Rethink the middle manager role ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌   ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 

Delivering actionable insights on the day’s news AS ONLY MCKINSEY CAN Brought to you by Liz Hilton Segel, chief client officer and managing partner, global industry practices, & Homayoun Hatami, managing partner, global client capabilities Happy New Year from Only McKinsey, the newsletter previously called On Point. We’re grateful to be back in your inbox kicking off 2024 with a renewed commitment to deliver prescient business insights on news of the day—as only McKinsey can. What matters to middle managers In the news • No satisfaction. As Fortune notes, being in the middle isn’t easy. Just ask burned-out middle managers who report the lowest job satisfaction among workers, reveals Glassdoor, the US workplace rating website. An increase in “accidental managers” may partly explain the trend: an unrelated survey of 4,500 UK workers found that about 80% of managers received too little training for the job that they were promoted into. Unless employers address midlevel leaders’ stress, they may lose them, one of the authors of the Glassdoor report said. [Fortune] Many middle managers prioritize autonomy, responsibility, and compensation over advancement. On McKinsey.com • Battling bureaucracy. Squeezed between executives and frontline workers, middle managers are a critical yet often neglected group. “We’ve layered so many responsibilities onto them,” asserts McKinsey partner Emily Field, who along with partner Bryan Hancock and senior partner emeritus Bill Schaninger wrote Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work. As a result, managers have little time to develop talent. See the latest McKinsey Quarterly Five Fifty for what companies can do to help mend the middle-manager role. Uplift middle managers —Edited by Belinda Yu, editor, Atlanta Was this forwarded to you? Sign up here. Or send us feedback—we’d love to hear from you. Follow our thinking Copyright © 2023 | McKinsey & Company, 3 World Trade Center, 175 Greenwich Street, New York, NY 10007