Caught in the Middle
A GUIDE TO MIDDLE MANAGEMENT
Notice
©2015 NATIONAL EMERGENCY NUMBER ASSOCIATION
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
These materials may not be reproduced in any way without the
express written permission of the National Emergency Number
Association or the Course Instructor.
National Emergency Number Association education courses may not
be video- or audio-taped without the express written permission of
the National Emergency Number Association or the Course Instructor.
Follow us on Twitter & Like us on Facebook
@NENA911Training
www.facebook.com/NENA911Training
YOUR SOURCE FOR 9-1-1 EDUCATION & TRAINING
WWW.NENA.ORG/EDUCATION
Course Logistics
•Course Schedule
•Sign-in/Sign-out Sheet
•Housekeeping
◦ Breaks
◦ Cell phones
◦ Facilities
◦ Evacuation / Shelter-in Place
◦ Smoking
•Evaluations – Course, Instructor & Facility
Student Introductions
•First and Last Name
•Agency
•Title
•Years in the business
•One thing they hope to learn from the course
Instructor
John Ferraro, ENP
[email protected]
[email protected]
708-446-1037
Caught in the Middle
•The Situation
•Leadership
•Understanding People
•Communications
•Supervising your Employees
•Upper Management
•Escape
•Discussions
Course Objectives
•Discuss the challenges that are specifically related to middle
managers.
•Identify and discuss different leadership styles and how to develop
your own style.
•Identify what the four “working styles” personalities are and how
they impact the workplace.
•Discuss the importance of effective communications in middle
management.
•Determine effective techniques for supervising employees and
dealing with upper management.
The Situation
The Situation
•How many first line supervisors or middle managers
are in the room?
•How many feel that they are consistently “in the
middle” of issues in their center?
•How many upper level managers do we have that
feel like they “need more” from their supervisors
•What are the biggest challenges facing our
supervisors?
The Situation
•Middle Managers are “Caught in the Middle”.
•Have to deal with two different groups of people:
◦ Those who they are supervising
◦ Those who they report to
•Inherently, these two different groups may have
different goals and requirements that puts the middle
manager in difficult positions.
•We are going to discuss some methods to better
prepare you for being “Caught in the Middle”.
The Situation
•What is your goal?
◦Survive being in the middle
◦Thrive being in the middle
◦Promotion to a higher position
◦Other
•We will discuss many specific situations come up
with different ways and techniques to address
them.
Situations
•Morale is low in the center due to increased discipline
over failure to follow procedures. Management is
insisting the middle managers have to hold employees
accountable, but the managers don’t want to hurt
morale further.
•The middle managers best friend works on another shift
and told the manager that her co-worker has been
making her uncomfortable and making unwanted
advances towards her. Her friend said not to tell anyone
about it though.
Leadership
16
Leadership
•What does this mean to you?
•What are the different styles of leadership?
◦Google it, they are 3, 4, 5, 6, and even 10 styles of
leadership depending on who you ask.
•Three (3) Basic Styles
◦Authoritarian
◦Participative
◦Delegative
Leadership
•Authoritarian Leadership (Autocratic)
◦ Provide clear expectations for what needs to be done, when
it should be done, and how it should be done.
◦ Make decisions independently with little or no input from
the rest of the group.
◦ Decision-making was less creative under authoritarian
leadership.
.
◦ Best applied to situations where there is little time for group
decision-making or where the leader is the most
knowledgeable member of the group.
Leadership
•Participative Leadership (Democratic)
◦Is generally the most effective leadership style.
◦Democratic leaders offer guidance to group members,
but they also participate in the group and allow input
from other group members.
◦Participative leaders encourage group members to
participate, but retain the final say over the decisionmaking process. Group members feel engaged in the
process and are more motivated and creative.
Leadership
•Delegative (laissez-fair leadership)
◦The least productive of all three groups.
◦Delegative leaders offer little or no guidance to group
members and leave decision-making up to group
members.
◦While this style can be effective in situations where
group members are highly qualified in an area of
expertise, it often leads to poorly defined roles and a
lack of motivation.
Leadership
•We also see other styles
of leadership:
•Servant Style Leader:
◦Foresight
◦Commitment to the
growth of people
◦Stewardship
◦Listening
◦Empathy
◦Healing
◦Awareness
◦Persuasion
◦Conceptualization
◦Building Community
Leadership
•In “Its Your Ship”, By Captain Michael Abrashoff
many great tips for leadership are discussed.
◦Take Command
◦Lead by Example
◦Listen Aggressively
◦Communicate Purpose and Meaning
◦Take Calculated Risk
◦Improve Your Peoples Quality of Life
Leadership
•What is important to the middle manager
◦ Embrace the Agency mission and values.
◦ Find ways to explain them in ways that your employees can
understand and embrace.
◦ Listen to your employees and raise their concerns.
◦ Have the courage to identify problems and their solutions.
◦ Strive to constantly improve what you can.
◦ Lead by example
◦ Communicate
•Leadership Success
◦ Loyal
◦ Educated
◦ Adaptable
◦ Determined
◦ Enthusiastic
◦ Reliable
◦ Selfless
◦ Tough
◦ Empathetic
◦ Assertive
◦ Courageous
◦ Honorable
◦ Leaders teach
•Leadership Failure
◦Lacks passion
◦Unclear vision
◦Poor communications skills
◦Avoids taking risks
◦Callous
◦Unethical
◦Poor self-management
◦Incompetent
◦Plays the victim
◦Tears others down
◦Micromanages
◦First to take credit
◦Last to take blame
Understanding
People
Understanding People
•This is a PEOPLE position.
◦We supervise people.
◦We work for People – Bosses, elected people, citizens.
◦Our whole job is to HELP people.
•Is this why we were promoted?
◦I hope so, but I also know people that have excelled in
their careers due to knowledge in technology.
◦If it is not why you were promoted than you better
become a people person.
Understanding People
•Supervising and managing people, requires many
different Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSA’s)
•You also need to understand different personalities
•Many different methods to do this:
◦Myers & Briggs Type indicator
◦DiSC
◦Working Styles
Understanding People
•Working Styles - breaks it down to 4 styles
◦ Analytical
◦ Driver
◦ Amiable
◦ Expressive
•Also further broken into responsive verse assertiveness
•Everyone has parts of all traits, but you likely have a
dominant style.
Understanding People
•What is your style?
◦Exercise
•What do you do with this information?
•Helps you understand the people above and below
you in the organization.
•When possible, surround your self with people who
are different. If that is not possible, understand it
and use this to prevent conflict.
Communications
Communications
•The most important trait in the middle manager is
the ability to communicate.
•Communications are a two way street.
•This is crucial when you are stuck in the
middle.
•What information needs to go up and
what information needs to go down.
Communications
•The communications process
Communications
•Listening
◦Not just a buzz word.
◦One of the most important things you do.
◦You need to listen to your boss to understand the agency
vision, mission and direction.
◦You need to listen to your employees to know what are
challenges they have, how is morale and what do they
need.
◦Listen to members of your team.
37
Listening Exercise
•Pick a partner
•One person does all the talking
•One person does all the listening
•One-Minute in each role
•Don’t take notes and don’t talk if you are the
listener – just listen!
Communications
•The issue of communication in your environment may
be directly impacted on size of agency and span of
control.
•You need to make sure that you become that conduit.
•You cannot over communicate.
•Use a variety of methods:
◦ Face to face, roll calls, meetings, emails, memo’s
◦ Speaking of E-mails: “Reply all” and other issues
Communication
•Using a filter:
◦ You have to use a filter in middle management
◦ Your boss does not need to know everything you do. You
have to determine what information needs to get to her and
what information can stay at your level.
◦ You also may have access to information from above that
while important, has to be filtered down to your employees.
 Confidential information (employee, etc.)
 Discussions before a decision has been made
 Union negotiations
Communications
•Confronting rumors
◦Its not discipline or a formal investigation to just
confront what you have heard.
•Your not an expert
◦Don’t represent knowledge or information you don’t
have.
◦Get answers, if you don’t know.
◦Follow up
41
Communication
•Chain of Command in your own
communications
◦Support the message
◦Speak with authority
◦Gripes go up
Supervising Your
Employees
44
45
Supervising Your Employees
•Challenges:
◦How to deal with being promoted
Are you supervising friends
Has that changed your relationship
Have you communicated with them on the differences of your
role
◦Being tested
◦Problem employees
46
Supervising Your Employees
•Resolutions:
◦You need to establish boundaries.
◦Involve them in the solution.
Ownership of the problem
Consensus of direction
Shared set of goals
◦Treat people fair and consistent and you will set your self
up to succeed.
◦Remember perceptions can be reality.
47
Supervising Your Employees
•Other tips:
◦Praise in Public, criticize in private
◦Choose your battles
◦Document, Document, Document
◦Delegate
◦Get ORGANIZED:
Time Management
“To Do’ Lists
Resources, Franklin Planners, Outlook, One Note, pen, paper.
48
Upper
Management
49
50
Upper Management
•What is your Upper Management?
•You need to understand your organization and
your position in it.
•How do you do this?
•Organizational Charts can be useful:
51
52
53
Upper Management
•Can be the hardest part of Middle Management
◦You could have GOOD Upper Management
Strong Vision = Must deliver it through organization
High Energy = Added pressures on you
Engaged = Employees may want to bypass you and go direct to the
Boss. Open Door policies
◦You could have POOR Upper Management
No Vision = Leaves you frustrated to improve things
No Energy = No bar set to accomplish things
Unengaged = You are left to solve all your own problems
54
Upper Management
•Some facts you have to know.
◦Have their own priorities that can be in conflict with
apparent needs of agency.
Fiscal Pressures
Agency issues
May overly focus on technology and not people
◦You must balance things.
If Upper Management does not agree with you, demonstrate the why
respectfully.
55
Upper Management
•Place a lot of pressure on Middle Managers.
•Understand their role, but still expect you to be
able to handle everything.
•We need you to be:
◦Trustworthy
◦Hardworking
◦Communicative – Both Directions!!!
◦Share in vision and mission
56
A Management Point of View
•Common issues from the Directors Chair
◦Supervisor and Managers who have a problem viewing a
situation from a “Management” point of view.
◦This is a difficult transition
◦Have to look at things from both sides
◦Examples:
Scheduling: A supervisory might bring a new work schedule to a
Director for consideration. The schedule may solve an employee
concern, like more weekends off, but could cost the agency more to
implement.
Escape
Escape
•Escape from being “Caught in the Middle”
◦ Say YES whenever possible because you sometimes have to
say no.
◦ Don’t try too hard to please your employees and your boss,
because you will likely please neither.
◦ If you have identified a problem, you should develop a
solution. Make it into a recommendation as you discuss it
with your boss.
◦ Listen, listen, listen. Take ideas from your employees up and
take direction from your boss down.
Escape
•Develop your own leadership style.
•Know your personality and those above and below you.
•Become a great communicator. It will never fail you.
•Know how to supervise your employees properly.
•Understand the needs of Upper Management, while
never minimizing the needs of those below you.
•Have the courage to lead!
Discussions
Discussions
•The Situations.
•What are your issues?
Recommended Reading
•“Its Your Ship” and/or “Its Our Ship”
◦ By Captain Michael Abrashoff
•“Leadership”
◦ By Rudolph Giuliani
•“From Buddy to Boss”
◦ By Chase Sargent
•“People Styles at Work”
◦ By Robert Bolton and Dorothy Glover Bolton
•“Up the Organization”
◦ By Robert Townsend
Take it Home
Develop your own leadership style
Read a good book on leadership
Learn about peoples styles and
personalities and use it effectively at work
Communicate effectively
Learn how to deal with your employees
Look at things from both points of view
Follow us on Twitter & Like us on Facebook
@NENA911Training
www.facebook.com/NENA911Training