# Workplace Surgery: middle management burnout - **Episode:** [154](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/154.md) (2024-12-17) - **Type:** workplace-surgery - **Tags:** middle-management, burnout, workplace-stress - **Time:** 34:18–39:57 (start 2058s) - **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/154?t=2058](https://truthliesandwork.com/154?t=2058) --- [34:18] Leanne Elliott: Yes, but it shouldn't be every day. I think middle managers do have a hard time because you, you get it from all angles, don't you? And, and it, it, it's a lot. So there's a few things here that I think require a bit of A bit of reflection on your part to really understand what's going on. I think the first thing is understanding that as a middle manager, are you delegating? Are you providing your teams with also core development opportunities to do the things that really at this point are beyond your pay grade? Things that they can help you with, things that they can add to in terms of projects, maybe projects that they can lead on your behalf, like these grand plans the leadership team want you to implement. That might be one person who might be having a working group or a steering group to help you with these things. Middle managers are really typically protective of their world because they know the stakes are high, because you're going to potentially upset the people above you and upset the people below you. So that sense of control can often be in hyperdrive if you're a middle manager. So learning how to delegate is really important. And to learn that, I would go back to our episode with Kate Waterfall Hill. She talks about delegating Delegation so brilliantly and very practically. Also, go to our YouTube channel. We've got some shorts up there on delegation. And she's basically kind of saying that, I think if I remember right, the 1-3-1 method. So, somebody comes to you with one solution, you ask them for 3— sorry, they come to you with one problem, you ask them for 3 possible solutions, and you ask them which solution they want to go with. You then ask them, what do you need from me? How can I support you in this? And when should we check in to see how you're getting on? And it's simple things like that, that if you look through kind of the fires you're putting out, looking around and going, do I need to put out this fire, or actually could my team put out this fire if I give them the, the agency and the tools needed to, to do that? So that'd be the first thing I'd look at, is how there might be ways that you can better manage or delegate your workload to allow you the time you need to focus on those value-add activities that you have as a manager in the business. The second thing I'd say, are you okay? Because this sounds a bit like burnout as well, when we're often overwhelmed, Overworked, underinspired. We start to disconnect. We start to get cynical. We start to become exhausted. They're the three main symptoms of burnout, and with that comes lots of emotional reactions. Like you said, you know, you're not feeling the love for your job anymore, but also some cognitive signs of that as well. You can get brain fog. You can make it seem harder to make decisions, and and that is going to add to your workload as well. So I think there may need to be a check in on how you're doing and how you're managing your work life boundaries, and how you're. investing in your own wellbeing right now as well. The final thing I'd say is, has there been a fundamental shift in the organisation in terms of the leadership team you're working with, in terms of the relationships within the workplace, in terms of the vision and mission? Do you still connect with that? Do you still believe with that? Believe in that? Are you just becoming disengaged, and is it actually just time to move on? And I think with some self-reflection across those 3 things, you might be able to identify some areas that you can make your day-to-day life easier in the short term, and also potentially look at the mid to long term as to whether this organisation is still the place for you, or whether it's time to move on to the next thing [37:42] Al Elliott: Excellent advice. I'd never thought about the burnout thing. That's a really, really good point. I think the way that Leanne describes management to me, or great managers to me, I always have in my head kind of an image of a snowplough. And it's driving down the street, and the problems or the challenges stopping the traffic from getting through is snow, and a great manager gets in front of them and just takes this snowplough and moves them all out the way so the rest of traffic can just move, move kind of like smoothly. And I feel that if you're not careful, then you forget that's your role. And the, and the, the reason I say this, the tonality in some of this is that, um, I feel like I'm getting moved, uh, missed out. I think what's— I see junior staff getting cool development opportunities, not development opportunities, cool development opportunities [38:24] Leanne Elliott: Yeah [38:25] Al Elliott: They're people extending— are attending exciting strategy days while people like me expect to keep things running. Again, that could be the cynicism from burnout. Um, it could, it could just be that, that you, you need to accept, I think, as— and I've not, I've not managed too many people, so Leanne, please correct me— I think you need to accept that management is very often doing stuff that no one's really going to see [38:46] Leanne Elliott: Yeah [38:46] Al Elliott: Because you're like— Leanne always says the greatest manager she ever had was saying, hide the wires. So a lot of people wouldn't even know what, what John, who who was Leanne's manager, did. But Leanne knew, and John was happy just to keep doing that work and getting things, getting problems out of the way without any kind of public reward for it [39:06] Leanne Elliott: I think actually, and that's the other way around, my senior manager knew what I did because we talk about it quite a lot. But I had a member of staff, Alec, hi Alec, who actually ended up taking over my job when I got promoted into the next role. And I remember the first day of kind of the handover, he went, I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure what you do. It's like, I know you make my life easier, and I know like you make things work, but I'm not sure what you actually do to make that happen. Um, and after about a couple of weeks, he's like, oh no, I get it, you do a lot. You do a lot. I'm like, I know, I know, totally. So with that in mind, how can I support you? Um, you know, with what's going on. So you have to have that relationship with your senior manager as well. And it sounds like they're not a great, a great manager that you've got if they're just coming to you and giving you more stuff Well, good luck with that [39:51] Al Elliott: Um, and if things do get better or you move on, just write to us, let us know. It'd be cool to get— we've never had one of the follow-ups from one of the ends