Disrupting Burnout
Disrupting Burnout with Dr. Patrice Buckner Jackson is dedicated to overworked, undervalued high-achieving servant leaders who give all to serve others and leave very little for yourself. You are an accomplished woman with many responsibilities and you often find yourself overwhelmed, exhausted, and burned out. I’ve been there. As a matter of fact, burnout almost cost me everything. Compassionate work can carry a high price tag: your mind, body, spirit and relationships may be in distress as you serve the needs of others. I am here to equip your hands and refresh your heart so you can serve in purpose and fulfillment and permanently break cycles of burnout.
Disrupting Burnout
119. The Burden of Middle Managers in Education
Hey Friend,
Have you ever considered that the true catalysts for educational transformation might not be the top leaders but the often overlooked middle managers? In this week’s episode, titled "The Burden of the Middle Manager," we shine a light on these unsung heroes within educational organizations.
From teacher leaders to assistant principals and deans, these middle managers are pivotal in driving change. They skillfully balance the high demands of upper leadership while also nurturing and guiding their teams. We’ll discuss the challenging transition from frontline roles to middle management and highlight the essential support and mentorship needed during this critical phase to prevent burnout and foster sustainable success.
This episode tackles the significant challenges middle managers face, particularly the frequent lack of proper training and support. Utilizing insights from the Gallup Workforce Study, we examine the widespread effects of burnout and stress the urgent need for organizations to better develop and empower these key figures. We’ll explore the specific tools and resources that are crucial for equipping middle managers, focusing on genuine leadership training and continuous support through coaching and mentorship.
By investing in the growth and well-being of middle managers, we can create a more engaged, productive, and thriving educational environment. Tune in to find out why middle managers are so crucial to progress and how we can elevate these vital leaders to new heights.
Join me as we delve into the pivotal role of middle managers and learn how we can better support these essential agents of change in our educational systems.
Love Always,
PBJ
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Friend, I'm convinced that real change, real transformation in our organizations does not happen at the top. Real change happens in the middle and that means that the burden the burden of our work, the burden of change, the burden of burnout falls on our middle managers. And I think it is time that we address the burden of the middle manager. Let's talk. So, as I was preparing for our webinar, we had last week shout out to everyone who attended with us. It was such a good conversation. If you missed it or somehow missed our email messages, if you will check your spam messages, I found out that several folks were unable to join us because they didn't get their welcome message. But, friend, it came as soon as you click submit and for many of those people, what we found is it went to their spam. So check out your spam, but the recording is there. But what I found as I was preparing for the webinar is there's research that shows us and proves that the burden lies on our middle management. So let me tell you what I mean when I talk about a middle manager, specifically in education, right? So in my mind, a middle manager, you've been promoted from the front lines, so some of those positions may be teacher, leader or director or assistant principal or principal or even assistant superintendent in K-12 in colleges and universities. That may be assistant director, associate director, director, it may be dean, it may be department chair, even up to AVP, assistant vice, whatever chancellor, president, whatever your institution chooses. Right, when you are in the middle, you have at least a level, or maybe several levels of folks below you, and when I say below you, I just mean people that you supervise in the organizational chart. Right, we know that our people are not below us and you have several levels above you. So people that you report to that also report to other people that report to other people. You are in middle management. And the thing I started thinking about being in middle management it is the longest and toughest season of your career, and I'm not saying that being in executive leadership is easy. Please hear me, that is not the truth, that's not what I'm saying. But there is a level of autonomy that you gain once you are in executive leadership that frees you to serve and lead a little bit more in the way that you would like to.
Speaker 1:In middle management, we often find ourselves trying to cater to the needs of several levels of leadership because of where we rank in the organizational structure. So just that organization, just that position in the structure adds a level or several levels of burden and stress to middle management, because you're not just trying to please your immediate leader but you're thinking about their leader and their leader and what all of those people need. But you also have several levels sometimes that you are supervising. So it feels like there's a crunch in the middle, because you have the desires, the demands, the responsibilities, the requests that are coming down to you that you have to honor. But then you have the needs and the support and the mentoring and the training coming up that you need to support your people and be a good leader to them. And often in middle management it feels like well, where do I put it? Where does it go? Where does the overflow from my plate go If I am covering and supporting and training and taking good care of my folks as they serve, but I'm also taking things off the plate of my leader? Where do I put the pieces on my plate? Where does the overflow go? So I know that the burden of our organizations, our institutions, our schools really, really rest on middle management. Another challenge that I found concerning middle management is the sharp transition right? So when you're on the front line so let's say you are a new teacher or a resident director or a new professional coordinator or a new level professional in education If you have good leadership, often there is someone that you can go to for support.
Speaker 1:If you have a good leader, there's a mentor, there's a coach, someone who's going to help you through the toughest days. All right, friend, I'm just popping in really quick because I need your help. Would you go over to Amazon right now and leave a quick review for Disrupting Burnout? You don't have to finish the whole book to leave a review and it doesn't have to be long or fancy, just your honest take on the book. I know that there's some algorithm fairies out there. If you leave enough reviews, they will share this book with other readers who need it. So would you help me out, would you help our friends out who haven't heard about Disrupt burnout yet? Go over to Amazon and leave your honest review for disrupting burnout. I appreciate you. All right, let's get back to the episode.
Speaker 1:And then you transition from that frontline position to middle management, to leadership, to having some responsibility, and often what I find is middle managers don't have the support that maybe a frontline or a new employee might have. So once you move to middle management, people expect that you have a better handle on the work. They expect that you know what you're doing. You've been around for a little while, you can kind of manage on your own, which is true. But just because you've been promoted and you did a great job in whatever your first level of career was doesn't mean there are not new challenges at the leadership level and at the middle management level. And who do you talk to? Who do you take those challenges to? Who will support you? Who are the people in place that train, mentor, support you through this space?
Speaker 1:What I find often in middle management is this is the people level, meaning this is the level where you're not just focused on whatever the work is the teaching, the programming, the research assistant, the whatever you were doing that you know how to do the actual work. But most of the time when you're promoted to middle management, you've added leadership or responsibility for people. This is the people level. And, friend, I'm here to tell you the people part is the hardest part.
Speaker 1:Listen, you know how to run student organization or student orientation. You know how to program for your students. You know how to run student organization or student orientation. You know how to program for your students. You know how to put your curriculum together. You know how to stand in front of a classroom and teach. You know how to get good outcomes from your students. But who's going to teach you how to lead? Where do you learn how to lead and manage and guide people? That's not innate for most people. There may be pieces of it that are innate. Maybe you're a good listener, maybe you're a good support person just innately. But let me tell you something leading people is a whole different level, and especially in education.
Speaker 1:What I find is we promote people because they're good at the job they were doing. Maybe you're a great academic advisor, or maybe you do a wonderful job in your research and your being a professor or you know whatever. Maybe you're a world renowned researcher, right. That doesn't mean you know how to be dean friend. That doesn't mean you know how to be a department chair friend, because we've added the people level and we continue to put people in leadership positions who are not prepared to lead. Just because you're good at the core of the work doesn't mean you're good at leading, managing, supporting people. So there's no support, there's no training, there's no mentoring of the middle manager.
Speaker 1:I think it's unfair to put someone in position but fail to equip them for the task at hand. And in middle management, the task at hand is people Leading, guiding, supporting your people. And what I find is most of us learn this by trial and error. Most of us learn how to lead and guide our people by learning the hard way, by going through the grind and figuring it out, incident by incident and challenge by challenge. It is imperative that we support our middle managers.
Speaker 1:When I look at the Gallup Workforce Study, the most recent report that came out a couple weeks ago, Gallup continues to show that the burden, the impact of burnout is greater on the manager than it is on the folks who followed them. So the consequences of being burnt out, of being disengaged, are greater on the middle manager, on the manager, than it is on the people. So there's no wonder that those in middle management are struggling to figure out how to support your people, how to disrupt burnout in your team when you're burnt out yourself. If you see the signs of burnout in your team, guaranteed, look at your life, life. I want you to consider if you are surviving through burnout yourself, if you are fighting to remain engaged at work yourself. So I think, in order to transform, disrupt burnout, we need to start with the middle manager and we need to start by supporting the middle manager.
Speaker 1:Gallup also shared that when the manager is engaged at a high level, so are the people, so is everybody else who follows them. And Gallup defines engaged as thriving at work, right. So Gallup has three categories and they have a proprietary evaluation system where they determine where folks fall in these three categories. The first category is engaged you're thriving at work. The second category is not engaged, and that they define that as quiet quitting the people who are physically there but you no longer have their heart and their mind. They're just doing what they have to do so that they can get through this. And then there's the disengaged, which is the third group, and Gallup says these people are loudly quitting. So these are the disgruntled, the frustrated. These are the folks where the burnout becomes contagious because they're sharing their disapproval and their disengagement with everyone who will listen. These folks are actually impeding the progress of people who want to be engaged because their level of frustration is so viral. So three levels engaged, not engaged and disengaged.
Speaker 1:And the research shows that managers who are engaged, thriving at work, also have employees who are thriving at work. Managers who are not engaged have a higher level of people who are not engaged or quite quitting at work. Managers who are not engaged or quiet, quitting at work, managers who are disengaged you got a problem, friend, you got a whole problem. When you have a person in position who is loudly quitting and I say that loosely because Gallup calls it loudly quitting but what I find is often these people ain't going nowhere, they have dug their heels in, they are frustrated. No one else is going to take them in the state that they are in, so you are stuck. You have that person and you got to deal with that. So we'll talk about that on another week.
Speaker 1:But the research shows that if we support, if we train, if we guide, if we pour into the middle management, then the outcome of that is a more engaged team, a more engaged organization, a more engaged school, institution, school system. So I'm here to tell you we've got to start paying attention to the burden of the middle manager. So I want to give you three ways that we need to start paying attention to middle management. First of all, we need to recruit and hire the best managers. So when you're looking for your next director of a department, when you're looking for your next director of a department, when you're looking for your next assistant principal, or even a principal or assistant superintendent, when you're looking for your next department chair or Dean, look for the person who shows leadership, even without the title right. So all of us need support, all of us need training, but there are people who have an innate, natural flow of guiding, leading, supporting people. And those folks do that even before you give them a title. So before they are promoted, before they get the job, before they get the accolade, you can see leadership in these people.
Speaker 1:So don't just identify somebody who's good at their whatever their job is the task at hand. That's important because they need some knowledge and expertise in the task. But even outside of how they perform the task, what leadership qualities do you see in them? Even amongst their peers? Leaders can't hide. They show up without trying. So identify leadership. Choose people who show leadership qualities before you even give them the job.
Speaker 1:So that's number one Identify leaders and promote leaders. Promote people who are leaders? Number two require leadership and management training. Don't just promote people, but have a program in place. Don't just promote people, but have a program in place and I've seen like different cities will have leadership cohorts, that they will offer leadership to right, and that's powerful. And even some institutions have established some leadership programs and I think that's important. And I think that it's important that we support these programs and that we recruit people into them even before they're in the leadership position, so before they get the promotion.
Speaker 1:Who are those people that are showing promise that you can invest in them by giving them the leadership training? What kind of training do they need? They need training and communication. I know it sounds so simple, but it is not simple. It is not easy to learn how to have a hard conversation with someone, to learn how to truly listen and hear and not just try to fix the problem, but listen to what people are saying to you. We need to practice and learn how to have more effective conversations with everyone Managing up, managing down, managing across. Communication is necessary. It is more than necessary, right, it's required.
Speaker 1:We need to understand how to influence people, not to manipulate them, but how to influence. Leadership is influence. If you don't have influence on people, you are not leading. So we need to train and help people understand how to have influence. We need to train leaders on how to navigate change and how to take care of their people as we're navigating change. Because you've already heard it said the one constant is change. We know that change is going to come. There'll be change in leadership, there'll be change in policy, there will be change in requirements. Change is going to come. We need to equip our leaders in how to navigate change and we need to equip our leaders in people leadership, people management, how to guide and support your people. So leaders need to be required to go through leadership and management training, and that may be after they get the promotion, but I suggest, even before they get the promotion, that they get this training because it's so critically important.
Speaker 1:And finally, we need to support the middle manager. As I stated earlier, when you're on the front lines or first level careers, if you have a good leader, that mentorship, that coaching is kind of built in, because you know if you lead first level folks, a large majority of your responsibility is to support them, guide them, mentor them, coach them right when you get to the middle management level, coach them right. When you get to the middle management level, often that support, that coaching, that mentoring goes away because the person that supervises you is so busy with their own things that they don't have time to pour into you, or it's not consistent, or the middle manager doesn't want to bother their manager. They may not have the best manager, so that may not be the person that needs to mentor them or coach them. We need to be intentional about making sure that middle managers are surrounded by support.
Speaker 1:I remember being in middle management positions and longing for a mentor, longing for somebody who I could share some things with, who would coach me, challenge me, and often I didn't feel like I had that. There were people, and not all the time. I've had some good mentors in my career, but there were people who I watched from afar and I learned by watching them. But I didn't often have a person that I could sit down with and share a challenge or frustration and have them walk me through it or guide me through it, and the result of that is I had to learn the hard way, sometimes through consequences, sometimes through consequences, sometimes through difficult situations is where I built my toolkit of how to lead right, and I think that we can do a better job for our new generation of leaders.
Speaker 1:I think that we have tools. I think we have a toolkit that we can offer and give them and support them and coach them so that they can be successful, not in just accomplishing the goals of the organization, but so they can be successful in leading their people, so that they can do well but also be well while they're doing well. So, yeah, it's time, friends, for us to recognize the burden of the middle leader, a middle manager is time for us to recruit the right people into these positions, to require them to have leadership training that works not a waste of time, not something to check the block, but real, true training. And it is time for us to surround them with support, to assign them to coaches and mentors and sponsors who will open doors for them and invite them to have seats at the table so that they can learn and have a better experience than we had. All right, listen, that's what I got for you today. I hope that you will take this to your school, to your organization.
Speaker 1:Think about those folks who are in those middle management positions. Maybe it's you Maybe it's you Share this with a leader or a supervisor. Help them to understand the need, because it's not just your story. The data shows us that middle managers are carrying a heavy burden and if we want our organizations to change, if we want to get better, if we want to make progress, if we want to disrupt burnout, we need to start in the middle. All right, friend, as always. You are powerful, you are significant, you are brilliant and you are loved. Love always, pbj.
