In Praise of Managers.

Every time I scroll through LinkedIn I see posts about leadership. When e-mails drop into my in-box they offer leadership development courses and opportunities to become a fantastic leading light. Everyone celebrates great leadership. Lots of people aspire to being great leaders.

Don't get me wrong, good leaders are important. But in our eagerness to focus on the top jobs, we have typecast management as the Cinderella of the professional portfolio. It's a mere stepping stone to leadership, a stopping off point as we check progress along the way to better, more important things. We've all done the workshop exercise where we compare Leadership vs Management, gazing adoringly at one list of qualities whilst silently discarding the other.

So, I want to stop for a moment and speak up in support of the manager. Because I believe that good leaders stand on the shoulders of great managers. Middle managers are especially important because they are the buffer between the demands of their leaders and the needs of their people. This middle-ground is a minefield. It's tough, and it's often thankless. When middle managers get it wrong, they get the blame and they get to clean up the mess. When they get it right, they hand success to their leaders who use it as a foundation for their vision.

Managers are the glue that hold organisations together. They operationalise the aspiration and ambition of their leaders and they bring ideas to life. They motivate, mediate and orchestrate. The carry heavy loads on their shoulders. They serve multiple masters and juggle competing agendas.

But you'll see none of these responsibilities on a middle-management job description. Because on paper they simply operationalise strategies and manage people. The embellishment and sparkle is reserved for the leadership roles.

Throughout my career I have learned that without excellent managers, leaders cannot lead. Without strong middle managers leaders will fail. So in amongst all this talk of leadership, let's remember the managers who work hard, do some serious heavy lifting and are the foundation of every leader's success.

To all managers working in the shadows of their leaders I offer a huge thank you. We see you. We appreciate you.