Empowering Middle Managers to Focus Their Impact
“Our retention is amazing but it makes me worried we will start to lose people because we don’t have enough opportunities for growth.” A client said this to me recently as we were reflecting on her team’s growth over the past year of us working together.
The Challenge
She’s in a middle management position, so has less influence on salary and promotion and was lamenting the lack of upward mobility. For anyone who has worked with, or for, nonprofits, this is a familiar problem that is complex and layered. It’s not what this article is about. This article is about helping her find the areas where she can have the biggest impact. For her, seeing her sphere of influence more clearly was the first step.
Her team has well above average retention for her industry, with most members of the team having been with the organization for over 5 years. Given the time span, people have developed their skillsets, and grown well beyond what they were capable of when they were hired. Growing talent, rather than needing to recruit it, is phenomenal, but has a set of challenges that she is tapping into. Unfortunately, a lot of what she is flagging is outside her sphere of influence.
She and I have had similar conversations over the past year, and I know how deeply she feels about keeping her team. She likes them, enjoys working with them, and appreciates their talent. When we spoke recently, I flat out named what she cannot control. In her organization, she cannot influence pay raises. She can make recommendations on promotions, but these decisions are also outside of her control. Knowing these limitations, focusing time and attention on these aspects is adding stress to her plate, without changing what is actually under her control.
Sometimes the desire to control things that we cannot control is a result of feeling like we can’t control anything. Middle managers are unfortunately in this situation regularly when they are asked to oversee processes that they didn’t design, or asked to execute on ideas they were not part of creating. They often have awareness of what is happening above them, without the ability to control it. That awareness is necessary as it helps them see the bigger picture, but focusing on what they can control allows them more agency and likely helps them be more effective in their roles. The middle manager role is extremely difficult. It may be the first time somebody is in a management role, and typically in nonprofits, the skills that get you promoted are likely not ones that make you a strong manager. Helping them find the ways to have the most impact can lead to significant empowerment.
The Mental Shift
Our work together over the past year has involved detailed process analysis with efficiency improvement. Traditionally, the team has been siloed in their approaches, and a year ago many people told me that they often found themselves working at odds with their peers because there hadn’t been early collaborative discussions about how their work could be jointly beneficial. This has led to more cross-team collaboration and is generating new ideas for ways to work together.
What I reflected back to her, is that there are many types of growth. I am not advocating for additional work without the appropriate pay, but rather that interesting new challenges are another form of growth that help engage people, and that providing that is within her sphere of influence. While this does not entirely eliminate her fear of losing good staff, it gave her a new way to look at it. Rather than something entirely out of her hands, she realized she did have a way to continue to help people grow, while advocating for appropriate pay and recognition as best she could.
For her, this shift felt hopeful. She felt like she had something she could control that would positively impact her team. Helping middle managers understand and clearly see what they can and cannot impact helps them focus their time and attention on where they can truly change things.
What to Watch for
It’s not always about helping them see what they can control. There are other signs that they need support focusing their attention on where they can have the greatest impact. The first step is identification.
A few signs they need this support:
Resistance to more open collaboration with peers
Lack of execution on what you are expecting
Concern and worry for things that are ultimately out of their control
What to Do About it
Identification is the first step, but the real question is, what now? The three examples above all point to different underlying mechanisms, and need different approaches.
What’s the best approach if the primary problem is:
Resistance:
Lack of execution:
Concern outside their focus:
While it can feel difficult to slow down and find the time to identify, and resolve these issues, this investment in your team helps boost them up, and build stronger relationships that ultimately support your mission.
