In the television show “The Office” and the comic strip “Dilbert,” the middle manager is often portrayed as a complete jackass, someone who is continually rewarded for being small-minded, belligerent, hateful, narcissistic and very likely deranged. The boss is a complete and utter moron — he or she is responsible for just about everything wrong at work.
But is that really an accurate picture? Of some middle managers, yes. But for many others, it is an unfair caricature of those who put in long hours trying to keep all the plates in the air, juggling the demands of upper management with those of employees and customers. The job is often extremely difficult, and has been ranked in at least one study as more stressful than bereavement, divorce or raising a teenager.
Cheerleader
Still, at least one person is on the side of the middle manager, championing what he says can be a “really cool job” and reminding us all that while it’s easy to take potshots at middle managers, they perform a critical function in the workplace.
“The role of the middle manager is misunderstood,” says Wayne Turmel. “A middle manager must be really good with people. He or she has to communicate up and down the communication stream. This person not only translates orders to the employees from the upper ranks, but must also make direct reports to senior managers and pass up important information.”
Turmel tries to help other middle managers do their job better through training and writing, but he also provides a continual source of support and information through his Podcast Network Internet show called “The Cranky Middle Manager” (http://cmm.thepodcastnetwork.com).
“The word ‘cranky’ was carefully chosen, partly because it sounds funny,” says Turmel, a one-time stand-up comic. “I didn’t want it to sound like middle managers are angry or furious. That’s not it. It’s just that the job is really hard sometimes, and other people don’t understand the role middle managers play. They’ve never really had it explained to them.”
Turmel’s show features a variety of guests in an effort to educate middle managers on how to do their jobs better. He says that’s because while training dollars are often funneled to first-tier managers in an effort to improve customer service, or to the senior executives for specialized education, not enough funds are aimed at boosting middle manager performance.
“Companies spent the 1980s getting rid of the ‘overhead,’ so there’s no bench strength” in management, Turmel says. “These managers need to find ways to improve themselves because companies don’t do enough to share information with them.”
Not Good Fit
Another problem with middle management ranks these days is that employees are moved into those ranks because “they’re really good at doing something.”
“So, you move these people away from the thing they’re really good at, like engineering, and they’re now supposed to tell other people how to do the job,” he says. “One of the best stories I heard was an engineer who moved back to the line after six months as a manager. When I asked him why, he said, ‘because code does what I tell it to the first time and I don’t have to ask how the kids are.’”
Turmel says he understands that some people may never want to join the management ranks, no matter the carrots a company may dangle. But for those who do decide to take the leap, he says that it’s time they get the respect they deserve.
To that end, he’s started an online campaign for Congress to declare a “middle manager day.”
Why?
“Because it’s time that other people spend just one day thinking about what they do to drive middle managers crazy — and just stop doing it,” he says. “We should get one stinking day to ourselves.”
