Abstract Given the high demand for 21st century knowledge work to be completed in group settings, combined with the low percentage of teams who reach high performing status, the stakes are higher than ever as teams attempt to deliver on their organization’s strategic, financial, and community objectives. Researchers have hypothesized repeatedly that the conditions in which…
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The Need for Developing Leaders
Businesses spend more on developing leaders than any other expense item in their training and development budgets (Ardichvili et al., 2016). Such significant investment demonstrates the influence leaders assert on organizational outcomes (Holt et al., 2018; Manning & Curtis, 2019). Like other processes, leadership is subject to an input-mediator-output logic such that output quality is…
Leading from the Middle
Leading from the middle contrasts with top-down leadership and bottom-up leadership (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2019). De Nobile (2019) agreed, asserting middle leaders have distinctly unique roles from senior leaders. Scholars described middle managers as “stuck in the middle” of the organizational hierarchy, required to balance senior management demands with followers’ realities (Way et al., 2018)….
Unique Attributes of Middle Leadership
Middle leadership is a unique construct with attributes distinct from top-down or bottom-up leadership (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2019). While middle leadership shares some attributes with leaders at all levels, the unique attributes of middle leadership occur due to middle leaders’ position in the organizational hierarchy (Berraies, 2020; Grootenboer et al., 2019; Kieran et al., 2020;…
The Nature of Middle Leadership
In recent years, scholars and practitioners have shifted terminology from ‘middle managers’ to ‘middle leaders,’ representing the changing nature of middle managers’ roles as becoming increasingly complex (Chilvers et al., 2018; De Nobile, 2018). Middle managers are all levels of management between front-line supervisors and the top of the organization (Kieran et al., 2020). Middle…
Middle Managers’ Role Conditions in the Middle of the Organizational Hierarchy
A distinguishing characteristic of middle leadership is its position in the middle of the organizational hierarchy and the unique conditions related thereto (Jaser, 2020; Kieran et al., 2020). Jaser (2020) argued middle leaders are stuck in a “web of relationships” generating conflicting demands (Jaser, 2020). Bryant (2018) also asserted the realities of middle leaders’ organizational…
Middle Managers’ Leadership Competencies in the Literature
Middle managers are expected to demonstrate a wide set of leadership competencies to motivate themselves and their employees to improved performance (Diskiene et al., 2019). Middle leaders require competencies ranging from strategic to interpersonal, including thinking and acting strategically; demonstrating strong character (e.g., trustworthiness and integrity); building a positive team culture and encouraging positive relationships…
Middle Manager Barriers to Exhibiting Leadership Competencies
In both the business and the education literature, researchers identified middle manager barriers to exhibiting leadership competencies. In business, barriers identified in order of most to least include: emphasis on administrative, operational, and managerial work (Alvesson & Jonsson, 2018; Tsuda & Sato, 2020); excessive work load leading to lack of time to engage in leadership…
Middle Leader Role Description
Middle Leader Role Description in the Business Literature The middle leader role description in the business literature appears more often as middle managers exercising leadership than as middle leaders or they use the terms middle manager and middle leader interchangeably. Middle managers are all levels of management between front-line supervisors and the top of the…
Defining Middle Leadership and Middle Leadership Competencies
Defining Middle Leadership Middle leadership is a unique leadership construct including the leadership responsibilities, behaviors, and competencies required by middle managers to perform as leaders in the middle of the organizational hierarchy (De Nobile, 2018; Kieran et al., 2020; Pavlopoulos, 2020; Thornton et al., 2018; Wei, 2018). Middle leadership – or “leading from the middle”…