By 
There is a growing awareness of the critical role middle managers play in the organization. Senior management depends on middle managers to execute the organization's vision and strategy. The middle managers could be described as the success engine of the organization.
However, most companies are dissatisfied with the performance of their middle managers. According to a McKinsey study, middle managers "are less committed to staying with their companies, less enthusiastic about their work, less satisfied with their performance"
Many things or a combination of them may be responsible for middle managers' failures. Let's take a look at 5 reasons why middle managers fail.
Poor Work Ethics
Work ethics is contagious. The leader's work ethic sets the work climate within the team. Leaders with strong work ethics are hardworking, highly motivated, and produce consistently high-quality results that foster a productive work culture. Their approach to work acts as a source of motivation for others. Bad work ethics have a cascade effect on the workplace, creating an atmosphere that encourages mediocrity, unethical behavior, and toxicity that dips employee morale and slows down productivity. Leaders who demonstrate unethical behavior lose credibility making it difficult to drive their team to achieve significant results. Unethical leaders are unable to effectively engage their team causing a range of problems ranging from low morale, high turnover, and decreased productivity to financial losses.
Bad Communication Skill
A middle-level leader lacking in communication skills is incapable of overcoming communication barriers to establishing clear expectations while conveying vital information regarding workplace success. The absence of clear goals may lead to workplace errors or completing tasks inadequately. When people know their roles and what's expected of them, they square up to the task. Bad communication skills often lead to misrepresentation of facts resulting in inefficiencies, conflicts, and poor team collaboration. In a multicultural environment, a leader with bad communication skills finds it difficult to effectively galvanize diverse perspectives and cultures into one strong and well-bonded team This leads to the death of mutual respect, low collaboration, and innovation. Lack of transparency and active listening increases the chances of excluding valuable perspectives, which may result in bad decisions and low innovation. Their inability to work across boundaries can lead to misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and errors in the workplace. A leader lacking good communication skills often suffers employee mistrust, absenteeism, low team engagement, and ultimately low productivity. He is incapable of fostering collaboration and sustaining a healthy and productive workplace. Poor communication can hinder workflow efficiency especially when instructions or directions are unclear or conveyed through an improper communication channel.
Incompetence
Competence is a major driver of success. The possession of excellent technical skills earns the leader respect and inspires followers. An incompetent leader has a demotivating effect on the team and may lead to a decline in productivity and low staff retention. Incompetent leaders fail to articulate goals, develop strategy plans, set clear expectations, and communicate objectives. This results in ambiguity leaving room for low engagement, dangerous operational miscalculations, low efficiency, and poor results. Additionally, middle managers who lack competence in the art of leadership act without empathy, play favorites, and are unapproachable. This creates a strong emotional distance, alienating themselves from their team members and leading to low morale, lack of collaboration, resentment, and low productivity. When team members lack faith in their leadership, morale suffers, and productivity declines. Incompetent middle leaders are tactless, bossy, impolite, unclear, and agitated thereby creating a hostile environment that leaves employees disgruntled and unmotivated. This makes it impossible for them to instill confidence in the people leading to poor productivity.
Weak People skill
People skill is pivotal in leadership success. If a leader can successfully navigate the different behavioral layers of the workplace he is likely to find it easier to build strong relationships and drive a high-performance team. The ability to engage in meaningful conversations with other people, and demonstrate empathy, patience, and active listening, helps a leader to build trust and deepen interpersonal connections with others making it easier to work as a team.
People with poor people skills are unable to avoid misunderstandings, resolve conflicts, and earn the cooperation needed to achieve real results. The absence of this skill can lead to miscommunication, discontent, inefficiency, and low productivity.
Lack of Training
The role of a middle manager is challenging, it requires being both a proactive leader to direct reports and an engaged follower to the top management, simultaneously. The complexity of this role creates the need for constant coaching and training without which failure is inevitable. Whilst middle-level managers are there to accomplish set objectives through people, they also have aspirations to achieve significant progress in their careers. They aspire to move up the ladder in the organization's structure. Without promising training opportunities, they get demoralized leading to low productivity. The absence of training leaves middle managers unprepared for their role, including being disadvantaged in taking on changes associated with operations. Untrained leaders are unable to deliver high-quality performance consistently. By not being equipped with adequate knowledge and skills they also cannot provide coaching assistance for their team members translating to low performance and low staff morale. It may also result in ineffective communication, and a lack of problem-solving abilities leaving team members dissatisfied, demotivated, and unproductive. Other impacts of a lack of training for middle-level leaders may include high employee turnover, compliance issues, safety risks, and cost inefficiency.
A robust, well-equipped middle manager is what every organization requires to achieve excellent results while remaining competitive. Investing in developmental programs, well-thought-out welfare packages, and paying attention to middle managers' concerns will play a major role in improving middle leaders' performance and fetching your organization the desired objective.
