Insights · 2012
Personal middle management
In 2012 this article was included in Susanne Teglkamp’s book “I den gode ledelses tjeneste” (In the Service of Good Leadership). The claim is simple: leadership is always personal, and everything good starts with middle managers. On the other hand, it takes a skilled manager to handle both.
Leadership IS personal
Leadership is personal because it is about character ethics and integrity. If there is no coherence between the person we are and what we do, we lose credibility. The messages in word and writing get lost in the forest of deeds. As has been said: “What you are shouts so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”
There is nothing wrong with showing emotions at work. Would you want a direct manager who could do nothing but display passivity and a stony face through good times and bad? Hardly. We want whole human beings we can identify with.
As a young officer, it was only many years later that I found out that if you want the group to run in the same direction, you cannot just stand on a beer crate and give orders. You can do that once in a while — when you have earned the group’s respect.
When knowledge is power
In a professional bureaucracy, knowledge is power and the glue that holds everything together. As the company grows, new young leadership talents appear straight from their education who can threaten the existing power bases. And when power is threatened, we protect territory — so knowledge sharing is avoided, to the detriment of employees, customers and finances.
At the same time, the young leaders are given responsibility for exactly the areas where the boss expects miracles. Naturally, that does not happen, because at engineering school they never met an employee, saw a customer or had P&L responsibility. It is not their fault, but it is the company’s responsibility to teach them.
Everything good starts with middle managers
My CBA thesis, “LeaderShop: The Key to Successful Strategy”, is about systematically building the organisation’s overall leadership competencies — because it turned out that everything good starts with middle managers. Middle managers are the key to success, but they can also be a millstone around the neck, especially if as a leader you deny your own development potential.
It hurts an experienced leader to be told that they really ought to learn something about people management. But just as I had to accept as a young officer: all development starts with ourselves, and it takes a certain humility all the way through life.
Written by Mads Cronquist. Originally published in Danish on cronquist.dk (2012) under the title “Det personlige mellemlederskab” — here in an edited English version.