When you are a company leader and you have frustrations because of middle management, the truth is the only person that should be blamed is you. Failure or success of the middle managers always depends on the actions of upper management. In order for middle management staff to do a proper job, the vision, goals and mission of a company have to be understood. German Trujillo Manrique highlights that this is impossible without upper management modeling and guidance.
Empowering Middle Management
Upper management needs to help middle management to properly fulfill and understand individual role. You want to be sure that you provide opportunities for development of skills in education and administration. Managers basically need to receive the tools that are needed in order to succeed. When you think about everything, the situation is similar to simply grooming middle management in order to be sure that their management career is built while the entire company becomes more effective.
Administration
All companies need to make some changes or to deliver some news that is not welcomed. In most situations there is an email that is sent out. This tends to be done without middle managers being consulted. Managers need to receive the information that is needed in order to deal with the changes and should be consulted in order to identify possible obstacles that can be envisioned.
Simply put, the feedback of middle managers needs to be taken into account since this is practically the only way to be sure that changes will have the results that you think they will. Middle managers have to be seen as one part of problem solution, not as simple doers.
Education
In any company there are many different workers that have specific skill sets, attitudes, interests and a lot more. These need to be managed. However, managing employees in the exact same way every single time is not something that works. It is mandatory that you educate middle managers on spotting weaknesses, talents, learning styles, strengths and more in regards to the employees. The goal is to tailor the company’s approach based on the situation of the individual.
Support
The boss can so easily break or make an employee’s working experience. That is why the retention rate of a company is highly dependent on the working relationship that is set between employees and first line managers. The middle managers have to focus on making relationships better with employees.
Whenever there are diminished resources or economic upheaval, upper management cannot actually rely on incentives or perks. However, numerous studies showed that worker satisfaction is prominently relying on feedback that is positive, empowerment and autonomy. The contributions of the employees will easily build and maintain employee morale.
Conclusions
Always think about whether or not upper management actually empowers middle management. A failure to do this can lead to really low performance levels for every single department in the company. Be sure that you have clear programs in place that empower and support middle managers so they can create the working conditions that increase company performance.