We discuss the pivotal role of Middle Management, how it reflects on your career goals, the challenges of onboarding and recruiting the role, how to measure performance, and who is responsible. Ideal for business leaders, executives, and aspiring middle managers to gain actionable strategies for effective leadership and organisational growth.

Hello and welcome to The Growth Workshop Podcast with your

hosts, me, Matt Best and Jonny Adams.

In this podcast, we'll be sharing insights from our combined 30+ years experience

and hearing from other industry leaders to get their thoughts and perspectives on

what growth looks like in modern business.

We'll cover all aspects of leadership, sales, account development, and customer

success, alongside other critical elements required to build an effective

growth engine for your business.

This podcast is aimed at leaders from exec all the way down to line managers.

/ In today's session, we'll be looking at middle management.

Is it your best asset or a waste of resource?

And as middle managers, how can you navigate this difficult space and be

successful in your own career progression?

Jonny, great to see you as always.

What for you are the important factors as individual contributors prepare

for a career in middle management?

A very good morning to you, Matt.

Thanks for a great question.

If we're looking from an individual contributor's seat, I think it's

important to reflect on what are the aims and the goals and what are

the outcomes potentially as they gravitate towards that particular role.

As human beings, We probably have a higher purpose in life than just

coming to work every single day.

I don't know about you, but rolling out of bed early in the morning to

go to work isn't really what I'm here to do every single day of my life.

I enjoy other things in life, holidays my home, family, et cetera.

And therefore, if we're looking at building a pathway for

individual contributors to move into middle management.

The important factors may necessarily not be around a career trajectory.

It could be in and around that higher purpose.

What is it that they're looking to achieve as individuals that

will enable them to get there?

And one of my own mentors, Matt who's been coaching me for a number

of years, talked a little bit around what is your 10 year plan?

When you think about a 10 year plan, I just left with silence because I wasn't

aware of what that potential goal is.

So having that plan or that goal in sight or set may give an individual contributor

an idea around what are those important factors to help them move from individual

contributor role to middle management.

What's your perspective?

It's definitely an important consideration.

And I think it comes back to having all of the information at hand.

Putting ourselves in the shoes of those mentors and those leaders,

how we can make it really clear to those individual contributors.

What will change in their world?

What's going to be expected of them and what competencies should we been

looking for from them in those roles.

You touch upon an important point there, because you think about a

leader that sits in a position thinking, gosh, how am I going to hit target?

The team are underperforming.

I don't have enough bandwidth.

Okay, I'll go and recruit a middle management layer because, they can

do it or they can pick up the grunt.

So there's that element that the business or the existing leadership need to be able

to create some of the pathway for them.

If we have a look at those important factors.

The business must put a decent onboarding approach or be able to be aware of

what are the capabilities before they start to open up those job roles.

Because yesterday we debated this with a client on one hand, one of the leaders

was what was comfortable giving people the opportunity to prove their worth over

a period of time where the other leader was saying no, make a decision up front.

I think that's a really great point, Jonny, and consistency

is key, which I think is what you're getting at there is what is the

business telling that layer, essentially that middle management group.

I think also it's about being really plain about what's expected and

helping them understand what it is.

Again, I've been in situations before with leaders who look at

leadership and say Yeah, you just now have to manage that team.

And it can be quite hard for someone who's never done that before to

really work out what that is.

The first thing they're going to do is look to the people who have led them

in the past and be led by example, to a degree, you've got to work out whether

you've got an effective senior leadership team as well, when it comes to those,

those core kind of leadership principles.

The other aspect for those people moving into those middle management

roles is again, going back to, okay, what really is expected of me down to a

week, Jonny, you and I talk to clients all the time about this around you.

The appropriate cadence for one to ones and team meetings.

What you should be discussing in those one to ones and team meetings.

What coaching framework you're going to adopt for yourself and your team and as

a business, what's your manager's creed?

I just shared a whole bunch of things there, but there's a lot of that

structure that I think is really critical and a hugely important factor

for an individual contributor moving into that role alongside the direct

support they're getting from their leader, their direct leader as well.

Consolidating what we've spoken about so far, if you're looking

to explore an opportunity in middle management, one of the key factors

is go and speak to HR, go and speak to your existing leadership team, go

and speak to if there's other middle managers in that position and ask

them, what are the measurements that you've that you've got against you?

Because everyone is hired for a reason.

Everyone is fired for a reason and everyone is measured against something.

So that factor of measurement and understanding what they're able

to achieve, but you also talk about is the business in a right

position to harness your excitement, enthusiasm, and potential current raw

capability to be a middle manager.

And I think that's important that those are some of the factors that you're

exploring as an individual contributor, if you're looking towards that next journey.

If we transition there, maybe Jonny, to put ourselves in the shoes

of a business owner or exec or senior leadership for you is the right stage

to start thinking about adding a middle management layer into your business?

When we're thinking about that.

We could probably put multiple hats on.

So if we look at it through the revenue growth arena, which is what

we're all about, Matt, you and I, we want to be thinking about what is the

current state of our organisation?

Where is our trajectory over the next one or two years?

So if we want to grow from.

50 million to 60 million.

There are a couple of leavers that we could pull and how productive

is your team at the moment.

Now I would go back to some effective research that suggests if you have

competent and capable leaders that coach well in that middle management

area, you're likely to see greater quota attainment and you're likely

to see extra or even more upside in terms of your revenue growth.

So there's an upside there that might be one of the next levers

that you pull to enable better productivity in the organisation if

you're a business owner or leader.

Now that's that part.

The second part I'd share briefly before hearing your thoughts would be let's

think about retention and attraction.

Most of us in millennial world, you're a millennial, aren't you, Matt?

Just check, just about, I think, I think it's in that category.

So being millennials, it's not all about sticking in 40

years and sitting through that or wait until that person retires.

Actually, what people are able to do is be agile across different

organisations and options.

So if you want to create an organisation as a destination of choice and having a

middle management career path, might be a great way to attract some really good

raw talent and give that opportunity for them to develop, to retain and

attract wicked talent moving forward.

So there's a couple of reasons, why business leaders and owners.

From your experience in industry, Matt, what's been your case?

You worked in one of the largest software.

organisations and, in the UK and the world.

So one of the one of the things that I've seen definitely not

work is where middle managers are just doing a job that could be largely

automated in their capacity and aren't adding significant value to the team

that they're supposed to be supporting.

But on the contrary.

I've seen really effective middle managers who have the support of the

wider business in terms of automating some of those, some of the reporting

tasks and actually are allowed to focus and are equipped with the skills and

the tools to be effective leaders to really get the most outta the team.

I think that's what I've often see and actually what I read in the industry

material as well as, oh, middle management, who needs middle management?

Actually, if you've got a.

a senior leader whose responsibility is largely upwards and not, and they're

not looking down all that often, but they've got a lot of individual

contributors reporting into them.

Then you ask yourself, what support are they getting?

They might set up a mentoring structure or something like that.

But I think there is a place, a really solid place for middle management to help.

support those individuals in that individual contributor layer to get the

very most out of them and therefore help you in developing, growing your team.

But also to your second point there, Jonny, around creating an organisation

and a business that people want to come and work for and want to stay

working for is a lot about the support that people get, that individual

contributors are getting in their roles.

Things that we talk about with clients all the time around recognition and praise.

And if you've got a senior leader who spends most of their time in

board meetings and none of their time with their team, then their

team aren't feeling that support.

What types of things would you recommend a leader or a business?

To automate, to enable the capacity for a middle manager to do what they should

be doing, which is leading and coaching and seeing that productivity improve.

You've got examples, I'm sure from your experiences.

I think it goes back to reporting.

Like we say, you can't manage what you can't measure.

And so every business is looking at how do we measure performance?

So we might be good if we take the.

If we take a sort of account management team or custom success team, there are

various measures, metrics, reports, information that you're going to

track about your existing customers.

The same in a sales team where you're looking at pipeline, you're looking at

velocity, all of those sorts of metrics.

So often I've seen it where it's the role, it's a big part of the role of

the middle manager's job to collect up that information, interpret that

information and be able to share that up.

To the rest of the business.

And if those tasks are very admin heavy, if you could automate a lot

of that reporting activity so that the middle managers are delivered

the information that they need to make calls, make judgments, lead

their team effectively, but also have effective conversations up, then you

take away some of that distraction.

I've worked with middle managers in the past who see their job largely as.

Being in internal review meetings, representing their wider customer base,

their wider team, and they spend more time doing that and putting the reports

together than they actually do spend time with customers and with their team.

I think that's the right approach to take is the middle

management are their to support and develop behaviours and capability

aligned towards your strategy and values.

And I think we see often that a leadership team or business owner

goes, Oh God, I'm just, knackered from doing all of the rubbish stuff.

And actually what I'm going to do though, is just put another layer in.

Don't do it always right.

Middle management isn't the answer to everything.

So looking at, spans and layers, a bit of a term there, but ultimately what's

your hierarchical structure, there is benefits of having a flat hierarchy,

less bureaucracy, easy decision making, you can get changes in speed through the

agility of what strategy you're sharing.

So that's absolutely beneficial.

So therefore don't put a middle management in, but if you want to make you to go to a

larger organisation, potentially, and you want to drive through those layers to pass

on multiple strategies and accountability.

It may be helpful to have a higher level of layers and that middle

management can really pioneer some of the tactical stuff you're doing whilst

that then protects the upper layer.

If you want to call it that.

To think more strategically beyond the business to drive the business forward.

So I think that's an important lookout as well for business

owners, whether you do or you don't.

And what particular stage.

And actually on that, clearly one of the really important things here,

Jonny is making sure that in that middle management layer, that we have effective

people, we have high performing managers.

What are some of the telltale signs for you?

And in your experience that you've seen either working with clients

or running teams yourself as.

low and high performing middle managers.

Two things really.

So the first would be identifying the approach towards skill and will.

So if you think about the classic, the skill will matrix, you've got

the four box grid, you've got skill on one side, will on the other.

And we can then identify the approach in which these middle

back managers are being effective.

Ultimately, how are you going to define will?

And the way in which we hear often is through the levels of activity.

So it's proven that people would like between three to five hours of coaching

per month from their leadership.

If that's one of the key metrics, then let's analyse the amount of activity a

middle manager is doing, for instance, one to ones, team meetings, and that might

contribute to maybe 40 hours a month, 80 hours a month of activity, brilliant,

bright, the will is high because they're achieving these activities.

Great sign if they're doing it, it's a really good indication that

they're high performing underneath the will bracket performance.

Defining performance in its simplest form as a lag indicator would be productivity

or revenue, or you can look at it for a conversion, the ability to convert

anywhere from a lead or an opportunity that might be shared all the way to,

win loss, that's a great barometer.

But how to measure middle management.

Is that if you were to hold a mirror up in front of you as a

middle manager, you don't see yourself, you see your team, right?

So you see your team look back at you and ultimately the performance of your team,

whether it's quota attainment conversion or another lead in the lag indicator like

that, that will give you good indication.

So that's the first piece around how to assess high, low performance

in terms of that using a framework like the skill will matrix.

I think the other thing is that you'll hear is if you do a bit of

360 analysis, so don't just look at yourself, don't just look at the

middle manager, but go down a level and speak to the individual contributors.

Hey, Matt, you're doing a great year.

You're performing really well.

Just how has Jonny been contributing towards your performance and getting

some qualitative analysis and understanding from the horse's mouth?

What is the value of this leader?

Because Time and time again, when you ask people, do they like one to ones?

Most people go, no, they're rubbish.

They really annoy.

Yeah.

I'll get micromanaged.

Actually it's probably because they're not as valuable as they could be.

They're not getting the impact or the value because most people would be

willing to go and do something if there's value and there's a statement in it.

It's probably because the individual contribution or the

self professional is not seeing the value in that particular person.

High and low performers, skill world matrix, and then qualitative 360 analysis.

Probably add to that, Jonny, talks to your point on 360s, which is the

value of sort of skip level meetings and skip level calls can be really effective.

If you've got someone of the the senior leadership having those

direct conversations with ICs or team leads, or the other thing.

The other side, if you like, of the middle manager themselves getting

to, testing that is the message that they're delivering to that middle

management layer, getting through and getting through appropriately

and looking beyond some of those.

We think about the measures of performance, looking beyond some of

those measures directly related to business performance, because it may

be that individual has a team that is known to be a sort of difficult

team, a challenge, a team that's going through transition, a different area

of the, of the business, perhaps that is like me to have varied performance.

I think finding ways to measure the performance of a manager themselves

against the robust competency framework is really important in terms of, how

to understand how effective they are, so you could look at staff retention.

You could look at some of those other metrics.

So to add some quantitative data, rather to the to the qualitative analysis that

you're getting from the 360 reviews.

And then, we talked a little bit at the top around some of the important factors

as individual contributors prepare for that career move into middle management.

And as we both know, there's a lot of change involved in that.

What for you are perhaps the reasons that middle managers might fail?

We typically find that when looking at middle management

recruitment, why it can fail sometimes is we don't set them up for success.

It's quite fascinating.

Oh, okay.

Here's a position we'd like you to, we would like you to apply for it.

Wink, nudge, nudge.

It's a middle management job.

Okay.

Yeah.

I apply for it because if I don't, that's going to cause a problem.

So I will do it.

So I apply for it, get the job.

Brill.

Okay.

So you've been a high performer in sales.

What would be great is if you just carry on doing what you've

done, you're a great person.

See you later.

Complete neglect.

No management, no preparation, no pathway.

When we recruit someone outside of the firm, or we recruit a sales

professional, we've got this 30, 60, 90 day onboarding program.

They go and meet everyone.

They get included.

They get this sort of amazing sort of sense of here's a pathway to success.

That's if you do have that.

The point being is.

How often do we recruit middle management internally or externally

and not provide the right onboarding?

And that's normally where we see middle management fail.

So that's one particular piece.

The second piece is that there's something called the Valley of Despair.

And I talk about this a lot within our leadership program.

Everyone goes through the Valley of Despair.

Let me just say that.

And what that looks like is the classic curve where you're super excited.

Really looking forward to the job and Matt, you've been at SBR for a number of

years now, when you first started, you would have been super excited, absolutely

right, I'm going to make this the best thing ever, and I recall that time when I

started SBR and previous jobs, and all of a sudden you go on this valley, and all

of a sudden you go down that big dip of going, Oh my gosh, I did not know what I

didn't know, and is it really like this?

And do I have to deal with that complaint and that annoying individual

and that person just won't shut up when I'm trying to support them?

The point being is that everyone going through a change of role, middle

management, senior management, or a sales professional will go through the

valley of despair, which means that their motivation will be challenged throughout

a period of time on their onboarding.

So please be cognisant and aware of that.

Because if you're not.

And you don't develop your capability, you're more than likely to quit and revert

back to type and go that wasn't for me.

It wasn't a great job, but it's actually about mentally being prepared for those

challenges and obstacles ahead and your leadership around you should be

able to support you in those things.

So those are two things why middle management fails.

That's arguably most, most obvious when you're taking someone from

an individual contributor into middle management, because it is a different job.

It's from middle management to senior management.

Okay, a bit more responsibility, maybe some time on the board, right?

But the reality is that a lot of what you're doing with the team is going

to be similar to what you're doing.

What you've done before, but it's really different coming from an IC

level into middle management role.

I think the other thing is not giving someone the opportunity to test it out

and to have a bit of, to start measuring some of that before they get there.

How do we give them some of that?

How is an individual contributor given some of that responsibility

before they actually landed the role?

Hey, why don't you chair the next few team meetings that we're running?

You're not going to give an individual contributor who's looking to move into

middle management, the responsibility of running performance improvements plan

for one of their peers quite clearly, but there are opportunities outside

of those sorts of situations that are really easy to give that responsibility,

increased buddying responsibility, starting to get them thinking about

how they might support, support that person and then how they could do it.

It gives them an opportunity to test their own muscles around leadership,

whether or not they think it's for them, but it also gets, gives you as a senior

leader, an opportunity to understand and witness how they behave in that situation.

So Jonny, what a great discussion we've had today on middle management.

And I look at the importance of structuring an onboarding process for

those coming through the ranks, looking at whether or not you need a middle

management in your business at all.

And what to look out for as you may be looking to build one yourself.

And Jonny, obviously I'd like to thank you for your contribution today as always.

And really just ask our audience to take the time.

To look at your own organisations, whether you're a senior leader or a middle manager

yourself, what's working, what's not, where could you leverage some of what

we've talked about today to improve your own organisational structure and where

middle management fits or may not fit.

Jonny, thanks so much for your time today, as always, and to everyone

listening, we look forward to seeing you again on the next podcast.

Thanks Matt.

Cheers.

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Goodbye.