Your host, Sri Chellappa, talks with the Human Resources Director, Tina Greer. Middle management often finds itself in the corporate shadow, outshone by the allure of top leadership and the frontline hustle. Yet, as Tina explored, these managers are the linchpin of any organization, directly influencing frontline teams and shaping the customer experience. It's high time we spotlight their pivotal role and prioritize their development.
The crux of the conversation centered on strategies for cultivating a strong middle management cadre. Tina underscored the critical need for senior management to support this endeavor actively. She highlighted essential skills for middle managers, such as problem-solving, effective feedback, communication, and relationship-building, all of which have a direct impact on employee retention.
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[00:00:16] Welcome to the People Strategy Leaders Show.
[00:00:20] I'm your host Srikant Chellappa, founder and president of Engagedly and a serial entrepreneur in technology, films and music.
[00:00:27] This is where we talk to people leaders, business strategists and organizational savants about leading in the time of change.
[00:00:33] What is working? What is not working? And more importantly, what we should be thinking about.
[00:00:39] Stick around to the end of the show. We will reveal how you can be our next guest.
[00:00:44] And now let's engage.
[00:00:47] Hello and welcome to People Strategy Leaders Podcast. I'm your host Srikant Chellappa.
[00:00:52] I'm joined today with Tina Greer. Tina is an HR leader whose extensive expertise in managing HR and transforming operations has been pivotal in her career trajectory.
[00:01:02] With over 25 years of experience, Tina has navigated the intricacies of HR within a variety of organizational contexts ranging from startups to Fortune 500.
[00:01:12] Her diverse background spans not only strategic and operational HR roles, but also internal and client facing roles, providing strategic guidance and hands on support to organizations.
[00:01:22] Grounded in a human centric approach, Tina recognizes the universal truth that people are at the heart of every organization, regardless of location.
[00:01:31] Having lived and worked abroad for over 15 years, she brings a global mindset to her work, seamlessly translating her international experience to our ever changing landscape in the U.S.
[00:01:41] Tina's successes lie in her ability to bridge, divide and foster collaboration. She excels in transforming ambiguity into clarity and addressing complex human capital challenges head on.
[00:01:53] Her passion for building strong middle management has been a constant thread throughout her career, recognizing its pivotal role in driving organizational success.
[00:02:03] Welcome to the show, Tina. It's such a pleasure to have you.
[00:02:06] Thank you for inviting me. I appreciate it.
[00:02:09] The topic that we're going to talk about today is driving middle management success, and that's one of your favorite topics.
[00:02:16] A lot of organizations focus so much on either building top leadership or focus on engaging their people and driving results through them.
[00:02:28] But I don't think they give enough focus to middle management from what at least I've seen because middle management gets pushed from both sides.
[00:02:36] So what is so interesting about that topic that you really feel so passionate about and why is that important?
[00:02:41] What you just actually explained about how middle management sandwiched in between leadership, which gets a lot of attention in general, and the frontline employees.
[00:02:54] However, the piece in the middle of the middle management team, they're the ones as data is proven over and over are the ones that actually really have the most and the direct impact on the frontline team.
[00:03:12] And by therefore, the customers and the experience that the customers are having in engaging with.
[00:03:19] And for some reason, it's when companies are constrained, time constraint, resource constraint.
[00:03:25] It seems to be the middle management that kind of takes the brunt of a lot of that.
[00:03:30] Yeah, I think one of the things that we also see a lot is companies when they lay off teams, they have a lot of managers sometimes as well thinking, oh, they're just overhead.
[00:03:39] I don't necessarily need that many managers and then it ends up really hurting the team.
[00:03:45] So from your experience, what have some of these poor practices that you've seen?
[00:03:50] And then we'll talk about some of the best practices. But let's talk about the poor practices first that you've seen in your career.
[00:03:55] Obviously, it's been a lot of global companies internationally as well as US.
[00:04:00] So I'm sure you've seen a lot of things that are done very badly.
[00:04:04] Right. One common situation that I've seen quite a bit is organizations putting employees into a supervisory middle management role because they have been fantastic employees in what they've done functionally.
[00:04:24] Great people. They have a lot to give to the organization and to others.
[00:04:30] And moving from a individual contributor role to a manager role requires some significantly different skill sets.
[00:04:41] And so looking at someone at what they're doing now and they're doing such a wonderful job, putting them into a managerial role and just letting it happen may or may not get the results that an organization wants to achieve.
[00:04:56] And I've seen that in larger companies, smaller companies who are more resource constrained across industries.
[00:05:04] And it's a mindset that intelligent, high performing people will just get in there and figure it out.
[00:05:13] They may or may not. Different people have different skill sets.
[00:05:16] And whether it comes naturally of whatever they need to do to be successful in that role may or may not happen.
[00:05:22] It's throwing caution to the wind in that sense.
[00:05:25] Yeah, I think the challenge there might be is that if somebody is doing it very well, where do they go next?
[00:05:32] Maybe they're capped out, right? They're like, okay, I'm already you're already in the top of the bracket for your role.
[00:05:38] Maybe you go from analyst to a senior analyst, then what? There's no director analyst.
[00:05:43] Either become a director or a manager of the analyst.
[00:05:47] How have you seen companies solve for them, something like that?
[00:05:52] In different ways, some effectively and some not so effectively.
[00:05:56] To that point, often in the industry where I've spent a lot of time in consultancy, it's very much of analyst and consultants and manager.
[00:06:09] And as someone continues in their career, it's transforming a lot from the analyst manager.
[00:06:15] That's a change. And then a change again when more becoming more senior into sales.
[00:06:23] So the same person who might be absolutely fantastic at the analyst consultant might master the managerial roles and not be able to do sales or vice versa.
[00:06:35] However, there's only one career trajectory. It's just straight up this path.
[00:06:40] And what I've seen work, I've seen organizations go both ways of one.
[00:06:44] This is that's the way we do it. And it's either up or out.
[00:06:49] Other organizations can face that and work with are there dual career paths that could apply to different people's strengths of more of a super project manager, for example.
[00:07:03] Or what if not that title, but that type of functionality of these are your strengths.
[00:07:09] So organizations who can work through that and try to define what are the other options.
[00:07:17] How do we retain good employees and recognize that strengths and interests are different?
[00:07:26] One thing I have seen, one example of actually that is very well is when people are self aware as well.
[00:07:33] Some employees are really good performers, like you said, and then they get promoted because they're asking for what's next for me.
[00:07:39] Obviously I've crushed every goal. Every organization loves me.
[00:07:43] My customers love me. We hit all our numbers or targets or goals in our projects that I've been on.
[00:07:51] What's next for me? And then the managers of that person is pressure to figure out I got to do something for this person.
[00:07:57] Otherwise this person might leave and just increase the salary because HR is saying, oh, they're already top of the band.
[00:08:02] I can't increase their unless you move them to a different band.
[00:08:05] Right. There's some level of flexibility.
[00:08:07] I think the HR team or the salary band structures need to probably have as well.
[00:08:11] I'm thinking what are your thoughts on that? Because unfortunately there are salary bands that get stuck.
[00:08:15] If you're an analyst and you're the best analyst the company can have, but they can only pay you so much because an analyst band is this.
[00:08:22] Going through a couple of different things.
[00:08:27] So understanding from the employee's point of view of what they're really looking for is key.
[00:08:34] For the analyst in this example, what are their skill sets outside? What are their interests outside of the analyst role?
[00:08:43] And opportunities may exist, taking that information and for the organization to consider how might those skills be utilized more broadly.
[00:08:57] So instead of this is the band just for that particular role, thinking more of if it's broadened instead of deepened.
[00:09:07] Because I think a lot of the bands are met are because you go from junior level more senior and the bands are getting bigger.
[00:09:16] What if it's flipped on its head and instead it's maybe how is that expertise carried further into other areas of the organization?
[00:09:25] And that could also add a significant amount of value.
[00:09:29] It's just a different way than the traditional thinking is.
[00:09:34] And I think that's an example of where organizations can work with what the organization needs and what is going to keep the employee engaged.
[00:09:46] So it's not just, oh, I've hit the limit so I've reached the limit of my development within the organization.
[00:09:55] Yeah, there's a big movement going on right with that in terms of companies moving to a skill based taxonomy on work and having fluidity in their work.
[00:10:06] Mobility, internal mobility around that where they could do different jobs in the same organization without having to necessarily say this is my title, this is the only thing I'm doing.
[00:10:16] So I think there's some level of that going on in the organization which would make them a little bit more almost like an internal freelancer.
[00:10:22] They're doing different things as well.
[00:10:24] But there is a core work they do, but they also go out and play roles in other projects and other functions as well.
[00:10:30] And I think that feeds into as well for so many companies now every industry is there's change happening at some level.
[00:10:39] And the more that the team members are versatile, agile, can handle the change and ambiguity that comes with different roles, that's an exceptional skill set that companies want to keep internally.
[00:10:56] And also for team members themselves and thinking about maybe in five, ten years whatever, there's a goal they have that doesn't necessarily involve working even in the same industry they're in.
[00:11:08] But how can the company extend their tenure there by thinking about okay I understand you want to go there.
[00:11:16] How can we help give you those skills and the company still gain the benefit of their expertise while they're doing that.
[00:11:24] So prolonging the time of the person in the organization.
[00:11:28] I think it's a benefit for both companies, the more that they can really sit down.
[00:11:32] It might be a completely new way of designing the teams or whatever it is in the organization that would take some change but has some significant value.
[00:11:42] Yeah, yeah. All right, so let's talk about the middle management success, right, in terms of what. So obviously we've established that not everybody needs to be a manager, and you can still pay somebody and compensate and reward recognize somebody without them being
[00:11:58] a manager, because to me managers just another role, like maybe an analyst is a role and manager role, your skills are managing more than doing individual analyst work if you're an if you came from beacon analyst.
[00:12:11] Yep. What have you seen the best companies do the best organizations do to build a strong carter of middle management.
[00:12:21] First, I think that before diving into what is that for the middle management. This is all caveated with the with senior management actually really buys into this senior I feel that the organization senior management has got to make this a priority.
[00:12:38] As an organization, if the senior leadership is not so bought in, it's not going to happen, assuming the culture is there, the organization wants to support middle management.
[00:12:51] Understanding within that specific organization, what makes roles successful in their organization, and it might be some slightly different things are vastly different things depending upon the organization.
[00:13:06] For, I think the majority around it is thinking through problem solving, being able to give feedback communication and relationship building with their team members.
[00:13:19] Something between different studies I've seen 50 to 58 percent of people leave organizations when they're voluntarily leaving is because the relationship with their direct supervisor isn't providing them what they need.
[00:13:36] Right. That's a huge amount and so just ensuring that those people can just establish and maintain those relationships as a first step would go a long way towards retention.
[00:13:50] So what else in your experience, what have you seen? What have you done implementing in some of these programs or developing that you've seen really good success with?
[00:13:59] A couple of things, quite a few different things. But in an organization, a consultancy firm I worked with years ago, in that organization we were experiencing some significant turnover and we pulled together data on exit interviews from employee surveys to uncover the
[00:14:02] What were the real issues?
[00:14:03] Yep. A couple of things, quite a few different things. But in an organization, a consultancy firm I worked with years ago, in that organization we were experiencing some significant turnover and we pulled together data on exit interviews from employee surveys to uncover what were the real issues.
[00:14:33] And we were finding that team members and new managers in particular weren't feeling supported by the next level, the director level in this particular organization.
[00:14:49] And really working with the director level to understand how is that communication or how should that communication then be happening.
[00:14:59] Of giving the managers, for example, more autonomy so that they're able to gain the experience and also make some mistakes but then have that safety net of working together and collaborating with someone.
[00:15:16] So they're learning more and more, shadowing where appropriate on conversations with other team members so that they're learning how to do that.
[00:15:27] Or perhaps working more closely with someone on developing performance feedback for some of their employees.
[00:15:34] Employees really like how there's a difficult message. It's always going to be a difficult message from time to time that needs to be delivered. How do you do that in a way that the person you're giving it to actually leaves feeling, okay, okay I get that.
[00:15:49] I can do something with that and it's a bit of a skill and can be learned. So just providing the combination of training, of shadowing, of on-the-job opportunities.
[00:16:03] I think a combination of those, which also is a good thing that it doesn't need to be always really expensive. Sending people out for a force of thousands of dollars.
[00:16:13] Companies with limited budgets and limited time can work those opportunities in.
[00:16:20] Another thing that I have seen work a lot of organizations do is to build a mentoring program in the organization or coaching program where you get a mentor or coach from completely different departments.
[00:16:30] There's no reporting relationship challenges there. Your performance in your team does not impact that person. There's that level of separation.
[00:16:39] Stuff like that help in your implementations as well.
[00:16:44] Yes, absolutely. Years ago when I worked with, that sounded really bad, the emphasis on the years ago, but when I did work with Carrier Corporation, they had a wonderful, and they still might, I just am not involved with it, have for MBA graduates a rotational global program.
[00:17:05] And one of the points that made that so successful was the implementation of global mentoring. As someone's moving around functionally globally, having a central contact that was always watching over, helping being someone to bounce ideas off, having been in their place before, understanding the challenges of working and you're moving to a new country.
[00:17:34] You're going to be there for so many months. You need to get in, be credible, be empathetic, learn the culture, learn the management style and then move again.
[00:17:43] It's wonderful. It's exciting. It can be very lonely. It could be very challenging. It's a whole mix and having the person who's bouncing ideas off of, giving advice, sees someone grow in their experience during the couple of years is exceptionally helpful for both.
[00:18:05] I think that's a great example. I know that manufacturing companies, especially the manufacturing companies that had really good management practices for decades have that. Carrier does, which like you said, and I know Ford back in the day did too.
[00:18:29] I'm sure they still do. A lot of the auto manufacturers have that rotational program before you become, then you pick where you want to be and then you grow into it and then you have some kind of a coach or a counselor.
[00:18:43] So I want to ask a slightly different question now on in terms of the tools. What are the different tools that would you recommend for management support to really drive a strong middle management?
[00:18:58] I have worked in organizations as far as just some tools, seen some very interesting use of personality tests that have, I am still surprised really how insightful that they can be. There are multiple different ones out there.
[00:19:18] However, organizations that pull the findings from those into their management leadership overall training I think are really doing something next level in the sense of really thinking through.
[00:19:38] As a manager, for example, knowing myself, what are my personal, what are my insights? Where do I normally go? How can I develop that differently? And then once you start pulling in and these are the people I work with, and this is how they're functioning.
[00:19:57] How does that all interact? And I think really building an understanding within the organization of what are a person's drivers, how can you become more adaptive, where your natural strengths. I find that really interesting.
[00:20:12] I love communication, style of collaboration. Exactly. Do you really do not like Zoom calls? Do you want data? Do you want just words? Do you need pictures? Do you want it crisp and short?
[00:20:26] Do you want a storyline or a discussion? Yeah. And yeah, internal or again, introvert, extrovert, it's your decision making management style, all of that.
[00:20:37] Yeah, how I like to work is a good one. And communicate too. One of the things that I struggle with sometimes personally is that I like to work with data.
[00:20:47] So all my discussions with my directs and my discussions with anybody else, it's always about data because it's like the only way I feel this is my view. Right?
[00:20:57] In my discussion, I'm like, where were we a week ago? Where are we now? Where are we going? How are we progressing towards that? I want to look at data.
[00:21:05] To the extent we can. Not everything can be distilled down to data, but at least some level of something that's evidentiary in nature, whether it is a list of activities you're working on or a list of things you're trying to accomplish.
[00:21:17] I always want to focus something. And some people just like a loose conversation. They just want to generally talk about their life. First of all, they'll talk about their dog and their brother, which is fine.
[00:21:27] I like doing that too, because you really want to understand the person and build that relationship. But then they talk about the different challenges they're facing in their role and things like that, which are also important discussions to have.
[00:21:38] And there's a style that some people prefer. They want to have those more unstructured conversations. And some people like more structured conversations. I like to know after this meeting what are the next steps? Can we outline that and make sure that we follow up on that?
[00:21:52] I think so is nature. There's some good things we need to do, I think on both sides, but you can really swing from one to the other. And the middle management in this situation here needs to be first of all aware of what type of personality they are.
[00:22:04] And then also need to know that their team understands who they are and they understand what the teams are as well. So talking to your point on adjustments and some level of self-reflection can provide that.
[00:22:16] I think so. I think so. And particularly for individuals who are just moving into those roles, some people are naturally very self-reflective. And just as many people are not. So really having that information, having empirical data is very helpful on that.
[00:22:34] I remember one of the first performance reviews I had when I was working in Paris and my supervisor at the time told me to rate yourself. Just do it yourself and then we'll go over the results and see what I think.
[00:22:47] Oh my gosh, they were so different. I perceived myself and I thought I was quite a self-aware person. And it was very different.
[00:22:57] But the good, so there are opportunities for me to do things differently and better. And even with such differing views, the way in which it was delivered wasn't, and so this is awful and you'll always be awful.
[00:23:16] And it gets more of these are just some different pieces of feedback you can take. Here's some plans of how we can get you that different experience.
[00:23:26] And it was a really interesting exercise. The company didn't do the personality typing that is more prevalent today of the different versions that are out there, but just having that self-awareness presented to me.
[00:23:43] I didn't have the self-awareness, maybe that's it, but having information presented to me actually really helped significantly.
[00:23:51] Yeah, that's very insightful. Although one way to argue that is saying was the manager, your manager at the point clear about what they were expecting from you so that you could, this was the expectation, this is how I did.
[00:24:05] And if the expectation wasn't clearly set, then you were like, oh, I did all these things, but maybe the expectations were on a completely different.
[00:24:12] That's a good question.
[00:24:16] Two things. I think there's the bit about what one does and how one does it.
[00:24:22] So, there's a goal to achieve at that time it was in a procurement department. So there's a goal to achieve savings that one makes in different areas.
[00:24:36] That can be accomplished, and it can be accomplished in significantly different ways as far as one's personality. So I'm American. I went to work in Europe.
[00:24:47] There's differences about how things are done.
[00:24:50] And I get things done but do I get it done in the way that's also the best for the wider team? Not to say I'm a particularly abrasive person, but at the same time there are cultural differences.
[00:25:02] And learning the how is a lot of the culture as well, just as much as what are you doing? Can you do procurement? Yes. Did you smash the targets? Yes.
[00:25:13] Are there ways that you can do it as well that have additional benefit for the wider team in building these relationships in a different way?
[00:25:22] So I think that was the part that's not captured always in the goal setting of organizations.
[00:25:31] That is true. Yeah, we always talk about the what and how in our performance reviews discussions with our customers as well in our platform for doing that obviously, engagedly which has components of what and how that you can build the what is the goals, OKRs, KPIs, whatever that is.
[00:25:49] And I think that was your behavioral rules, which are driven by the typically by the organizational values or by your competencies based on your role or other types of softer aspects.
[00:26:00] But they still need some evidentiary aspects to it. How do we exhibit those behaviors?
[00:26:07] And I think our good best organizations do both. And it's not just part because you could be achieving the what but leaving dead bodies on the wake. Exactly.
[00:26:17] Talking about that assessment, do you recall what assessment that was that you found quite insightful in your experience?
[00:26:25] I when I was working at C.R.E., they didn't do those assessments. But recently since in the past 10 years, I've been in the U.S. working with a re consultancy.
[00:26:38] Everyone who comes into the organization takes the Myers-Briggs test.
[00:26:43] And those then become at the time I was working there and they're growing so fast, I'm not sure how they fit it into a digestible chunk of information.
[00:26:55] But in meetings, we'd have sheets with every person listed in their in whichever particular box that they put their personality is in.
[00:27:05] And there would be trainings throughout the year just about personality types. What does that mean? How is how do they like to see the information?
[00:27:13] And the projects we were doing were very data heavy projects. So how do different people want to see the information?
[00:27:22] How do we work together with teams? What's motivating for our team members? What what turns them on, what turns them off all of that?
[00:27:32] And so it actually was just such a piece of part of the culture in just how we work. This is how we work. We recognize that people are different.
[00:27:43] We recognize that there's a way that we can all improve in working with our colleagues throughout the organization and then in working with clients, although we didn't know what their results were,
[00:27:57] it was just having the information internally. Then you could use it to understand clients better be like, oh, I think they're this is more their personality.
[00:28:08] So let me adjust what I'm presenting or how I'm speaking with them, whatever it is, engaging them with more of that mindset.
[00:28:18] Yeah, yeah. And then I think I don't know if this is true or not, but I've heard I have not I've not taken MBTI in probably 10, 15 years now, but I've heard that it actually can change over time too.
[00:28:31] So you might want to do that every few years, if not more frequently. Yeah, that's funny that you mentioned that because when I first took it, the Myers-Briggs, it would have been just about 10 years ago for the first time.
[00:28:45] And I forget what my acronym was then, but it was I was focused on process and data. And that was my thing.
[00:28:57] And that was my thing. And now I've taken it more recently and I'm an advocate. Let me see what the for those people out there who follow this INFJ, but this is much more of a people focused personality type.
[00:29:17] And I think as I've changed over the years, now I feel like, oh yes, this is definitely where I am. When I think about just structure and process now, it feels confining and just, oh, that wouldn't motivate me at all.
[00:29:34] Yeah, personally, I do find it's true. I'm not sure if all people change, but I did.
[00:29:40] Awesome. Thanks a lot, Tina. It's been a pleasure chatting with you on the topic of building strong middle management and then so many different ways to do it.
[00:29:48] So there's not one way to do it obviously having rotational approaches with a mentor, having tools like assessment tools, having some sort of a shadowing over time that grows into the role.
[00:29:59] So many different ways to actually do it, but having a thoughtful approach and supporting your managers. Another one is a big one that I'm my key takeaways from this discussion. Is there anything else you want to add in terms of organizations looking at ways to build a strong middle management?
[00:30:15] I think the key is the commitment and then just start doing it again. It's not an endeavor that has to take a significant amount of the cash injection to make it happen.
[00:30:29] It's a lot of just the commitments to doing it and integrating it over time into the ways that an organization works.
[00:30:37] Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Where can people reach out to learn more about what you do and learn more about you?
[00:30:45] Please look at my LinkedIn page for Tina Greer and my email and phone number is located on there, so please be in contact with any questions or comments.
[00:30:57] Thank you, Tina. It's been a pleasure.
[00:31:00] Thank you so much. I appreciate your time.
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