Karima-Catherine Goundiam is the founder and chief executive officer of digital strategy firm Red Dot Digital and business matchmaking platform B2BeeMatch.
Middle managers are in a state of crisis. They were suffering from burnout before the pandemic and the cascade of changes, stressors and work-related demands has only exacerbated the problem. According to a survey by the Workforce Institute at UKG from earlier this year, nearly half of middle managers planned to quit their jobs within the year.
I left the corporate world because of my own frustrations while in middle management; it’s much more satisfying to run my own company. But as someone highly involved in the business world, I still deal with a lot of middle managers, both within the companies that are now my clients and in wider business settings. So, I’d like to offer my perspective as a semi-outsider looking in.
Why are middle managers burning out?
Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health defines career burnout as “a state of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress.” They say it can leave people feeling helpless, resentful and emotionally drained. Symptoms include low motivation, reduced productivity, disengagement and an inability to function at work and elsewhere.
How would a middle manager get there? There’s a long list of reasons.
Middle managers need to support the employees who report to them while also satisfying the demands of their superiors. This means they’re in a position where they hold a lot of responsibility, but often don’t have enough real power or resources to accomplish either task fully.
On top of this basic structural challenge, people at the middle management stage of their careers are often also in midlife, which means many of them are already stretched thin as caregivers to both children and aging parents, all exacerbated by the pandemic. And let’s not forget that in today’s typical corporate world, we’re seeing grossly overpaid executives in contrast with overburdened staff and management whose wages aren’t even rising at the page of inflation. This leads to resentment and disengagement.
We’re seeing a range of responses: strikes from grocery workers to writers and actors, “quiet quitting” (basically, doing the minimum at your job), and the “great resignation,” among other things. The people who still have jobs are left scrambling to compensate for everyone who’s gone, amid an over all labour shortage and the destabilization of supply chains. Given all this, it’s almost more surprising when a middle manager isn’t suffering from burnout. So, what can we do about it?
Problem: A disconnected C-suite
Let’s start at the top: C-suite executives. Generally, C-levels are transient. For the most part, they tend to stay in their positions in the range of 2.5 to five years (and falling), which means they don’t have time to make substantial change or develop strong relationships with middle managers. This hampers continuity and stability. There’s also a transactional factor in the C-suite which creates further disconnect. Their employment is unstable; it’s results-oriented rather than being about leadership, which creates a lack of interest in deep connections and a lot of pressure to achieve specific results. In this context, why would they care about organizational well-being?
Solution: Promote from within
One major solution here is to play the long game. We need to return to growing the next generation and fostering talent internally. This means promoting people from within who can act as leaders.
Only about a third of organizations engage in formal succession planning, according to a report by the Association for Talent Development. This number needs to go way up in order to combat disengagement, groom the next generation of leaders and make the most of the knowledgeable talent within your organization and the accumulated institutional memory they hold.
Looking outside for new leadership talent might not be the panacea you think it is.
Problem: Frustrated and ineffective middle management
Companies want innovation, but the people they tend to attract and keep prefer job security and the status quo. Why? Those who would really move a company along choose to leave because they get frustrated with all the roadblocks and rules. Combine that with insufficient support, and you get middle management more interested in CYA maneuvers than in responsible decision-making.
Solution: Give them more power
If you want better innovation and leadership, empower your middle managers. Hire them based on their alignment with your values, give them a sense of what’s important to you, and then let them do their jobs. Check in to see if they want more coaching or mentoring. Give them chances when they screw up. Encourage them to avoid micromanaging; if they start thinking as leaders now, they may become your future C-suite themselves.
Problem: Mental health woes
In her book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, author Emily Nagoski writes that science tells us we need to spend 42 per cent of our lives resting. That includes sleep, but it also means down time of other kinds. Does that sound like a lot? It is. But if we don’t get that much rest on purpose, our bodies will take it, whether we like it or not, in the form of illness and exhaustion — making for poorer work performance and general misery. In other words, when you push your managers, you will end up getting less out of them, not more. And that’s before they just go ahead and quit.
Solution: Let managers create better balance
Encourage work-life balance among your managers — and mean it. Mental health coverage has increased in some companies, and it’s good that companies are recognizing the need for it, but giving people extra money for therapy while demanding they work 24/7 with no boundaries doesn’t actually help. Stop demanding unreasonable levels of productivity while sending a weekly mental health tip to everyone’s inbox. Start instituting real policies that let managers work flexibly: respect their right to disconnect (even where it’s not mandated by law), let them mix in-office and remote work and cultivate an attitude of balance.
The over all theme here is that people need to come first. We have to go back to putting people at the centre of organizations and decisions. When people are inspired even in difficult work contexts, it’s because the leader cares about them and about their growth. A people-first focus opens up possibilities for more frank conversations about what’s working and what’s not. It recalibrates the company’s culture. And it lets people bring their best selves to work.
A solid dose of humanity can help halt the burnout epidemic.
This column is part of Globe Careers’ Leadership Lab series, where executives and experts share their views and advice about the world of work. Find all Leadership Lab stories at tgam.ca/leadershiplab and guidelines for how to contribute to the column here.