The Leader in the Middle
“Following Leaders and Leading Followers ”
By Nathan Jamail
One of the most difficult leader positions in business today is “The Leader in the middle”. This is the leader that has a boss and is also the boss of others. The titles might be different; Manager, Director, Vice President, etc, but the struggle of following leaders and leading followers at the same time is real. In business today there are few leaders that have figured out their formula to be successful at being “The Leader in the middle”. One formula to this is knowing your value as a leader and as a follower. Being a successful leader in the middle is a constant battle of believing that one is powerful enough to lead and coach the team while accepting direction from upper leadership with a relentless desire to achieve success. Two things that can help leaders in the middle be more successful is to understand a leader in the middle must serve up and coach down. The greatest inhibitor of middle management is they confuse the two directions and one of the greatest mistakes that keep middle managers from being great leaders in the middle is they defend upward and the protect downward. By doing this, middle managers find themselves defending their teams efforts and failures to their bosses and protecting their employees from the big bad corporation or senior bosses. This is making them (the leader in the middle) look incapable to lead from their leader’s perspective and weak and likable from their team’s perspective. By changing one’s focus to serving up and coaching down, a middle manager now becomes a leader that can take the company’s goals and culture to a higher level and become a leader that the team members respect because they don’t accept failure and their greatest goal is to make their team members better!
Serve Up:
Leading from the middle is simple in concept but requires focus, confidence and commitment. First, a leader in the middle must embrace that one of their jobs is to listen to their boss and achieve their company’s goals, and unless they are working for a bad company, those company goals should be be focused on doing the right things at the right time with the best team. So, in this regard, lining up should not be a hard thing to do. A leader in the middle does not look for the reason why their boss’s directions are wrong, rather they look at how they can exceed their boss’s directions and expectations. They understand that their job is to make their boss look great, and if every leader in the middle does this, from the front line supervisor to the CEO, all leaders are in effect on the same page working on a common goal of serving up. To serve up does not mean to sacrifice others, such as employees or customers. If serving up requires a person to go against their personal beliefs or hurts others, then the answer is to find a place to work that aligns with a person’s beliefs; this is better for the company, the team and the leader in the middle.
Coach Down:
To coach down means that as a leader in the middle, the number one job of the leader to their direct reports is to make them better and more successful. Coaching down is not about removing obstacles for their employees, its about making the employees bigger than the obstacles. It’s more than making employees come to the leader with a solution and not a problem. It is teaching the employees how to find or create the solution. Coaching requires three things. One- not accepting anything less than desired while not allowing people to have bad attitudes or bad beliefs regardless of their successor or tenure. Second- coaching down requires that a coach spends time with team members practicing their skills, scrimmaging and preparing for upcoming meetings or activities. Third- like all great college football coaches; coaching means going out and recruiting top new talent. This does not mean hiring the applicants that submit a resume or applications. This means going out and finding those stud employees that love their job and are not sending out their resume’s.
Final Thought:
After being an owner, in upper management, in middle management and a front line employee myself, for over two decades, I find that now, as a coach, author and consultant, I help more middle managers become “Leaders in the Middle”. This concept is not new, nor is it earth shattering, but in over 90% of the cases I have seen over the past 20 years, this message or belief is not implemented. When a middle manager can become a “Leader in the Middle”, by serving up and coaching down, their success will sky rocket, their job satisfaction will be higher than ever before because their purpose is aligned with their beliefs. I know that the hundreds of Leaders I have been able to work with over the past 20 years would agree that this simple process of serving up and coaching down has not only changed their business for the better, but has enhanced their culture to a winning culture no matter the circumstances.
