The leadership gap in the middle

Many organizations invest heavily in developing senior leaders.

Others focus on building skills for frontline employees.

But the leaders in the middle – the ones responsible for translating strategy into action – are often left to figure things out on their own.

Vision coach Stew Pollard has seen that pattern repeatedly throughout his career in engineering, operations and organizational change.

“The average age of a first-time manager is about 30,” Stew says. “But the average age of a manager receiving leadership training is about 42.”

In other words, many people spend more than a decade learning leadership largely by trial and error.

Success or failure?

Stew’s career has given him a unique perspective on why that gap matters. With more than 25 years of leadership experience across organizations including Goodrich, Honeywell and J.D. Irving, he has worked at the intersection of strategy, process improvement and change management. 

And in his experience, most organizational change succeeds or fails in one place: the middle layer of leadership.

“Strategy gets created at the top and execution happens at the front line,” he says. “But everything has to flow through this bottleneck called middle managers.” 

Those leaders carry a complex role. They’re responsible for communicating strategic direction to their teams while also translating frontline feedback back to senior leadership. 

“They’re the ultimate go-between in the business,” Stew explains. “They’re receiving all the feedback from the front line and they have to funnel it up. And they’re receiving all the direction from above and have to funnel it down.” 

Communicating purpose

When that translation works, organizations gain traction. When it doesn’t, even well-designed strategies can stall.

Stew often sees middle leaders wrestling with a familiar challenge.

“They’ll say, ‘I’m being asked to do this, but I don’t know why,’” he says. 

Helping leaders understand and communicate that purpose is where coaching can make a difference.

“You can have the greatest strategy in the world,” Stew says. “But if people don’t change what they do, nothing actually changes.” 

Interested in Leadership Coaching? Start your journey HERE