Leading from the Middle. Scott Mautz

cartoons or Office reruns. Those who lead from the middle, let's use the often‐derogatory term “middle management” for a moment, aren't the go‐nowhere, has‐been, mediocre bureaucrats that block progress as popularized in pop culture. They're the ones that love what they do (mostly) and whose passion and talents make the company hum. They account for 22.3 percent of the variation in revenue in an organization, more than three times that attributed to those specifically in innovation roles, according to Wharton research.² A five‐year study from Stanford and Utah universities found that replacing a poor middle manager with a good one boosted productivity 12 percent, more than adding an incremental worker to a team.³

Figure 1.1 Lego Directives

      Source: Adapted from P. Evans, “Management 21C,” Chapter 5, Financial Times, Prentice Hall (2000), in “Emerging Leadership: A Handbook for Middle Manager Development” (IDeA).

Those leading from the middle are the key to employee engagement. They interact with the largest part of the organization and have the most direct impact on attracting and retaining talent. In fact, research shows that employees who have strong middle leaders are 20 percent less likely to quit their job if offered more money from another company.⁴ The Boston Consulting Group defined mid‐level managers as “vital to success,” according to their massive survey of executives spanning 100 countries that found nearly two‐thirds of respondents said middle managers were more critical than top managers.⁵

      Whether you lead from the upper middle, mid‐middle, or way lower middle, if you have a boss and are a boss, if you lead up, down, and across an organization, take pride in your career‐making position. And know the best realize that being in a position in the middle doesn't mean being stuck in the middle.

      It means a chance to lead.

      Marty Lyons, legendary former player and longtime radio announcer for the New York Jets football team, would know. Lyons played for the Jets for twelve seasons and led from the messy middle. Literally.

Lyons was a middle lineman sandwiched in between outside linemen Mark Gastineau and Joe Klecko, who along with Abdul Salaam, made up the famous “New York Sack Exchange,” a group that led the NFL in sacks three times between 1981 and 1984.⁶ Lyons told me on leading from the middle, “You have to know and embrace where you are and realize that being in the middle is a blessing. It means you have the opportunity to lead in all directions.”

      Lyons knew that his role as the middle lineman was to lock up the guys on the opposing front line so that the speedy outside linemen Gastineau and Klecko could get the edge in rushing the quarterback. He wanted to lead from the messy middle so the entire team could lead on the scoreboard. Later on, as Klecko, the locker room leader, got older, Lyons began stepping up to passionately yell and scream and psych his fellow players up before a game. Being in the middle always means the chance to lead, it just requires a keen awareness and understanding of the conditions around you, so you know exactly what actions to take at what time.

      And like in football, it requires a playbook. This playbook.

Of course, you don't run every play in this book all at once and you might not even use all the plays. To succeed in leading from the middle, use the right play in the right situation that's just right for you. The plays will take many forms of specificity: examples, frameworks, checklists, pointed advice, questions to ask, powerful acronyms, and much more. But before you run any plays, let's make sure you understand the field conditions.

Why Is the Middle So Messy?

I asked more than 3,000 managers who lead up, down, and across their organization what the most challenging thing is about their position. Nearly three‐quarters of responses had to do with the scope of their responsibility. Within that broad, daunting scope lie five categories of unique difficulties those leading from the middle face, captured in the acronym SCOPE and illustrated in Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.2 The Messy Middle

Leading from the messy middle means dealing with Self‐Identity, Conflict, Omnipotence, Physical, and Emotional challenges. Let's first spend time illuminating each of these difficulties, then in the next section you'll get plays to overcome each one.

      Self‐Identity

      When you lead up, down, and across you wear more hats than you can keep track of. It requires constant micro‐switching, moving from one role to the other, all day long. (I'll talk more about the expanse of required roles in the “Rock Your Roles” section of this chapter.) One minute you're adopting a deferential stance with your boss, the next you switch into a more assertive mode with your direct reports, then into collaborative mode with your peers. You might switch from moments where you're experiencing tremendous autonomy and a sense of control to moments where you feel like a mere cog in a giant wheel with lots of responsibility but little authority and too little support. You make lots of decisions but maybe not the big, shaping ones. The range of issues and responsibilities is ever broadening, creating still more micro‐transitions. Role switching fatigue is exacerbated when you have to perform in front of different levels of management or different functions within one meeting or when you unexpectedly have to jump into one of your roles you weren't mentally prepared to play.

      The net result is exhaustion, frustration, and confusion about who you really are and what you should be spending your time doing, which is further exacerbated if you're working in a poorly defined role with unclear expectations and uncertainty about how far your authority extends. And to cap it all off, all the micro‐transitions that force you to be spread thin can leave you feeling that while you're certainly busy, you're uncertain of the impact you're really having.

      Conflict

When you're surrounded on all sides, it's impossible not to experience conflict. But the leader in the middle has the dubious honor of trying to manage it all. There are natural tensions in the role and pressure that comes from all sides. Your boss cajoles, your employees resist, your peers won't collaborate. You absorb discontent from all around. You deal with conflicting agendas, conflicts of interest, and interpersonal conflicts. If you hear the mantra “more with less” one more time, you might more or less lose it, desperately wanting to counter with “How about we do more with more for once?!” You're inundated with the busywork that comes from being in the middle and being tied to processes and systems and yet you're subject to the time‐sucking whims of your chain of command.

      You constantly make trade‐offs relative to expectations and reconcile priorities with the capacity and talent you have to do the work. You're rewarded for great work with more unexpected work. You're constantly putting out fires but are expected to consistently put up the numbers. You must fiercely compete for and flawlessly allocate resources while fending off those who want more resources from you. You disagree with or didn't have a say in some of the biggest decisions from above and yet have to respond to a lack of understanding and agreement to the direction from below.

      Mary Galloway, an Industrial and Organizational