Caught in the Middle: The Hidden Strain of Management’s Most Crucial Role
Middle managers pressures are mounting to unprecedented levels
The number of middle managers is shrinking in many organizations. Further, Gartner predicts that by 2026, 20% of organizations will use AI to flatten their structures, eliminating more than half of current middle management positions (HBR, 04/2025). According to Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace, managers’ engagement has dropped from 30% to 27% in 2024, while individual contributor engagement remained flat. Manager engagement has only fallen twice in the past 12 years in 2020 and 2024. Additionally, burnout is rampant: 42% of managers’ report experiencing stress a lot of the previous day, compared to 39% of individual contributors (Gallup, 2025).
Drawing on 20+ years of management consulting in more than 40 countries and my latest research at ESCP I’ve found that the pressures on middle managers are often understated. Despite serving as the key link between strategy and execution middle managers are frequently left to navigate complexity and tensions with insufficient support. Most managers we coach report that they lack the time and resources to focus on developing their teams. Key performance indicators of the middle managers frequently focus on short-term financial performance, with limited consideration for the growth of the team or effectiveness in enabling organizational change. Company’s evaluation systems incentivize short-sighted decisions at the expense of long-term capability and performance. Precedo Consulting’s field data and academic research consistently echo this finding.
Middle managers continue to play an essential role
Peter Drucker’s seminal work, The Practice of Management (1954), emphasized that middle managers are the crucial link between top management’s vision and operational realities. They are uniquely positioned to detect shifts in customer needs, translate strategy into action, and guide employees through transitions brought on by technological change. However, their role is shifting from oversight to facilitation, from monitoring to capability-building.
In our work with sales leaders and their teams worldwide, three recurring challenges emerge:
- An unclear definition of middle management excellence. There is often no shared understanding of what great middle managers should do—or how their performance should be measured—creating inconsistency and missed opportunities for leadership development.
- A significant soft skills gap. Many organizations prioritize knowledge, often at the expense of essential interpersonal capabilities such as empathy and persuasion.
- A widespread sales coaching deficit. Both the frequency and quality of coaching fall short in most organizations, leaving teams without the guidance they need to improve performance and adapt to changing markets.
Recent studies in general management suggest that team engagement and performance metrics improve when management and coaching training is conducted with quality (Gallup 2025). Across B2B sales organizations, we have consistently been able to strengthen sales leaders’ coaching behaviors, resulting in higher hit-rates in sales opportunities, and increased team motivation. Integrating soft skills into the development tends to amplify results.
We believe the future of middle management will depend on the shift in core competencies. The successful middle managers will need to
- Translate corporate strategy into practical execution with clarity, but still maintain the ability for paradoxical thinking, where leaders simultaneously reach their short-term targets but also secure future performance
- Lead transformation and change instead of relying on control only
- Invest time in coaching to build skills of the teams, and
- Strengthen collaboration across organizational boundaries to promote shared learning.
Successful organizations will assess leadership performance more holistically, beyond short-term financial KPIs and thus recognize, measure and develop these competencies. By doing so, they are strengthening their competitive position and unlock the full potential of the organizations.
Marko Hänninen has over three decades of sales leadership experience and serves as a Managing Partner at Precedo Consulting, dedicated to helping organizations reach their full potential. Throughout his career, he has advised over 200 organizations, trained and coached more than 20,000 sales leaders and professionals across 40 countries, building sustainable results. He is currently completing a PhD in Sales Leadership at ESCP Business School in Paris.
