We Found 6 Key Skills That Create Successful Mid-Level Managers

If you have a running business, chances are you’ve developed your fair share of various business strategies that needed to be properly set up, communicated, tested and implemented. If this is the case, it is also highly likely that the majority of those strategies didn’t deliver as well as you initially hoped.

In fact, up to 90% of strategies fail to get implemented and executed successfully, which puts a company at a competitive disadvantage and results in wasted resources. The weight of those failed strategic efforts typically falls onto middle-level management.

Middle managers are those critical cogs that need to properly understand the end-goals of executives and stakeholders — and then figure out how to deploy the talent below them in order to achieve those goals.

So, Where’s The Problem?

The rub here is two-fold:

• Far too many modern organizations do not have sufficient levels of rigorousness when determining criteria for selecting the right person for a middle management role.
• Business executives and leaders often lack the right frameworks and analytical tools for assessing competency levels to support their decision-making process.

As Deloitte reports, the first problem can be solved by allocating much value to the “hard-core” competencies and defining those competencies for each role. As much as 89 percent of best-in-class businesses are deploying this tactic, and it obviously works well.

The solution for the second issue is investing in the right data analytics software that business leaders can deploy to gain valuable insights into which candidates are truly best fits for the role. Osterus is a perfect solution for this task as it can help businesses quickly, accurately and reliably sort through the candidate pools and highlight those applicants who are most likely to outperform others for a specific middle management position.

The skills that these companies need to focus on are the following.

High Systematicity in Thinking and Acting

Being in the “middle” of a company’s management architecture implies operating within processes and chains of command that go both up and down. This position requires the following:

• Clearly seeing the big picture.
• Widening the perspective in a multilateral manner.
• Recognizing patterns within operations, processes, relationships, communication channels, etc.
• Handling all the trade-offs that are an integral component of the business complexities.
• Abandoning the need to always please everyone, without losing empathy for others in the process.
• Being parsimonious in resource spending.

However, the aforementioned traits need to be complemented by:

A Pool of Soft Skills

Operational knowledge and experience are an obvious must, but having soft skills makes or breaks a successful manager. Some of those soft skills to consider include:

• Communication
• Transparency
• Appreciating and encouraging teamwork
• Listening Skills
• Consistency
• Reliability
• Trustworthiness
• Ability to accept responsibility

Proper communication skills are perhaps the most important to tackle here. In order to communicate well with both upper management and lower levels of the workforce framework, middle managers need to have a high degree of emotional intelligence and listening powers.

They need to be able to engage a team as a whole but also individuals on a more granular level so expected results can ensue.

The Capacity for Flexibility

Great mid-level managers should be able to respond well to change.

The modern business landscape is a dynamic one where mergers and acquisitions happen all the time, and where new products, services, relocations and pivots are often inevitable. Change is the only constant and adaptability is critical for the survival and progress of modern businesses.

The Knack for Innovation

Of course that meeting the established KPIs, handling reporting the right way, and other basic management skills are crucial (to the point that I didn’t even include them in this article), but the ability to identify new and more efficient ways of achieving those tasks is where true MVPs dwell.

Developing an innovative mindset, however, is not an easy task for a manager, nor is it easy for the decision-makers to recognize this quirk in an applicant. But once you find an innovative person for the position, you are one big step closer to beating direct competitors.

The Courage for Proactiveness

In order for an innovative mindset to be tangibly deployed, a person needs to have the courage to act upon their new ideas. Innovation is a rather passive trait without proactiveness.

Now, putting new ideas to the test can be resource-heavy as the main challenge here is uncertainty.

To be able to figure out if the new idea is truly an innovation — without wasting too much time or resources and with a positive influence on ROI — is another key aspect of being a star manager.

And this cannot be achieved without the necessary confidence and courage.

Self-Awareness

This is a trait to bind them all. One must be capable of objective self-assessment for all the previous skills and characteristics I mentioned above. One must be able to genuinely understand their own levels of applicable knowledge, experience, motivations, strengths/weaknesses, style and preferences.

This enables you to:

• Make optimal day-to-day decisions
• Leverage your quirks
• Minimize weaknesses

Once this is achieved, mapping the big picture and navigating the mid-level management realm becomes much easier for everyone in the equation.

Rounding Up

Middle-level leaders have the opportunity to collaborate with all other managers and most of the workforce, putting them in the best position to truly impact operational processes and improve them from within. The applicants who manage to do so almost always enjoy long careers. And the companies who employ them? They grow and prosper.

Looking for more information about how Osterus can help you analyze your competitors and get actionable insights for your own growth strategy? Feel free to contact me directly or schedule a demo of our product here and experience the power of workforce analysis first-hand.