The Unsung Heroes At Work

When we think about a company’s success, the first image that comes to our mind would be the high-profile and very expensive CEO and top management team. Like sports, we have heroes in business too. In the game of cricket, it could be the player who scored a tournament-winning sixer but there is a whole team behind him/her. Similarly, in business it’s the leader whose vision helped rejuvenate a tired company. But the CEO-worshipping “heroic leadership” concept doesn’t always hold water. Behind that one top guy, the whole team works endlessly to make him/her look good.

In business, there’s a group of unsung heroes working diligently behind the scenes. Some job positions in almost every other organisation are taken for granted, yet they are important ones. Imagine, as we enter in our offices, we find the place dirty. Similarly, various other positions are critical to our own success but they aren’t recognized as they should have been.

Who Are These Middle Managers?

In the hustle and bustle of a company, many of these unsung heroes remain anonymous — companies don’t often celebrate their Middle Managers who are like the glue that holds everything together. For some strange reasons, these poor chaps are often viewed as the culprits for whatever goes wrong in an organisation. Let’s go the root cause and try to identify which particular group of professionals are hired or promoted to the middle manager level position.

In some organisations, the long serving junior executive eventually fill in these positions. Since they generally remain stuck in the same old positions for years yet they do not make a vertical movement due to lack of ‘right’ skillset, the management team sometimes reluctantly or graciously recognizes them and moves them up the ladder as senior executives or assistant managers, without realising they still do not possess the ‘right’ skillset to fill in the big shoes of the managers when needed.

In order for the management to work on its leadership pipeline, here are a few tips:

1. Recognise Middle Managers as Leaders

Managers these days are mostly team leaders suspended in a web of working relationships, who require the emotional intelligence to motivate, engage and communicate. They need to be given autonomy and, when required, mentoring and/or coaching by someone they respect, someone they can trust and someone from whom they can learn.

Empowering the middle managers with these types of leadership skills not only fortifies the leadership against the loss of the star performers, it ensures they have a leadership pipeline for future succession planning.

2. Train, Train, Train

According to the AIG — Australian Industry Group — the evidence from both academic research and business surveys conclusively demonstrates that workplaces with more effective leadership and management capability are more productive, more profitable and more innovative.

Such workplaces consistently invest in strategy driven, outcome focused training programs at all levels i.e. it doesn’t invest in the top team only. It is part of the fabric of everyday business; a continuous learning process, where the process of doing, reflecting, learning and doing again never ceases.

3. Celebrate Successes

Most managers are so focused on achieving the next goal that they don’t take time out to celebrate what has already been achieved. Always remember that “success breeds success”. Celebrating team success is not only a great motivational tool for the team, but also inspires everyone around the workplace. It is a great time to reflect of what worked, what didn’t work and what we can do differently going forward.

So, let’s be public and be proud and recharge our energies for the future successes. Being part of the middle management is generally considered to be a thankless job. However if the leadership focuses on retaining the future star performers, managers may very well invest in the middle managers through the tools listed above.

Conclusion

Marcus Buckingham rightly said, “People leave managers, not companies”. More often than not these middle managers are under-resourced, under-trained, undervalued and overburdened. These people are truly the unsung heroes at our workplaces. They are neither executives nor workers and belong neither ‘in the tent’ nor ‘in the trenches’. This fundamental identity crisis sometimes leads to a litany of failures.

So, let’s start recognising and appreciating our everyday leaders who keep things running behind the scenes — the middle managers! They might not grab headlines, but they’re the backbone of our organisations. We should be committed to empower and support these unsung heroes. Unlike most businesses, we should be focused on the growth of these mid-level managers. Let them choose what they want to do with their careers after providing them with all necessary tools.

About the Author

Muhammad Sajwani is a C-Level HR, Transformation Leader, Board Advisor, Business Coach & Organisational Consultant working in the capacity of Managing Director, Evolve HR. He is an author, columnist and a contributor who besides writing for other platforms also regularly writes at BizCatalyst 360. He brings along 30+ years of local & international experience. He is a change catalyst specializing in unleashing the human Dreamgenius through Leadership, Creativity and Change Management. Muhammad has been instrumental in helping organizations come to terms with organizational changes like right-sizing and business process re-engineering. His innovative approach & high personal competence encourages people to not only accept change, but also to excel in it. Muhammad has diverse experience in conducting strategic & management development programs, conferences & events for organisations across sectors.