As We Work

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Erin Delmore: Hi. I'm Erin Delmore and as we work, we're noticing that many middle managers are stressed out.

Michelle Gullette: Middle management I think is probably the most challenging position to be in. The stress. It burned me out and in the end I ended up just seeing myself out the door on that one.

Erin Delmore: This is as we work from the Wall Street Journal, a show about the changing workplace and everything you need to know to navigate it. Coming up on the show, middle managers, those folks who bridge the gap between executives and workers, they're reporting higher levels of stress and anxiety than their colleagues. All the new rules around hybrid work and remote work are getting some of the blame. So what's the danger if middle managers burn out and what can senior leaders do to shore up morale? Stay with us. In workplaces across America, bosses are telling employees to come back to the office. But when it comes to putting a little muscle behind that edict, they're not the heavy. That task generally falls on someone else, the middle manager. Not only are middle managers now responsible for ensuring productivity and development for their direct reports, they're now also the arbiter of who works where and when. Exhausting? To hear them tell it, very. That's one of the new details from the Future Forums quarterly Pulse survey of workers around the globe, and Brian Elliot is on hand to tell us more and give us some advice on how to fix it. He's a Senior Vice President at Slack, and Executive Leader of Future Forum. It's a business consortium studying the future of the workplace. Brian, right now, how are middle managers feeling?

Brian Elliott: Stressed out. They are more at risk of burnout than anybody else in the organization. They have higher burnout scores than the people that they are managing. They have higher burnout scores than senior executives. And they have higher burnout scores, not surprisingly than executive executives. And that's not unusual when you think about what they've been going through for the past couple of years. But it's also, I think, the fact that middle managers are the rope in a game of tug of war between the people on their teams and senior executives and what people on their teams want. And what senior executives sometimes want is clearly a little bit at odds. And you've got senior leaders, senior executives, who are often thinking about it from their own personal perspective, what worked best for them when they were coming up through the organization. And what you're seeing now is not only the compounding of a couple of years of learnings over the course of the pandemic, but you're also seeing growing economic stress. And that's creating real pressure on everyone in the chain of command around performance inside of organizations. But the pinch point is your front line.

Erin Delmore: Managers, they're also kind of sandwiched in this layer with upper management, maybe handing down the policies, whether it's return to work or anything else in this space. What does that do to the tug of war that you're describing?

Brian Elliott: The challenge there is 60% of executives tell us that they're making their future of work plans with little to no direct input from their employees. If executives are largely doing it off of what worked for them a decade ago, two decades ago, like myself, that can often lead us into places that aren't accurate for the teams that actually work for us these days. What we're seeing now is that providing flexibility actually improves people's scores around things like culture and connection. But if you're a senior exec that's leaning on what worked for me, then you're not seeing the difference that a couple generations of changes in like digital first digital natives coming into the workforce, plus changing demographics have really brought into the workforce.

Erin Delmore: Something people are focused on and struggling with right now is return to office policies. So how is this turning into a new stress on middle managers?

Brian Elliott: It's the phrase return in the first place. That one itself is loaded. It feels like a request to go backwards on a number of different dimensions. The second is mandate. A mandate is we have decided on high that the best thing for all of you is X. And any team passed any certain point in size. We know that's not true. We would never do that to our customers. We would never say to our customers, "Congratulations. You can get exactly one size and one color," because we know there are different needs across different parts of our organizations. If you can go there as a leadership team, that's the power that you want to give your managers. You want to give them tools. You want to give them ways of doing this. So the more that you can make it tactical and the more you can make it purpose-driven around something, the easier it is than saying, "Here's the top down rule that everybody then has to interpret and figure out what it means." No one likes a mandate.

Erin Delmore: Look, I'm with you. No one likes a mandate. Nobody wants a top down rule shoved at them. But it's nothing new. I mean, some people in the company make the rules and some people have to enforce them and a lot of people have to follow them. So what's different?

Brian Elliott: What's different now is we would never have thought about making up a rule about how many days a week somebody has to be in the office pre-pandemic. We expected our managers to have a little bit more latitude around some of that. What's also changed pretty obviously is two and a half years of proof points. So in our own research, people with location flexibility have 4% higher productivity than those that don't have location flexibility. More importantly, it really hits on talent retention. If you're a manager trying to retain people in tough economic times, giving them benefits like flexibility that don't cost you anything, that yield better productivity, that yield retention of top talent is a competitive advantage.

Erin Delmore: Brian, I've read a lot of your work and you've argued that in the future, the manager's role will be more important than ever, so explain that to us.

Brian Elliott: Historically, it was a relatively straightforward job except it was still hard. Most middle managers were people that got to be promoted up because they're the most senior person in a team. They got told, "Congratulations, you're the manager." They probably didn't get much training and the job was monitor whether people are showing up on time, leaving on time and report up status on projects. They now need to be coaches. Your job as a manager is to coach a team in terms of their performance to give them greater clarity around what their roles are to help them instill purpose. And honestly, it's to do something that's really hard. It's to build psychological safety, to build trust within a team of very different individuals. And that's a very different set of skills to have. That old job was far easier. That second job of being a coach of helping build trust among diverse groups of people, that's really hard stuff and we don't train people very well in doing it. We don't support them as much as we should. And so that's why I think we're seeing this crisis that's continued to build on all of us.

Erin Delmore: Okay, Brian, so I'm going to give you a magic wand that you can wave over the American workforce. Tell me what are three things senior leaders could do today to bolster their minimum managers.

Brian Elliott: I think from a senior leadership perspective, one of the things to do is get in and listen. The biggest thing that's going to help us build trust and transparency is as a senior leader, getting in and understanding and talking with the front lines of your organization. Second is focus on outcomes, not attendance. Let's really stop talking about how many days a week somebody needs to be in the office. Let's instead talk about how are we giving middle managers the skills they need to train people on outcomes. That is a requirement for senior leadership too though, because it means that as senior leaders, we've got to be clear about what outcomes we're after. The third is invest in infrastructure to support your middle managers. It's not okay just to take people and say, "Congratulations Jane, you're now the manager of the team because you're the most senior person. Good luck with it." We need to give them training, tactical tools and tips to help them understand how to run a weekly one-on-one with their team members. But we also need to give them support networks. So you can do this by the way, digitally, really well, creating groups, cohorts of frontline managers, giving them a couple of people who are a little more experienced to help coach them, guide them on their journey. They can then build a network of people. And doing that with intent is a lot better than hoping that it happens because they happen to find somebody that can support them in doing that.

Erin Delmore: More support like skills training and maybe even not focusing so much on who's in the office, when, Brian says that could help middle managers feel a little less burned out. But for some middle managers, that advice is coming too late to keep them around. We'll hear from one of them next. The pandemic's been tough for a lot of us, a pile of new stressors, even for those who've been lucky enough to keep their jobs. And as we just heard from Brian, it's been tough for bosses, too. Case in point, Michelle Gullette. She's based in Tampa, Florida and says she was pushed to the brink before saying goodbye to her corporate middle management job in April. We reached out to her former employer and didn't hear back. Michelle, what was it like being a middle manager during the pandemic?

Michelle Gullette: So I was managing in a marketing department as a senior manager managing for direct reports. It was difficult because one, we were all home and I was also working with a team of fairly new people. I was the most senior on this channel marketing team other than our direct team boss. So being the most senior on a team and leading a team of people who have been hired during the pandemic remotely, I managed three people that I'd actually never met in person for the first six months.

Erin Delmore: So tell us a little bit about how this job took a toll on you.

Michelle Gullette: I got to the point after about six to eight months of that level of stress that I realized that I just don't want to do it anymore. There's easier paths to making money and having a good life than working 18 hour days where, because at that middle management level, you are expected to produce a lot of work product, but you're also trying to delegate and manage and administer the work of however many people you have on your team. So it's just honestly feels very thankless at times and you're kind of towing that line where you're like one of leadership. And at the same time, because I got promoted, I used to be one of them, so maintaining a distance from people who are my former peers and now they reported to me was also pretty stressful and difficult in a lot of ways.

Erin Delmore: That feels like something that could resonate with a lot of managers.

Michelle Gullette: Yeah, yeah. I believe a lot of people really burn out at that manager to director hop because you go from kind of being an individual contributor to being really a subject matter expert. And then you have to be a subject matter expert, but start learning management skills. And then if you do make it to that director, subject matter expert doesn't matter anymore. You have to develop a lot different skill set and learning how to leverage relationships, gain alignment throughout the broader organization and know who your decision makers are. And frankly, I like to work individually and realized that being an individual contributor is a little bit more my speed. I like to do things myself, know that it's done right, do it on my own time and not be beholden to five, six, 10 other people's schedules to get things done. So it was kind of a wake up call for me to be honest. Because I always thought I wanted it for the past six years and then I got 90% there and I'm like, "Okay, I don't actually want this." Yeah, I think I actually had probably a little existential crisis there.

Erin Delmore: Tell me about that existential crisis.

Michelle Gullette: When it started hitting me was I got assigned to be a project lead in late December for a 52 week project charter. And it was a great opportunity for my career. I really did enjoy it. It was stressful. We had weekly deliverables every Friday afternoon. And I think the pivotal moment for me was my son's birthday. He was turning 12 on March 3rd and it was a Thursday night. And because I'd been so stressed about this project, I hadn't planned anything for his birthday. I didn't have a birthday cake and I was like, "I'll just do it on Saturday. I'll take him shopping to GameStop or whatever." But my son, when I got home from school, he said, "What? There's no birthday cake." And then he went, "This is the worst birthday ever." And it just hit me. I was like, you know what? I don't want this life. So that was kind of my moment where I was like yeah, I think I'm going to step back because I have the rest of my life to work and very limited time here with my son. So if I want to take a step back in my career and just enjoy life, I can pick it back up. I'm only going to be 40 when he's 18, so I have plenty of time left to work and drive my career if that's what I want. But that was the moment where it hit me and I was like, yeah, I'm out.

Erin Delmore: What are you doing now? How does it suit you?

Michelle Gullette: I do work from home a hundred percent remote and we are a smaller organization. I do lead all of our marketing efforts and I have third party agencies that I work with, but I don't have any direct reports, so I like it. I think it's going to suit me for hopefully the next three or four years. And at that time, if I change my mind and want to be back into management, honestly, I would say I'm kind of on cruise control with my career right now. And if you would've asked me a year ago, I would've been embarrassed by that statement, but at this point I think it's totally fine for this stage of my life.

Erin Delmore: Congratulations on finding what you want and I hope that you have the best 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th birthday with your son and beyond.

Michelle Gullette: Yeah, I look forward to that. I feel like I'm in a good place. The work life balance is better. And it's like a lot of things in life. You don't really necessarily know what you want until you actually get there and are faced with the reality of what you thought you wanted.

Erin Delmore: So Michelle found some balance by re-wracking her work to better suit her life. And she no longer has to manage a group of people or deal with office politics. And speaking of politics, in this election season, we're talking about how to bring down the temperature when talk politics takes place in the office. That's in our pro tip next politics. It's right up there with religion and money on the list of things you don't talk about at the dinner table. But does the same rule apply at work? Maybe not. Johnny Taylor is the President and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management and he's seeing an increase in people's willingness to discuss politics at work. Johnny, what does your data show?

Johnny Taylor: Not only are we seeing a general increase, is more telltale is that we have seen a significant uptick in employees complaining about these discussions, that they are leading to toxicity in the workplace, that people feel as if they're being openly harassed, alienated, isolated, or discriminated against on the basis of their political affiliation or political view on any particular topic. For example, nearly a quarter of US workers have personally reported experiencing political affiliation bias in the workplace, and that includes preferential treatment or negative treatment. Now you may say, "Well, that's not a big deal." Well, that number has doubled since 2019.

Erin Delmore: Well, we can run this back since 2019. We have of course gone through the COVID pandemic. We've had the divisive 2020 election. What else comes to mind for you on why we're seeing this uptick now?

Johnny Taylor: Well, so the reality is we've told people to bring their whole selves to work. So guess what? They took us at our word. In times past, you didn't bring your whole self to work. And when you brought that whole self to work, you exercised a certain amount of discretion in what you discussed and the passion with which you discussed it. Well, that's all gone now. And the result is people are hashing it out. And if they want to say you're an idiot, to use their words for supporting said politician, then they say it. There are no laws that prevent you from saying to someone, "I don't like you. I won't promote you. I'll pay you less because I don't agree with you on political issues."

Erin Delmore: So whose job is it to ensure not only civility in the workplace, but to make sure that these ill effects don't come down on employees?

Johnny Taylor: The ultimate responsibility from an a workplace standpoint is for the organization to establish cultural norms, rules, if you will, rules by which we will agree to engage or not. And so yes, employees should all individually be cognizant of toxicity in the workplace and being more tolerant of or embracing diversity. Political diversity is another dimension of diversity. But ultimately the employers, through their HR functions and their other people leaders, have to make clear that civility is a requirement.

Erin Delmore: Johnny, do some companies have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to this?

Johnny Taylor: Yes, for sure. Now, small number of companies, but in fact it's becoming a little bit of its own trend.

Erin Delmore: Is that the solution? Or do new issues arise once that policy is put into effect?

Johnny Taylor: So it is a solution. I think it's suboptimal, but none of the solutions are perfect. What we really recommended that you put in place, safeguards, guardrails to tell people civility, that you can disagree without being disagreeable. That we don't have debates, instead, we have discussions. Like we can actually teach our workforce how to have these conversations yet still create a harmonious work environment and not lead to people opting out or feeling forced out because they are in the minority in a particular environment.

Erin Delmore: So what advice do you have for workers?

Johnny Taylor: One, don't ignore that temperature is running a little hot. If your candidate wins, be mindful, fellow colleague, about how you show up to work. Do you throw it in people's faces? Do you brag? Do you attack, put salt in the wound? No, because it could very well be you if your candidate had lost. We recommend very highly that on an individual employee basis, that you do your best to embrace diversity and that we show up like adults because that's who by and large we bring into the workplace are adults.

Erin Delmore: Speaking of politics, the Biden administration is looking to make a big change that could impact gig workers by classifying more of them as employees. But it's setting up a big battle over the meaning of independent contractor. That's next week. Like the show? Tell your friends to subscribe and give us a five star review on your favorite platform. As we work as a production of the Wall Street Journal. Charlotte Gartenberg is our producer. Jonathan Sanders is solid, solid as a rock, and he's our booking producer. Scott Saloway is our supervising producer. Jessica Fenton is our sound engineer. Our music was composed by Hansdale Hsu. I'm Erin Delmore. See you next time.