They have to turn the board's strategy into daily work. They have to push through change and roll out AI, while keeping their team motivated. And when the results of the employee survey are disappointing, they are the ones asked why. They sit between the board and their team, and research shows that position is getting harder. In this article, you will read why middle managers are caught in the middle, and what the board can do to turn that around.
The layer that feels least safe
Jan Hagen (ESMT Berlin) and Bin Zhao studied the psychological safety of more than 1,100 managers in large organisations. Psychological safety is the feeling that you can admit mistakes, ask questions and give criticism without it being held against you. The outcome: middle managers feel less safe than the top, and also less safe than their own employees. Those who have been a middle manager for less than three years score even lower (HBR).
That has consequences for the whole organisation. People who don't feel safe filter bad news. The board then mainly hears what is going well, and problems only surface once they have grown big. Also read how top executives think about psychological safety.
Managers' energy is falling too
Gallup shows that manager engagement worldwide is falling sharply: from 30% to 27% in 2024, and then to 22% in 2025 (Gallup). That is worrying, because a team's engagement depends to a large extent on its manager. A manager who is running on reserve can hardly look after the energy of their team.
The introduction of AI doesn't make it any easier. Researchers Julia Shin and Sandra Sucher saw that AI often helps juniors and the top get to more interesting work. For middle managers, on the other hand, work piles up: they have to check AI's work, coach their people in new ways of working and safeguard quality, on top of everything they were already doing (HBR). At the same time, it is precisely they who determine whether AI really takes hold in daily work or stays on the sidelines (HBR).
Between a rock and a hard place
Paul van Heeringen of IMPACT on the Job sees something in practice that fits this research closely. A team fills in an employee survey, which is processed by an external party, and the middle manager is told by the top that his or her team scores lower on work engagement. While it is often very clear where that comes from. Has a team just gone through a change, have there been a lot of staff changes, or has a measure been introduced that is good for the company but works out badly for some employees? Then it is logical that engagement is temporarily somewhat lower.
Is that a problem? Not necessarily. But when a manager has a change mandate on one side and is judged on an engagement score on the other, they are caught between a rock and a hard place. That deserves much more attention.
What the board can do
- Read scores in context. A lower score after a reorganisation or a difficult decision tells a different story from the same score in a quiet year. First ask what was going on, before you judge.
- Use the results to talk, not to judge. What matters is that the manager discusses the results with the team. Give middle managers room to have that conversation, rather than just the task of pushing up the figures.
- Show yourself that mistakes are allowed. Middle managers look to the top. A board that shares its own doubts and mistakes makes it safer for the layer below to be honest.
- Give time for the AI transition. Learning and experimenting with AI takes time. Anyone who adds that on top of normal work without taking anything away is asking for exhaustion.
- Make sure middle managers find each other. A fixed group of fellow managers to share experiences with helps against the feeling of being on your own.
Start with leadership
A good measurement takes into account what a team has been through, and a good facilitator asks about it. With the Responsible Leadership Scale by Leiders.nl, you see how employees experience leadership, per team or across the whole organisation. That is a good starting point for the conversation between the board and middle management. And in the Executive Leadership Programme (ELP), experienced leaders work for two days with prof. dr. Bas Kodden on their own leadership, including in times of change.
