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After a few years of hard work, developing your skills and building relationships, you may well be in a position to take on a management role.
For many, it’s the natural next step in a career journey, but becoming a manager can change your working day more than you might expect.
Suddenly, it’s not only your own work you need to think about. You could have a team coming to you with questions, senior managers asking for updates and targets that you’re responsible for meeting.
This is the position many people in middle management find themselves in.
So, what is middle management and what are the pros and cons of becoming a middle manager? Or working with one? Here’s what you need to know.
Middle management is the level between senior management and employees further down an organisation.
You probably won’t find any vacancies advertising for a “middle manager”. Instead, you might see roles such as operations manager, department manager, branch manager or regional manager.
Let’s say you work in marketing. You start as a marketing assistant, move up to marketing executive and eventually become marketing manager.
As marketing manager, perhaps you have four people reporting to you while you report to the marketing director. In that company, you would most likely sit within middle management.
Of course, another company could organise its marketing department completely differently.
That’s why job titles only tell you so much. Your responsibilities, who you report to and whether anyone reports to you give you a better idea of where your role sits.
A middle manager usually has responsibility for a team, department or particular area of a business.
Much of the job involves turning plans from senior management into everyday work. If directors want the business to increase sales, improve customer service or complete a project by a certain date, managers further down the organisation need to work out what that means for their teams.
That could involve setting targets, dividing up work or checking how things are progressing.
Then there’s the ‘people’ side of the job.
A manager may hold appraisals, help new starters settle in, deal with disagreements or support an employee who is struggling. They may also have to raise problems with their own manager when their team needs more time, money or people.
It can mean switching between very different conversations during the same day.
According to Harvard Business School research, the middle manager role is moving away from ‘commanding’ to more coaching:
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For many people, moving into middle management is their first opportunity to properly manage a team.
That experience can be useful if you have ambitions to move into senior management later in your career. Reading about leadership is one thing, but dealing with real people, deadlines and problems gives you something rather different to draw on.
You may have more influence over your workplace too.
Perhaps there’s a process that has annoyed you for years and you finally have the authority to change it. Or maybe a member of your team has potential and you can give them more responsibility.
You’ll also get to know a different side of the business.
As an employee, you might mainly think about your own work and immediate team. Move into management and you could find yourself involved in recruitment, budgets, planning and conversations with other departments.
Some people find that side of the job far more interesting than they expected.
There’s a reason middle management can have a reputation for being difficult.
You have responsibility, but you don’t necessarily have the final say.
Imagine your team has been busy for months and desperately wants another employee. You agree with them, but senior management says there’s no budget for another hire.
Your team may still expect you to sort it out.
Or senior management might introduce a new way of working that goes down badly with your department. You may have had little involvement in the decision, yet you’re the person answering questions about it on Monday morning.
These situations come with the job.
Workload can be another problem, especially when someone first moves into management. Your diary starts filling up with one-to-ones, meetings and recruitment tasks, but your old workload hasn’t completely disappeared.
Learning what to delegate and what really needs your attention can take time.
Working with middle managers can have a significant effect on your day-to-day experience at work.
They often translate senior leadership’s plans into practical tasks, allocate work, support employee development and pass feedback from their teams to senior managers.
Ultimately, working with a middle manager can provide useful guidance and support. Problems are more likely when communication is poor, priorities are unclear or the manager has responsibility without enough authority to act.
Communication matters a lot because middle managers spend so much time dealing with different people.
Arguably, the most vital management skill is communication. When considering skills for your CV, this should without doubt be at the forefront.
It’s often forgotten that the communication is a two-way street. You need to explain what you expect from your team, but listening matters just as much.
Empathy is key – and should be part of your “soft skill” arsenal. If somebody tells you a deadline is unrealistic or they’re struggling with their workload, simply repeating the target back to them probably isn’t going to help.
Delegation can take some getting used to as well.
When you know how to do something yourself, it can seem quicker to just get on with it. Do that every time and you’ll soon end up doing your team’s jobs as well as your own.
Other useful skills can include organisation, problem-solving, decision-making and conflict resolution. The exact mix will depend on your role and the people you manage.
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A promotion can look attractive on paper, particularly when it comes with a better salary. But it’s worth thinking about whether you actually want to manage people.
Not everybody does, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
You might love being an accountant but have no interest in managing six other accountants. Or perhaps you’re a great salesperson who gets far more satisfaction from winning business than holding performance reviews.
If you are considering a management vacancy, read the job description carefully.
How many people would report to you? Would you still do much of your current work? Who would you report to? What would the company expect you to achieve in your first few months?
Answering these questions will help paint a more realistic, or detailed, picture of what the role will look like.
If you’ve already worked in middle management, make sure your CV shows more than your basic responsibilities.
Hiring managers will probably expect a manager to have managed people, held meetings and allocated work. Give them something more useful.
Think about what changed while you were in charge.
Did somebody you trained earn a promotion? Did your team take on more work? Perhaps you helped solve a staffing problem or changed a process that wasn’t working.
Your examples don’t all need to involve enormous numbers or dramatic business turnarounds.
The important part is showing what you contributed. That’s much stronger than filling half a page with phrases such as “excellent communicator” and “strong leader” without explaining why.
Middle management sits below senior managers and above more junior employees or managers.
Every company has a slightly different structure, so look at the responsibilities that come with the role rather than the job title alone.
Operations managers, department managers, regional managers, branch managers and some project managers could all fall into this category.
A small business may have very little middle management, while a large company could have several management levels between employees and its most senior leaders.
It can be if you want to develop your management experience or eventually apply for more senior positions.
However, don’t assume you have to become a manager to have a successful career. If you prefer specialising in your field rather than managing people, another route may suit you better.
It’s a fact of life: change can be daunting. Stepping into a management role will impact your working patterns.
From just worrying about your own deadlines, you’ll now be thinking about several people’s workloads at once. You’ll need to juggle stakeholders – there will also be times when your team wants one thing and the people above you want another.
However, there’s often enjoyment to be taken from helping other people improve, having more leadership input into decisions and taking responsibility for a team.
If you’re considering your first middle manager role or considering applying for a job with management responsibilities, you might find these blogs useful:
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Our professional CV writers can help you put your management experience into words and build a CV around where you want to go next. Contact us today.
