Why Middle Management Sucks

About 11 years into my current job I became a supervisor.  It just happened, sometimes you have to step up to fill a void.  I had been front-loading my career for a while, meaning simply working my butt off.  I worked long hours and took everything on, but I also liked it for the most part.  Ahh the days…

Then one day I found myself in “middle manager” land.  Looking back on it it seems like it happened in a flash.  Where did all that time go?

My agency defines a manager as someone who supervises supervisors.  So as a manager we’re in charge of multiple divisions or branches of people. 

Managers in my agency also typically have decent sized budgets to handle, as well as enterprise level projects. 

My first two years is a manager went pretty well.  I thrived on the new responsibilities and challenges, and gradually learned to delegate more and more to my team.

Delegation can be an empowering and addictive thing.  One day you find yourself struggling through some mundane and bureaucratic task and then poof – it hits you.  “Screw this, I’m just going to ask so-and-so to do this.  I’m in charge”. 

As long as you’re delegating things that are legitimately in your subordinates job description, you can really ease the day-to-day pain on yourself by simply wielding some authority.  And doing this frees up time to do what you’re really supposed to do, which is take on higher level and more strategic tasks. 

So in theory, as middle management tasks become crappier, you can delegate some of the crappy and make it better.  To a first-line employee that would seem like a dream.  Just pawn off the bad stuff. 

This went on for a while and it seemed I would be able to make middle management work using this strategy. 

Then my agency got a new Director one day, and he changed out the entire top leadership team.  It was clear from the get-go that this guy was kind of clueless, and his new team started making big changes across the board.  Most of these were bad, and everyone knew it. 

Some where down right nonsensical and killed morale.  I found myself increasingly having a “wtf?” thought-cloud over my head while reading new policy emails from senior leadership. 

The bewilderment was not mine alone.  Every day more and more of my colleagues were questioning these changes and becoming detached.

Sometimes I would pass a colleague in the hallway and not a word would be uttered, only slowly shaking heads.  It was all we needed to do to communicate our thoughts. 

But the hardest part of all, and the aspect that really forced me to reevaluate my job, career, and future, was dealing with my “young and impressionable” employees while these major changes were going on. 

I was in charge of an office of 65 people, of which about 58 where “first line” employees.  You know, the folks who actually do the mission instead of supervising the mission or pushing paper around.

I found out quickly that middle management is a tough place to be when upper management sucks. 

There’s tons of research and literature out there about the difficulties of middle management.  It’s a job that forces you to constantly pivot between deference as a subordinate to seniors, and assertiveness as a leader of a large group. 

That’s a tough dance when you don’t agree with your seniors, and your subordinates don’t either.

 

Stuck In The Middle

Time went on and our senior leaders were increasingly making just incredibly bad decisions.  They would purchase a key technology from company X when we all knew that company Y’s version was better and cheaper.  Every time one of these boneheaded decisions was made I found myself having to answer questions from my junior folks. 

Employee:  “But why did we buy from X?  That’s the wrong decision”

Me:  “Uhh…. I don’t know?”.

With almost every horribly misguided decision they would send out “manager talking points” to us managers.  These were essentially FAQ-like documents that try to address as to why a decision is being made.

These documents were head scratching, and often just littered with bad information and incorrect “facts”. 

And here’s the thing – as a middle manager I was supposed to robotically repeat these to my subordinates, like a cult member being indoctrinated.  Even though I disagreed. 

Essentially I was being asked to lie to my subordinates. 

“Well we went with company X because their technology is better!” 

This is why I wanted out.  For me, middle management became a cop out.  A thankless position of being torn between honesty and disingenuousness. 

When my employees would ask me the tough questions, you could see the “WTF!?” in their eyes.  They were often bursting at the seams to get the question out, with the assurance that I would agree with them and share their bewilderment. 

But I was supposed to “support the flag”.  If I followed orders from on high I was supposed to deliver some rote talking-point answer, like a politician on a talk show. 

My agency has tons of leadership training, and much of it is mandatory.  According to our leadership training I was supposed to pretend that I was behind the boneheaded decision. 

“You can’t show discord”.  That’s what we were taught in our leadership classes.  “Be positive and put the best face forward on all high level decisions to your subordinates”. 

In other words, be a phony.  Lie.  Hide your true feelings. 

Enough already. 

Sure, when our senior leadership was good middle management wasn’t so bad.  Sometimes it was actually a bit fun, especially the mentoring part. 

 

Creeping Stress

Research shows that supervisory and middle management jobs are, well, not too healthy.  Business Insider cites a Columbia University study:

Results showed that supervisors and managers had the highest rates of both anxiety and depression. Supervisors had a 19% rate of depression and managers had a 14% rate, compared to 12% for workers and owners. As for anxiety, supervisors had an 11% rate and managers had a 7% rate, compared to 5% for owners and 2% for workers.

It goes on:

Prins and his coauthors have a few theories about why middle management is such a stressful place to be. The paper cites research suggesting that people who don’t have a lot of authority to make decisions but still face a lot of external demands show higher rates of depressive symptoms.  That sounds exactly like the position a middle manager would find herself in. For the most part, she’s unable to challenge orders from high-level executives, and she’s constantly juggling competing requests for her attention from above and below.

Well, yep.  That kind of describes where I was in a nutshell.  Actually I was able to challenge orders from on high in most cases, I’m not one to take things lying down. 

But it didn’t get me anywhere.  If anything it created more stress and strained relationships with other senior leaders and managers.  Many saw me as just a pot-stirrer, which I guess I was. 

But I was stirring for all the right reasons, like being honest and true to myself and my employees.  Unfortunately I just came to the conclusion that middle management by it’s very nature just doesn’t lend itself to being honest and true to oneself, especially when senior management is off the rails. 

So I went part time, and gave up my middle management job. 

It’s not like me to run from a problem, but this problem was out of my hands, impossible to fix.  My health his more important than my job, and the stress and anxiety weren’t going to fix themselves. 

And if I’m never a middle manager again, well, I might be okay with that fate.

How about you financial warriors – Are any of you in middle management?  If so, have you ever had to face being stuck between honesty and “saluting the flag”?