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December 7 2003 - Middle managers should take a good look at their own management skills instead of trying to solve their staffing problems by recruiting better staff. So says Monash University’s Professor Phyllis Tharenou, an organisational behaviour expert, commenting on a recent web poll.

52% of respondents to a recent Australian Human Resources Institute web poll said that middle managers have most difficulty "managing poorly performing staff."

Reported in AHRI’s December magazine HRMonthly, Tharenou says that if staff are performing poorly, "... one factor may be poor selection decisions, but often people do not perform well because of the management style."

Commenting about the same poll, managing director of The Nous Group, Tim Orton, points out that "middle managers face both ways" up to senior management and down to the front line - "they are the ones who make or mire change."

Orton says that middle managers are critical links in an organisation because they can either "win the trust of the do-ers at the front line" or be the "layer of clay ... blocking everything."

Tim Orton considers that middle managers need to be good at five things:

Translators: "...translating meaning down to their followers."

Directors: "... who inspire and coach the actors how to act, but do not act themselves."

Mechanics: "... maintain the momentum of their people and their unit."

Pioneers: "... need to know when to step out and expect their followers to follow, and when to step back and let the followers lead themselves."

Philosophers: "... know the right thing to do for the organisation and their people … and have the courage to act on their decisions."

Just 3% of AHRI members who responded to the poll thought that middle managers had most difficulty "achieving goals and getting results."

This compared with the following beliefs about managers' main source of difficulty:

"having the courage to make hard decisions" (19%)

"keeping high performers motivated" (13%)

"delegating tasks effectively" (13%)

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