complexity and the depth and breadth of the workload that may be probably the chief reason why Resources are unavailable because people are overloaded. Bigger team at the top, a Quarter of the people in this study, john, said that they needed a bigger team. They needed more staffing resources to physically, you know, be able to accomplish the tasks and the functions within their team. So I think that's significant. We're talking about people resources mostly, and I think the other, the other important pieces to remember that managers are not only responsible to report and work with their executives. That's a certain dynamic right, but they're also the ones who are chiefly responsible for onboarding new talent and developing people. That is a tall I want to say a tall, freaking order. That's a tall order, John.
JB: It is, it is.
SB: We can't step over the fact that managing people is hard. I mean oh yeah people are amazing, people are gifted, they're talented, but they're human, they're messy, they're fallible. Just that dynamic requires, I think, about. We've mentioned this book before, but Patrick Lynch Ioni's the motive. This is the book that he said he wished he would have written first, before all the other great works 11 or 12 of them, maybe now 13 but in the motive he talks about responsibility, centered leadership, and I know that leadership we distinguish leadership and management but it's this presence, it's this way that you can interact with your people. Yeah, and it can't come from To be effective, it can't come from anything other than hey, I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do and it's part of my why, it's part of my values.
JB: Mm-hmm.
Sara: I'm willing to sacrifice because let's be honest management leadership it is. It is not actually glamorous or glorified in any particular way.
JB: It's very, very hard and it's made even harder if you don't have objective data. And I'm gonna sound so repetitive, but you, our listeners, know this about us, our clients know this about us. We try to solve people issues with our gut, with our instinct, with History and and very subjective variables. I mean the study even talks about Managers struggling because they don't understand team dynamic, team dynamics, how to deal with conflict, and this is where, when you have objective data, it Clarifies so much. And you know one of the other things that I think about now. I realize the idea of pulse surveys or I love the emoji that, the idea at the end of the week, how are people doing? But when I think about our employee experience survey that we run and it looks at job, fit manager, fit team, fit culture, fit. It looks at and overall engagement, I mean it literally is a roadmap to say if you want to know your Red flag areas in your organization and specifically on your team. Here they are yeah, and here's how you handle them. But you're not just shooting from the hip. And I, and I think middle managers, are Really really struggling because they feel forced to just sort of wing it Without the resources to be able to look at something objectively and say I know how to fix this and I have the resources to do it. It's a vicious cycle.
SB: It truly is the final, maybe the place to land with all of this is help your managers. Executives, organizations, chief leaders. Help your managers. Let's do a better job of equipping them. Let's do a fitness test, a goodness of fit test. How many of those managers really are in the job because they had no other route to higher pay and status, as you indicated, john? How many of those managers don't really understand that they're not doing a good job? I think about those American. Idol auditions that they show sometimes where you're like how did that person make it to the studio without someone telling them you know what? This is not your gifting.
JB: Yeah, you know what I love you, but this is not your calling right now, that's right.
SB: There are other things you could probably do really, really well, and I don't mean to poke fun here but there are people who, for whatever reason, have never been told, and they have the best intentions of the world. I was talking with another client recently about attention versus impact.
JB: Yeah.
SB: You're trying to help. I get it, but do you recognize that when you try to help, this is what gets created and it's really damaging and toxic?
JB: Right.
SB: Maybe not, so we got to help the managers we have to. Any company that wishes to survive and thrive into the next, whatever the next decade, needs to stop and take a look, get some data and figure out what would be the key ways to support and address the issues that managers face.
JB: Sara, do you think that one of the mistakes we've made with management and supervisory roles is that we've kind of made it a pass-fail thing? If you don't do this, you're a failure, and that, I think, is a cultural thing? I think it's when we create that wide pathway for individual contributors and narrow the manager pathway and give people the option to opt out and just to say listen, if you're interested in this and you want to come out of that individual contributor pathway, even though you have more levels to gain and learning to do and ways to make more money, we see real potential in you for developing other people. But here's the thing If this does not work, if this truly isn't your calling ie performing on American Idol it's okay. It's okay. There will always be a place for you as an individual contributor in this organization. That's a total shift, that's a mindset shift and when you have that at the beginning, it makes that I would say that challenge of moving into management a little bit easier to realize. Gosh, I might say, this really isn't for me. I'm going to go back.
SB: In the study. There's some other good ideas that are offered, but and this podcast is not meant to, you know, regurgitate the problem and ruminate on the problem. We really hope that these ideas and this data help inspire new actions and, you know, more fulfillment and success in the work, Because that's why we exist Absolutely, yeah, well, this is great, Sara.
JB: I'm so glad you brought this to my attention and that we really dug into it. Everybody go into the show notes, download the report, share it with people and just see. Is this a reflection of maybe some things that your middle managers are experiencing?
SB: Sounds good, john, and hey, we will see you next time on the Bosshole Chronicles.
JB: We'd like to thank our guests today on the Bosshole Chronicles and if you have a Bosshole Chronicles story of your own, please email us at mystoryatthebossholechroniclescom. Once again, mystoryatthebossholechroniclescom, we'll see you again soon.