Stop Managing Up. Lead from the Middle.

Organisations are firing their middle managers and calling it efficiency. Middle managers are carrying out orders they don't believe in and calling it professionalism. Both are wrong — and this dismissive perspective of the work of Middle Management is costing everyone far more than they realise. 

In this episode, Shiao-Yin Kuik makes a case for what great leadership in the middle actually looks like, and shares a strategic framework for Middles wanting to change things in their organisation.

About The Soul at Work Podcast
Close the gap between what you value and how you actually work. If you're the person in your organisation who sees the human cost and is done with solutions that treat the symptoms of the problem, not the source, this show is built for you.

Ready to go further than a podcast — training programmes and consulting calls are available at www.ourcommonground.com.sg.

LinkedIn | Common Ground Consultancy
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Transcript

Speaker 0:03

Welcome to Soul at Work. I'm Shiao -Yin Kuik.

Speaker 0:06

This podcast is for every leader out there who sees the gap between what they deeply value and how they actually work every day.

Speaker 0:14

So if you're done settling for all these surface fixes and you just want to go to the root of your work issues, then please join me. Each episode I'll take you through one theme all the way through the good, the bad, the ugly, and I'll leave you with one beautifully practical strategy you can bring to work tomorrow.

Speaker 0:32

This is not all talk. I built this podcast for practice. So let's go.

The One Thing: Stop Managing. Start Leading.

Speaker 0:41

If there's one thing I want you to take from this episode, it's this.

Speaker 0:45

If you are in Middle Management and you're feeling increasingly torn apart by the Top and the grounds demands, and you are so sick of carrying out decisions you don't agree with, I want you to start leading from wherever you are.

Speaker 0:59

Stop managing the situation.

Speaker 1:01

Stop waiting for someone to show up and save the day, make that decision, call things out.

Speaker 1:06

Start becoming that leader you are waiting for them to be.

Speaker 1:11

Be that leader you have always needed and wanted, but never got to have.

Speaker 1:16

Because here's what I've learned after two decades of working with leaders at every level and being a leader myself through good times and bad.

Speaker 1:24

Leadership is not something that arrives with a change of job title.

Speaker 1:29

And leadership is definitely not a magic power that a fairy god CEO is going to give or take away from you.

Speaker 1:36

Leadership is a stance.

Speaker 1:38

It's a psychological choice that you make.

Speaker 1:40

It is a learnable, trainable, foundational skill, and it lives within every human being who chooses to practice it.

Speaker 1:49

Your practice as a leader begins the moment you look around at all that is broken around you and you finally decide:

Speaker 1:57

Enough is enough.

Speaker 1:58

Something must change around here, and you know what?

Speaker 2:02

It might as well begin with me.

The Good: The Hidden Power of the Middle Layer

Speaker 2:07

Alright, are you ready for the good?

Speaker 2:09

If you are part of the Middle layer of an organisation, you have no idea how powerful and necessary you are.

Speaker 2:18

Now, when I say system and organisation, I don't want you to think of organisations like a machine-like system. I want you to think of organisations more like an ecosystem, like a living human body. Because this metaphor gives you a far more helpful and enlivening picture of how true system power actually operates.

Speaker 2:41

When you see the organisation as a body, it's easy to think of the Top, say like the chairman or the director or you know the CEO as the brain, right? Taking in all this sensory data, making quick decisions, forming plans, sending out strategy signals. And it's probably easy for most of us to imagine the ground must be maybe the hands or the feet that end up executing all these external moves. Or maybe the ground are like the armies of like red or white blood cells and they are fixing all of this internal stuff.

Speaker 3:16

But what about the Middles? Like the middle managers. That's usually harder for people to describe or imagine.

Speaker 3:25

So I challenge you to imagine Middles are like the central nervous system and the musculoskeletal system that is working in sync every day to literally carry out the brain's strategies. This is like the amazing invisible combined framework of like the spinal cord, the bones, the joints, the muscles that make sure this magical daily relay race from brain signal to movements in the rest of the body is gonna go super smooth.

Speaker 3:57

Now, many of us may not fully see or understand what Middles do for work. Just like our body, we don't really think of the muscles and the skeletons and all the coordinating stuff that is happening under the surface.

Speaker 4:10

But you can rest assured, in every organisation, there are unseen Middles working really, really hard to transmit abstract signals from the Top into practical, actionable instructions for every other part of the body.

Speaker 4:24

So imagine like Middles like moving like muscles.

Speaker 4:28

Alright, guys, let's expand here. Okay, okay, now let's contract. Okay, we all have to push and push and push through this thing together. Wait, wait, wait, pull back, pull back.

Speaker 4:38

So it's a lot of heavy lifting and agile sprinting and reaching out and stretching.

Speaker 4:44

So Middles are always right in this thick of managing tensions every day, doing whatever it takes to carry out the latest abstract thing that the brains at the Top are thinking about.

Speaker 4:56

So without Middles, executive strategy from the Top stays as wishful thinking, not meaningful action.

Speaker 5:03

I want to stress this because so many people think of Middles as a layer of disposable tissue. So I want us to appreciate Middles as the organisation's main driver of muscular movement and action in the world. Middles make a difference between whether the organisation can operate collectively as a whole system to take a whole new action in the world or just stay paralysed as is.

Speaker 5:29

I connect this way of thinking to the work of organisational systems thinker Barry Oshry.

Speaker 5:36

I really love him and the way he thinks about the system.

Speaker 5:40

A core idea in his work is that total system power in an organisation requires every layer to do really specific jobs. So the Tops, like the CEO, the deputy director, the Tops must act like the developers of the system. And the Middles, like middle managers, like project leads, team heads, they must be the integrators of the system. And the ground, think of the executives who are like working the floor, right? They must be the fixers of the system.

Speaker 6:11

This is a whole system of leaders at work here. And when each layer leads its work well, the brainy head leading strategic development, the muscular middles leading coordination of the different parts, and the rest of the body leading problem solving on the ground, the whole body functions healthily. ]]]

Speaker 6:29

So power and leadership is present and must be practiced at every single layer and level of the body, not just the Top.

Speaker 6:38

We don't often associate Middles of strength and power and leadership, but the power to translate everything, integrate everything, and move everything as a whole system meaningfully in the real world is held and stewarded by the middle. So that's what leadership in the middle specifically looks like.

Speaker 6:56

I see this in my own small team. As the Top, I must lead my team with strategic directions. Yeah, but every day when I open my calendar in the morning, I actually follow the lead of what my Middles have determined I need to execute on. And that is because I know and I trust they have had multiple integrative conversations with each other, and thus they have greater integrated wisdom than I do on how to best operationalise my ideas into grounded daily work. They hold this connective tissue of timelines and budgets and client relationships and project details all grounded in plain old reality. I practice my leadership as a Top, but I must give my Middles space to also practice their leadership by supporting them to call their shots, make their recommendations, and even push back on me when necessary.

Speaker 7:50

So when the Top gives psychological safety and clear territory for Middles to practice leadership at their level, middles can really shine and get much more muscular in their practice as integrators of a system.

Speaker 8:04

And I cannot stress this enough. Behind every healthy, powerful, agile organisation is a well-defined muscular layer of strong, flexible leaders in the Middle. Alright,

The Bad: Why Middles Lose Their Authority

Speaker 8:21

so what's the bad news?

Speaker 8:23

Unfortunately, many organisations do not see Middle Management as a muscular layer, nor do they give them that space and the resources to take meaningful action in the world.

Speaker 8:35

A 2025 article by Aki Ito, chief correspondent at Business Insider, defending the need of Middle Management, by the way, opens with this sobering paragraph.

Speaker 8:46

"Few positions in corporate America are more thankless or more ridiculed than that of middle manager. Stuck between the CEO and everyone else in the office, they have long been derided as petty, powerless, thumb-twiddling bureaucrats whose job is to enforce the rules and crack the whip and stamp out any vestige of creativity or self-initiative. Middle management, the thinking goes, is make work for the mediocre."

Speaker 9:13

This dismissive view of Middle Management has made them an easy target for mass layoffs during tough times. And tech companies like Meta and X, they're not ashamed at all about their slash and burn of the middle layer, either eliminating middle managers or demoting them to the ranks of the supervised, or maybe just stacking on them more groundwork on Top of current managerial work.

Speaker 9:35

Gartner predicts that by end 2026, we're going to see 20% of organisations eliminating more than half of their Middle Management positions based on the assumption that AI integration is gonna fill that gap.

Speaker 9:50

Personally, I say good luck with that.

Speaker 9:54

Like muscles, we may not appreciate or realise how much heavy lifting middle managers do for us every day. We may only realise how much we needed their invisible work, you know, when we experience sudden muscular or bone loss.

Speaker 10:09

Things may look bad for Middle Managers now in the corporate world, but they may look far worse for the organisations trimming off the muscular layer that they have mistaken for administrative fat.

Speaker 10:21

A 2025 Korn Ferry study argues that losing the Middle Management layer so rapidly and carelessly will quickly lead to employee confusion and dissatisfaction, and all of this will ultimately affect productivity.

Speaker 10:36

Senior executives at the Top may find themselves having to pick up the daily responsibilities their middles used to do on their behalf, but they just never knew about it. Korn Ferry reports that because of this new and unexpected workload, 43% of senior executives now doubt they have the ability to fulfill their responsibilities as a Top. And 37% of employees on the Ground say that the lack of managers has now left them feeling d irectionless.

Speaker 11:04

Another interesting stat from that Korn Ferry report is that 80% of employees agree that a trusted manager is the number one reason they choose to stay at your organisation and stay excited and engaged and productive at work. So losing a great Middle Manager can really be a trigger for losing many other great employees. And if organisations were indiscriminate in their firing of the M iddle, a drastically slim down organisation today can really mean a big fat leadership crisis tomorrow.

Speaker 11:38

So I have a feeling there will be some real remorse from some Tops when they discover how much institutional memory, relational glue, connective tissue, and operational wisdom walks out of the door with every good Middle that they carelessly let go. Those are things that AI will not have, and hiring a replacement Middle layer will be some costly karma.

Speaker 12:06

But before we put all of the blame on the organisations doing the firing, we also have to ask an uncomfortable question. How did Middles end up with such an unflattering cultural reputation in the first place?

Speaker 12:19

And how might Middles themselves have contributed to their own crisis where so many organisations got so confident that firing entire middle layers would make little difference to mission success?

Speaker 12:32

I think that Middles don't always advocate clearly and powerfully for what their layer is seeing, doing, or needing in the system. Because many Middles still think their main job is management, not leadership.

Speaker 12:47

There's a very good definition of the difference between managing and leading that I like from the world of Gestalt-based Organisation Development that I was trained in. Ready for it? Here it is.

Speaker 13:00

To manage is to work within a predefined boundary.

Speaker 13:05

And to lead is to work with the boundary, on the boundary, at the boundary, or through the boundary.

Speaker 13:13

Basically, you're not accepting that the boundary is, I can't question it. Right?

Speaker 13:18

To lead is to say, here is the boundary, and when necessary, I will shift that boundary. So Middles who act as order takers and message passers in the system, who are managing up and managing down and managing peers and managing expectations, managing projects, managing their own temper, you know, they are not necessarily leading.

Speaker 13:43

And there's nothing wrong with managing within a predefined boundary and accepting those boundaries unchallenged. But every sensible manager knows that there is a time to clearly and powerfully address and even challenge the boundaries that you have been given to work with. This could be boundaries of the resources you've been given, or the boundaries of work scope that keep expanding, or the boundaries of current ways of working that you find like a little bit unacceptable.

Speaker 14:14

So stepping into this moment when there is a boundary that must be addressed and named out loud, this is a call to leadership. So for Middles, it is absolutely within your job scope to discuss with the Tops which of these predetermined boundaries are getting in the way of your own ability to integrate their desired strategy with operational reality on the Ground.

Speaker 14:40

But when Middles keep quiet about these issues, they are abdicating their leadership and disempowering themselves. And this is actually what makes it so easy for so many people to disrespect and devalue the place of middles in the system.

Speaker 14:57

So what stops Middles from leading more powerfully in this way at their level?

Speaker 15:02

I can think of a couple of bad things.

Speaker 15:05

Sometimes it's their own self-doubt that holds them back. What do I know? The Tops are smarter than me, they're more experienced than me. Who am I to push back or make a recommendation? So they defer. Or they may just absorb whatever instructions come down. Or they execute orders without questioning, challenging, or presenting a more innovative way forward.

Speaker 15:32

Sometimes it's really about over-agreeableness. And what that means is you think it's your job to be this like lovely, friendly shock absorber between the Top and the Ground. Oh, let me take the heat from both sides. Let me politely smooth things over between them. Let me just try to keep the peace. And in trying to please everybody, they actually end up pleasing nobody. Least of all themselves. And you know what? Sometimes it's not them.

Speaker 16:06

Sometimes it's a mix of structural stupidity or structural threat. The organisation itself might be intentionally or unintentionally. It might be designed to maximise the Top's ability to give orders unquestioned. And the organisation actually minimises the middle's ability to disagree or challenge the system in a safe way.

Speaker 16:29

So it is no wonder that many middles simply give up. And you've probably met them. You've seen like the apathetic, "I'm just here for the regular pay cheque" Middle. You've also seen the complacent magic thinking, "Oh, it will all work out. The Tops will figure it out", Middle. Or maybe we have met the paper pushing, bureaucratic, let me just cover my ass Middle. Or we may have even met the dangerous two-faced middle who manages upwards with a smile but then gossips downward with a sneer. Like, "ah, what do these silly Tops know?" These are the Middles who have learned to survive by carrying out orders they do not believe in, and who choose to stay too quiet in front of Tops which could be abusive or cowardly or simply ignorant or incompetent. Middles have decided somewhere along the way that it is far safer for me to just manage my way through this mess rather than lead myself or lead anyone else through this.

Speaker 17:30

This stance of non-leadership in a situation that's just crying out for change is gonna work out really badly for everybody, not just for the Middle themselves, but really for the whole organisation. It also affects the general reputation of every middle in the system out there.

Speaker 17:51

When Middles consistently fail to exercise their power to integrate and lead a system from wherever they are, people at the Top and people at the Ground can start to wonder "why are Middles being paid so much to do so little for us?"

Speaker 18:06

And that might sting. But that is the tragic misunderstanding and missed opportunity that so many organisations secretly sit in.

The Ugly: When Middles Lose their Self

Speaker 18:21

Okay, are you ready for an even uglier truth?

Speaker 18:25

If you are a Middle who has spent way too long over-managing a thankless and powerless situation by being over-agreeable with people and over-absorbing of whatever task they throw at you, you will not just lose your authority and your allies in the organisation.

Speaker 18:43

Eventually, and much more crucially, you will lose your sense of self.

Speaker 18:50

Barry Oshry observed that the great challenge of middles is surviving a perpetual state of feeling torn. Torn with a capital T, right?

Speaker 19:01

Remember, Middles are at this daily epicentre of managing all these competing tensions between the Top and the Ground. So Middles may react by running back and forth and overworking and over-pleasing and over-absorbing whatever the sides are demanding from them.

Speaker 19:19

And if they keep doing this, they're going to end up sacrificing their own individual needs, thoughts and feelings and desires and values for the sake of integrating the system. And this is not a wise choice.

Speaker 19:35

For Barry Oshry, the first priority of the Middle is not to rush in to integrate the system. Not yet. Because the first and most important job of the Middle is to integrate one's own self. If the integrator Middle forgets to do that or wrongly assumes that sacrificing my personal desires is better for everyone, they are going to do a really poor job integrating everything and everyone.

Speaker 20:07

This is because our sense of individual selfhood is the very compass we need. Anyone's gonna need this, but especially the middles, right? You're gonna need this compass to lead yourself and anyone through any mess.

Speaker 20:24

Losing your self is the growing loss of your own truth, your own values, your own thoughts, your own feelings, your own desires, your own concerns. And when you let the system just lead you wherever it wants you to go, instead of you trying in small ways to also lead the system towards a far better position, you are going to feel increasingly despairing and dead inside.

Speaker 20:51

The loss of self happens not at once. It's slow the way muscles atrophy when they stop being used.

Speaker 20:59

I want you to try and recall any season in your life when you decided to stop bringing your intelligence and wisdom and values to work. You stopped voicing what you actually think. You stopped caring deeply about what could change. You became the wet blanket to every young, hopeful who still wants to do things well. You start operating out of tiredness and apathy and cynicism and saying, "Well, that's just how work is. That's just how upper management is. That's how life is. It doesn't get any better".

Speaker 21:34

And I understand that some of you listening might be in this position and you might be saying, Hey, wait here, I'm making a really tough, calculated choice to stay quiet and stay put in a system that would actually punish me quite painfully if I did try to speak up or push a boundary or lead change. So I totally get it that it's not going to be easy, convenient, or possible for Everyone to challenge or even exit an abusive or intolerant or maybe simply neglectful system. You may need the income. You may have people depending on you. And these are very real constraints that we must consider. And let's not minimise those things.

Speaker 22:18

Y ou may have done this out of practicality to survive a system.

Speaker 22:22

You may have told yourself that I'm just being realistic here.

Speaker 22:26

So really this challenge of when do I change things, when do I push back, this is something every one of us must discern for ourselves.

Speaker 22:36

But if you are feeling increasingly torn apart, right in the Middle, and struggling to figure out

Speaker 22:43

Should I stay and lead change or should I leave?

Speaker 22:46

I want you to reflect, what is my breaking point? Ask yourself, what are the early warning signs that tell me I have already crossed the line where the price I am paying in psychological and emotional well-being is starting to outweigh even the practical benefits I am getting in terms of financial security or job stability or even like team relationships. Because if you're already seeing those early warning signs or actually recognize that you are way past early warning signs and in deep, deep like trouble, then something must be said or done to change the situation.

Speaker 23:29

Talk to someone you love and trust about this decision. Do not go at this alone.

Speaker 23:33

And recognise that leaving is sometimes your greatest act of personal leadership. And if you do leave, leave in a way that stays true to your core values.

Speaker 23:44

Because sometimes it is your leaving that can lead others in a dysfunctional system to see that they can leave too.

Speaker 23:54

This final act of people basically saying to the system, enough is enough, we're not gonna put up with this anymore, this could be the signal that dysfunctional systems need to wake up and change.

The Beautiful: The Middle’s Three-Step Integration Strategy

Speaker 24:12

Okay, let's put all of that bad and ugly stuff aside and bring it all together in a beautiful and practical way forward.

Speaker 24:21

At the end of episode 1, Renewing the Soul at Work, I introduced a skill called Forming the Throughline.

Speaker 24:27

And I want to bring it back here.

Speaker 24:30

Forming the Throughline is a simple technique where you form this coherent and integrated true line of thoughts, feelings, and desired actions anchored in your core value.

Speaker 24:42

It helps you to integrate yourself so you can name what intrinsically matters most to you in a situation.

Speaker 24:49

Forming this Integrated Throughline is a crucial leadership skill for everyone, but especially crucial for Middles who are the integrator of the system.

Speaker 25:00

And I teach this exact skill in our Leading Effectively as Middle Managers workshop.

Speaker 25:06

So this is how it goes. How the Throughline works is to use the following structure to intentionally name these five things in sequence out loud to someone who needs to hear it.

Speaker 25:18

Number one, I notice, name a core indisputable fact about the situation.

Speaker 25:26

Number two, I think, and form a core thought or maybe an interpretation about the fact.

Speaker 25:34

Number three, I feel name a core emotion that lives underneath that thought.

Speaker 25:42

Number four, I want. State the concrete action or change you are asking for.

Speaker 25:49

And number five, I deeply value. Now anchor that whole through line in a core value that makes this matter.

Speaker 26:00

So, an example of how a Middle Manager could use the Throughline to integrate their disagreement with, let's say, senior management. It can sound something like this.

Speaker 26:12

I notice — this is the third major round of layoffs we've had over two years.

Speaker 26:18

I think — the impersonal way things were done is seriously damaging the productivity of all of the teams that have been left behind. They are distrustful of the organisation's ability to take care of them, they're frustrated about the extra work they now have to take on, and they are less willing to give as much as they used to in delivering on current projects.

Speaker 26:38

And I feel — similarly as them.

Speaker 26:43

I want — to revisit some of our earlier roadmaps and resource planning to prevent burnout among the surviving teams.

Speaker 26:52

I deeply value — efficiency just like you. And if we want things to stay as efficient post-layoff, we're gonna need more honest conversation around how we can look after our teams and manage the fallout.

Speaker 27:05

So that's an example of how you could practically apply that at work.

Speaker 27:11

How does this Throughline connect with Barry Oshry's beautiful advice for Middles?

Speaker 27:16

Remember, Oshry's advice was first integrate yourself.

Speaker 27:21

Now, after you have integrated yourself, then you go and integrate with other Middles in your organisation.

Speaker 27:30

And lastly, then you go and integrate your Tops and your Ground by helping them to talk to each other rather than use you as a glorified messenger boy between them.

Speaker 27:42

So Middles. Integrating yourself looks like use that Forming the Throughline skill we just talked about.

Speaker 27:49

When you see something you don't think is working, the first person you must talk to is yourself.

Speaker 27:55

So quieten yourself down and then reflect. Integrate yourself. What am I noticing? What am I thinking? What am I feeling? What am I wanting? And what do I deeply value? Why does this matter so much to me?

Speaker 28:10

Once you're clear on that, then you're ready to go to your peers in the Middle layer. And integrating with fellow Middles looks like maybe arranging a formal or an informal meeting with them, and really you're just exchanging with your peers.

Speaker 28:25

Hey, what are we noticing? I'm noticing this, are you noticing this? What are you thinking? What are you feeling? Are we all wanting the same things here? And what is it that you deeply value?

Speaker 28:38

So, what you want is to have this exchange of your peers so that you can get a much more integrated sense of what is going on on the whole of the organisation, what are all of the Middles seeing? And then you understand: hey, this is the conversation that we need to get the Tops and the Ground to talk to each other about, right?

Speaker 29:00

Now, now you can go to your Tops. And remember, your job is to help them be the developers of the system. So help them integrate themselves. It could sound like questions like "Boss, uh, what are you noticing? Uh, what are you thinking and feeling as you look at this situation? Could you share with me what you want? Can you tell me what you deeply value right now?" And then you can share what you've integrated from yourself as well as your middle peers, and then make a recommendation of how they could develop either you all in the Middle or those on the Ground through sharing resources, sharing skills, or sharing information. That's what the Tops can do for you.

Speaker 29:46

And then now you can also go to your Ground. Remember, your job is to help them be the fixers of the system. Help them integrate themselves by asking, "Hey Ground, tell me about the problems you are noticing. What do you think and feel about them? And what do you want to do to fix them? Tell me more about what you deeply value." Then you can share what you have integrated from yourself and your Middle peers or your Tops, and you can make a recommendation to them of how they could hopefully bring up the problem or the solution directly to the Top. Because sometimes it is best expressed by them and not you.

Speaker 30:23

So you want to find ways to facilitate the Top and the Ground to share with each other. Recommend them the best platforms to do it. Or you can even put together their responses, integrate their responses on their behalf if they need that help. Whatever you do, don't just pass messages along that you already know will just fragment their relationship and the rest of the organisation.

Speaker 30:45

You want to help them integrate with each other.

Speaker 30:48

And this is not just an act of powerful leadership from the Middle, it is an act of love.

Speaker 30:55

And remember, all of this is so much harder to do if you did not integrate yourself first and operate from your core values. You also needed to integrate with your fellow Middle so you don't feel I'm doing this all alone.

Speaker 31:12

Organisational dysfunction is not going to end in one conversation. It's going to take multiple conversations over time.

Speaker 31:19

But the conversation that kickstarts the whole process of change doesn't have to start with someone from the Top.

Speaker 31:26

It can be led by someone in the Middle or even the Ground who decides enough is enough. We can all do better than this. And there are things we can start changing today, and it's going to start with me.

The Closing: Go Lead Us From the Middle

Speaker 31:44

Alright, let's bring this to a close.

Speaker 31:46

I know today could have been a really tough lesson for some of you.

Speaker 31:51

Choosing to lead change rather than just manage things is not fun at all. And it's not easy, but it is worth it.

Speaker 32:00

You know, I named this podcast Soul at Work specifically as a reminder for myself and everyone out there listening that there are souls at work. We are souls at work. We're not human resources, we're not cogs in the system, we're not hamsters on wheels, not minions, and a million other horrible dehumanising ways I have heard organisations talk about people at work.

Speaker 32:24

We are souls and we are worthy of more than mere survival. We are built to thrive and to help others thrive too.

Speaker 32:33

Philosopher Dallas Willard defined the soul as the thing that integrates all of our separate parts, our will, our mind, our body, our values, our relationships, into a single, unified, functioning, healthy life.

Speaker 32:48

And this is why integration matters so much to me as a practice and why I feel so much for Middles who are charged with this very special, poetic, and underrated calling to be the integrator of the organisational system.

Speaker 33:06

So, Middles, please do not sell yourself short.

Speaker 33:11

At your very, very best, you are no less than the greatest protectors, defenders, and integrators of an organisation's soul.

Speaker 33:21

So please go on and lead us all from the middle.

Speaker 33:28

If this episode has named something that you totally recognise in your reality as a Middle Manager, or maybe you are a Top who sincerely wants to do better for your Middle Manager layers and you're looking for a way to help them, then join us for Leading Effectively as Middle Managers.

Speaker 33:45

It's a two-day programme where I'll help you work on how to better understand this context of Tops, Middles, and Grounds, will share peer insights, and I want to teach practical skills and frames to navigate the messy middle and help you lead from wherever you are.

Speaker 34:03

Thanks for listening. If you want to go further than the podcast, join us for our training programmes, or you can book us for an online consulting call at www.ourcommonground.com.sg. Hope to see you.