Leadership

Five Career Traps For Middle Managers

By Jo Owen

Updated on: June 9, 2010 / 5:23 AM EDT / MoneyWatch

Leading from the middle is the hardest stage of any manager's career. Whisper it quietly, but top management is far easier and more rewarding than middle management. At the top you have more control over your destiny, and more resources at your disposal.

Many people never make out of the matrix in the middle of most organisations. Here are the five most common types of career hold up:

The boy scout, who believes that working hard and honestly will get you to the top. No it will not. You need a claim to fame, to stake your claim and to have sponsors who will look out for you at promotion, bonus and assignment time.
The expert, who gets promoted on the basis of deep functional expertise. These people are good at managing ideas, techniques. Think accountants, lawyers, IT specialists. They fail to learn the top management skills of managing people, politics and business.
The politician, who is the opposite of the boy scout. Politicians always associate themselves with success. They vanish when there is trouble. They plot and connive. They can go far, but most get caught in the end: their enemies multiply over the years and eventually people notice that the politicians have not actually achieved anything.
The autocrat, who acts like they already are top managers. Their version of being a team player is "play my way or you are not a team player". Again, they can go far, but they are often highly divisive. Like the politician, they acquire enemies who are only too happy to stick the knife in as soon as the autocrat has an inevitable set back.
The cave dweller. Most large organisations have functional silos and layers like a pancake. When you cross a silo with a pancake you get a cave: this is where some middle managers hide. They protect their little piece of territory, to recreate the certainty they enjoyed in junior management. They fail to work with the complexity, ambiguity and opportunity which large organisations offer.

So how do you get through the middle management minefield? Successful middle managers all have elements, but not excess, of the boy scout (hard work) and the politician (understand the organisation) and the autocrat (make things happen). Most, but not all, are very good at working with people.

Inevitably, the skills which leaders really need to learn are ones for which there is precious little training. You have to discover the skills and the rules of the game yourself.

(Pic: bluebike cc2.0)