How to be successful in middle management

Middle management is a special kind of spot—you’re able to manage up and manage down and taking on this role requires some professional dexterity. It’s a critical place to be, especially in organizations today.

“There aren’t big swatches of middle management in organizations anymore,” says Scott Miller, executive vice president of thought leadership at global organization firm FranklinCovey. “Multinational Fortune 500 companies that used to have eight, 10, 12 layers now have three or four layers. So, the layers left in middle management are more important than ever.”

Read on to learn how to make the most of your middle-level management position.

Develop your management skills

Being good at your job doesn’t mean you’ll be good at being a manager. “The most glaring example of this is sales representatives who get promoted to be sales managers,” says Larry Sternberg, JD, a senior leader at HR consulting firm Talent Plus and author of Managing to Make a Difference. “Those are two different skills sets.”

If you’re interested in moving into management, make sure you’re developing the skills necessary for a management position. Find other people who were promoted into middle management and ask them how they got there. Or talk to your higher-up about your ambitions.

“Say, ‘Look, I have a goal to get into management,” Sternberg says. “’What do I need to do to prepare myself?’ And when you get that information, go and do it.”

Understand your role

You may have spent years being good at doing a thing. Middle managers are responsible for leading other people who are good at doing the thing. In other words, your role is no longer to be the one doing the thing—but to help other people be great at it.

“This takes a fundamental mindset shift,” Miller says. “Your job is not to rush in and save the day. Your job is to get work done with and through other people. It requires you to be more patient, more considerate, more thoughtful.”

You’ll have to take the time to build skills in other people, to delegate properly, and to learn how to provide critical feedback. “It’s a grooming ground that really separates those individuals who probably shouldn’t have been in a leadership role anyway,” Miller says. “It’s a bit of a fork in the road for a lot of people.”

Make your boss’s priorities your own

Understand your manager’s main concerns and align your goals with theirs. Not sure what they are? Ask.

Say, “Boss, I want to know the priorities here, so I can support you and make sure I’m meeting expectations.” Sternberg says, “That will get you a long way in managing up, because you’re going to be working on things your boss finds important.”

Develop good relationships

Many managers operate on the principal that they shouldn’t get too close to the people who report to them. It’s common to think that you must maintain some distance.

“That’s a myth that’s been around for a very long time,” Sternberg says. “We’ve learned from the most successful executives that the best really don’t place limits on how close they want to get with their people. The closer you are with people, the easier it is to influence them and to motivate them to do what needs to be done.”

Become a talent multiplier

“Increasingly, when you’re in middle management, your biggest challenge is recognizing that your job is not to be the smartest person in the room, but to be the genius maker of others,” Miller says. “Our job as a senior level leader is to really see where the genius is in our people. How do we pull it out, how do we inspire them to share their ideas, unleash their creativity?”

One strategy for doing this: Ask great questions. Ask broad questions that allow people to delve deep into their knowledge space and go out and research things. “When you do that, the organization learns,” Miller says.

If you’re a great mid-level leader, you’ll take joy in helping your team develop and grow their talent, possibly even beyond yours. This takes a secure, confident person but will benefit everyone in the end.

Accept that you’re creating culture

You’re not at the bottom and you’re not at the top, but you’re in a significant position, nonetheless. Though it may not be obvious to you, you’re creating culture just as much as the C suite.

Struggling to get to middle management? Join Monster for free today to get weekly career advice updates and job alerts for positions that best fit your experience. As a member you can upload up to five versions of your resume tailored for the jobs you're most interested in. Additionally, recruiters search Monster every day for talent as soon as positions get posted, so making yourself visible to them gives you an advantage over other candidates.