Among all the talent and people issues facing employers, middle manager ineffectiveness looms largest, given its disproportionate impact on employee acquisition, productivity, engagement, well-being, and retention. The line manager serves as the face of the company and its leadership, and is the primary point of contact between the company and its employees. Their responsibilities include selection and hiring, performance management, task direction, skills assessment and development guidance, and the interpretation and communication of company values, objectives, and policies. However, dramatic signals have emerged that raise the question of how to deploy them effectively and to consider how supplementing managers’ gaps in the performance of their critical tasks can be best for the organization and its employees.

Despite the role's outsized influence on critical talent outcomes, organizations are increasingly eliminating these jobs, with middle management representing 30% of all layoffs. Gartner predicts that 20% of organizations will utilize AI to further streamline their organizations in the immediate future, with these jobs squarely in their sights. Part of this is in response to a trend where middle management has increased from 9.2% of the U.S workforce to 13%, as recently reported in Harvard Business Review. This trend is placing greater visibility on the breadth of skills needed to perform these jobs effectively, creating the imperative for optimizing and supplementing managers’ gaps in skills and capabilities.

The problem with middle management

It can be argued that these are difficult times for managers. With layoffs increasing, the surviving managers are left with expanded spans of control. Few, if any, of the layoff reports mention associated reductions in managerial duties and responsibilities or streamlining and automating of their work processes to offset those increases in direct reports. If anything, those job responsibilities continue to swell. Research has found that the average manager now has 2.8 times more direct reports than they did six years ago. Add to that the finding that managers’ job duties have expanded by 51% more than they can effectively manage. Supplementing managers' gaps can answer the issue of duty expansion beyond the average individual's capabilities.

The quality of the typical manager is also a significant challenge. Gallup has conducted research that reveals a shocking and depressing finding: only 10% of managers possess the right traits, skills, and capabilities to perform their roles effectively. The next 20% of managers possess many (but not all) of those, and their shortcomings can be developed. Sadly, the remaining 70% are ill-suited for managing others, which is partly explained by the finding that 82% of managers are selected for the wrong reasons.

An equally significant issue is that managers are not responding well to the increases in workload, coupled with the apparent mismatch between their skills and capabilities and the job requirements. Historically low engagement levels (27%) are observed, and interestingly, are not solely due to their shortcomings.

Given the impact and influence of the role, these trends are more than just troubling. Gallup reports that teams with highly effective managers are 48% more profitable and 22% more productive than those with less talented managers. The business costs of employing many average or below-average managers are enormous, and they need the help that supplementing managers' gaps can offer.

How managers spend their time

While many of the articles, points of view, and research published on managers are focused on their people-related responsibilities (and the shortcomings therein), there is much more required of a manager. What we know from experience is that they are generally responsible for a broad mix of oversight and performing activities that require them to shift from overseeing others to contributing individual expertise, developing strategies, managing budgets, and acting as administrators. We expect our managers to perform tasks such as:

• Leading and supervising others in their assigned workflow roles and contributions.
• Making decisions related to resource allocation, technical trade-offs, and personnel.
• Planning and strategy activities related to interpreting cascaded objectives and direction, assigning individual and team goals, and adjusting direction and resourcing as conditions change.
• Coaching and developing employees to drive performance and productivity improvements, expand capabilities, and support career advancement and mobility.
• Communicating and collaborating to provide understanding, meaningfulness, and stronger bonds and innovation within and across departments, functions, and business units.
• Administering processes, policies, and reporting in support of structured, consistent, and compliant organizational functioning.
• Contributing individually related to functional and technical specialization(s) and experiences, such as providing input to new business, product, service, or work strategies, design, methods, and technologies.

Surveys of companies from across industries and the globe have consistently revealed a theme, with one from McKinsey showing that managers spend their work hours across individual contributor (31%), employee management (28%), strategy-related (23%), and administrative (18%) tasks. Interestingly, the most significant portion of the annual bonuses for surveyed managers comes from their individual (non-managerial) contributor activities. A recent study in Harvard Business Review (HBR) found that managers’ time is split between tasks involving administrative coordination and control (54%), problem solving and collaboration (30%), strategy and innovation (10%), and developing employees and engaging with stakeholders (7%). Finding individuals capable of handling all these tasks and areas of responsibility can be challenging, which supports the idea of supplementing managers' gaps as a strategy.

Understanding the skills and interests gap

When trying to explain the low effectiveness, engagement, and increasingly reported high burnout rates, it is crucial to develop an understanding of how those in middle management roles perceive their suitability, as well as how they would prefer to spend their days. This can support decision-making related to supplementing managers' gaps on a task and responsibility basis.

The HBR research asked managers to rank their top three skills, and the results are not surprising, given the low engagement and people management effectiveness levels observed across multiple studies. Managers listed these three as their top individual skills and capabilities:

• Digital and technology – 42%
• Creative thinking and experimentation – 33%
• Data analysis and interpretation – 31%
• Strategy development – 30%

Those make perfect sense when you consider the skills, experiences, and capabilities that middle to senior-level managers and leaders spent years learning (in school and college), practicing and refining (as early-to-mid-career professionals), and leading and guiding others. When considering the range of professional fields and organizational functions, managers come from a variety of backgrounds, including engineering, science, technology, marketing, finance, medicine and healthcare, law, construction, and many other fields requiring a mix of education and experience.

Consider, however, that once they advanced into management roles, the skills that they had spent years learning and applying took a back seat to management requirements, many of which they had limited or no prior experience or training in. Consider how relatively few of them rated the following skills and competencies as strengths against the requirements of a typical managerial job:

• Planning and administration – 23%
• Social networking – 21%
• People development and coaching – 21%
• Collaboration – 20%
• Performance management and reporting – 17%

There appears to be an apparent mismatch between what managers report as their greatest strengths and the role of a manager. Helping those who are otherwise well-qualified for the role by supplementing managers' gaps can offer support.

Equally illuminating are the insights that arise from a study into the most effective (and satisfied) managers, which found that the best ones spent two-thirds (2/3) of their total work weeks engaged in:

• Making key business or operational decisions
• Managing and motivating people
• Setting direction and strategy
• Managing external stakeholders

These managers likely map reasonably well to Gallup’s fully or nearly competent managers, as they are motivated by, and enjoy performing a (primary) mix of strategic and people-related tasks. At the same time, with the percentages of well-qualified managers limited and the continuing need to perform administrative and coordinative activities, a better design of the jobs is warranted.

The mismatch creates issues for managers. When one reconsiders the finding that only 10% of managers are fully skilled in all the responsibilities required of a manager, and another 20% can develop their gaps to achieve that level of competency, it becomes apparent that there is a significant need for improvement. Even with the volume of managerial jobs shrinking, those who should remain in or be selected for these roles in the future require attention. Therefore, the need to attend to and act on the question of supplementing managers' gaps needs to become a priority.

The management challenge is a two-headed monster

There appears to be a management crisis where the wrong people are in fewer management positions, with the wrong strengths and motivations relative to the tasks and responsibilities required to meet organizational requirements and imperatives. As Gallup notes, the cross-industry standard of hiring and promoting managers based upon technical capabilities, tenure, and success in other, unrelated roles continues. That focus on basing these decisions on technical expertise and prowess represents only one aspect of the role requirements.

Secondly, the wrong job design hinders role holders, who are given an overly broad mix of responsibilities that include administration, coaching and developing others, technical contributions, operational oversight, and strategic thinking and planning. Those jobs have become more complex, and many companies have not invested in simplifying the workloads and processes that managers are responsible for managing.

Artificial intelligence is suggested and promoted as a replacement for many human tasks, especially those repetitive and administrative tasks that managers complain about the most. While many applications are already being demonstrated as use cases for managerial task performance takeover, these are supplemental, not wholesale replacements. The technology can be used to draft initial versions of job postings, performance appraisals, project management, task prioritization and resource balancing, report generation, and meeting agendas, but requires review and editing, often substantial.

What managers bring to the table is arguably years away from being replaced. These skills are associated with tasks that require human judgment, relationship management, complex problem-solving, decision-making, and strategic thinking. The soft skills that experts contend will continue to differentiate managers and leaders include those related to visioning, leadership, interpersonal dynamics, and critical, creative, and integrative thinking. These are not easily or readily replaced and are essential for leading, motivating, and guiding high-performance teams. They enable envisioning future possibilities and opportunities, inspire resourceful and innovative problem-solving, and understanding individual challenges, thereby coaching people to overcome them. The key is supplementing managers’ gaps to match individual capabilities and motivations more closely with the work that needs to be done.

Solutions for identifying and best leveraging managers

Numerous opportunities exist to supplement managers’ gaps and enhance the design and management of their roles, given the challenges associated with the role and the circumstances facing organizations. They involve decision-making regarding the best approaches for augmenting their skills, tasks, and responsibilities related to the primary elements of those jobs.

1. Clarify what separates top performers

The first step is to determine who in the management ranks are in what Gallup identified as the top 10% managerial performers – those with the proper mix of aptitude, skills, competencies, and demonstrated results. That requires an objective view of those who can balance all the job requirements and perform them at a high level. Adopt formal and continuous employee assessment strategies as well as high-potential (HiPo) evaluation and development processes to understand what makes a well-rounded and high-performing manager. Consider skills and preferences, aptitudes and behaviors, proficiency and potential. Use these to make decisions about managerial retention vs. headcount reduction, deployment and placement, skill and experiential development plans, and future succession management suitability.

2. Separate responsibilities and redefine roles at this level

Depending on budget availability and resource implications, consider the organization’s operating model and organizational structure, as well as the opportunities to separate traditional managerial roles into new role categories (or logical combinations) that can better leverage the strengths and capabilities of valued contributors. Consider deconstructing jobs (as explained and promoted by Ravin Jesuthasan and John Boudreau) by breaking down the roles into skills- or task-based elements. These roles can exist in any function or professional specialty in a modern organization. Suggestions include:

• Technical expert. Blends deep subject matter expertise with an understanding of technical advances to drive innovation, coach and train others, research and develop new products, services, and workflows. Uses communications and collaboration skills to drive the integration of new technologies and methodologies, and create relationships and interactions with experts from academia, government, and industry.
• Project manager. Roles responsible for process improvement, customer experience enhancements, or oversight of the supply chain and partners. Use expertise in project planning, resourcing, and logistics, workflow and product/service development, process design methodologies, data analytics, change management, and team building and leadership to define, plan, and execute effective projects.
• People expert. Combines skills, expertise, passion, and demonstrated success in assessing, hiring, coaching, developing, deploying, skills and potential assessment, and workforce and talent planning. Anticipates or understands skills gaps and maintains a robust network of contacts across the enterprise to identify opportunities to reallocate or move resources (at the individual or group levels) where they are best needed.
• Strategist. Builds a deep and future-focused understanding of the business and its drivers, as well as how those interact with or will be impacted by a wide range of market, industry, consumer, geopolitical, and environmental trends. Sponsors, conducts, participates, and consumes relevant research across professional disciplines. Leverages expertise on cutting-edge technologies and advanced concepts, and assimilates and communicates those as a writer, speaker, and strategic planner.
  
  

3. Confirm individual strengths, abilities, and aptitudes

Leverage a comprehensive mix of objective assessment vehicles to generate reliable, credible, and trustworthy evaluations of managerial job holders and candidates. Use commercially available, internally validated, and multi-rater tools and methods to generate more objectively based assessments of manager skills and aptitudes. Use validated tests to assess skills (presence and proficiency) and aptitudes (innate talent to develop), direct observation by experts, and employee (“upward”) feedback through engagement, pulse, and 360-degree surveys.

Use survey questions that focus on managerial behaviors found to differentiate top performers from those who are average or below average (e.g., frequent check-ins, meaningful coaching, active listening, recognition). Use multi-rater evaluations (e.g., in talent reviews) and discussions to generate more valid and broad-based assessments. Collect data, observations, and insights on every aspect of management – strategy, technical, people, and administration. Make self-assessments, career goals, and preferences regular elements of data collection to build a complete picture of the kinds of roles to which each individual aspires.

4. Evaluate managers for the most suitable assignments and career paths

Once assessments are completed, continuous talent assessments (e.g., quarterly talent reviews discussing performance outliers and those experiencing sudden changes in effectiveness or circumstances) are best, with annual updates as a minimum expectation. This involves two steps: adapting a talent categorization based on Gallup research on managerial competency. This suggests that 10% are fully competent managers, 20% are partially competent (but have potential for development), and the remaining 70% are underperformers.

With that in mind, and based on the objective assessment conducted on the existing managerial workforce, develop a process that places each current manager in one of four categories with the associated action plan:

• Top Tier (10%). Recognize and reward them, promote them, continue to grow and challenge, put them in business-critical organizations and roles.
• Second Tier (20-30%). Identify weaknesses, assess their motivation to stay in role and develop further, create personalized development plans, and assign coaching and mentoring.
• Third Tier (30-40%). Use skills, aptitude, behavior, and aspiration assessments to identify strengths and (as appropriate and available) move them into non-management roles at an equivalent or similar level that acknowledges their ability to contribute and avoid perceptions of demotion or loss of status.
• Fourth Tier (20%). Provide feedback, career counseling, and coaching, and then remove them from the organization.
  
  

5. Redesign manager jobs

Reengineer the roles to free the full-capable manager to perform the duties most crucial to the business by redefining the roles and recommended worktime allocations. Create an environment that prioritizes the most appropriate mix of strategy, people management, technical leadership or contribution, and administration for each function. Keep in mind that the mix may vary for managers in manufacturing, HR managers, engineering, and marketing. Create plans for automating and streamlining administrative processes and tasks that might dominate managers’ time, effort, and energy. Use employee experience methodologies (such as design or human-centered thinking) to engage them in redesigning their roles and futures.

6. Assign proxies for critical tasks

Where management skills are in short supply, or to remove repetitive but strategically critical tasks that require expertise and professional attention, identify uniquely talented individuals to take on those tasks for managerial peers. Create processes that engage such experts in supplementing managers' gaps in essential personnel or technical work. Examples include:

• Selection and evaluation. Assign experienced interviewers and managers with a track record of measurable success in new hire and transfer attraction (e.g., high candidate experience ratings), assessment (e.g., high quality of hire), and talent identification (e.g., “net exporters” of transfers and promotions) to screen, interview, and recommend top candidates to fill open jobs of other managers. Utilize talent calibration or review boards to evaluate top job candidates, assess their readiness for promotion, identify development needs, and even determine salary or bonus assignments. Continue to have hiring managers make final decisions, but do so with the guidance and coaching of the selection experts.
• Career guidance and development. Assign career and deployment coaches who are familiar with career pathways within and across specific functions, know how to align aspirations and skills with new roles, and are intimately familiar with the available learning content and paths. Utilize those who have tenure and understand the organization, including its functions, business strategies, and skill requirements that are in short supply. The role is to provide personalized career development and guidance on career paths for individuals or groups of employees. These are especially useful where resources such as skills databases and talent marketplace-related technologies are lacking.
• Technical/workflow leadership. While more expensive to staff and can require changes to the operating model, purely technical or project management roles can create new mobility opportunities for those better suited for technical guidance rather than broader people management. These are often well-suited for organizations adopting project-based design, development, and delivery models (such as consulting or technology companies), as well as those with large STEM (science, math, engineering, technology) workforces where strong people management skills and motivation may be in limited supply.
  
  

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