Breaking the Leadership Matrix

Introduction

Nolan: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Learning and Development Podcast, sponsored by Infopro Learning. As always, I’m your host, Nolan Hout. Today, we’re going to be joined by ‘The HR Lady.’ And I’m not just speaking in hyperbole; that’s how Wendy Sellers, our guest today, is known, and that’s the name of her company.

But I could call her the HR lady even if that wasn’t the case because she’s so knowledgeable about a wide range of topics in our field. Some are very HR centric, and some are more into traditional learning and development.

Today, we’ll discuss how we can transform middle managers into strategic business leaders. We’ll also discuss surveys, training programs, ROI measurement, connecting to business, and just about everything else. We have a lot to cover in a short amount of time, so let’s dive right in and introduce our guest.

Hello, Wendy, welcome to the podcast.

Wendy: All right, thanks for having me.

Nolan: Yeah, and thanks for being on the podcast. Wendy, we have a great topic we want to dive into today—how HR and training can transform middle managers into strategic business partners. But before we get into that, one of our favorite things is learning more about our guests. In our field, people often have interesting paths that have led them to where they are today. So, Wendy, if you would, please start by sharing your origin story. How did you get to where you are now?

Wendy’s Background

Wendy: It was an accident, to be quite honest. I went to college to study healthcare administration and got a bachelor’s and master’s degree. When I ended up in that field for a very short period of time, I realized this is not me. This is way too slow and too much red tape.

I was looking for a job after moving from Pennsylvania to Florida when we had these things called paper resumes. I was walking in an elevator with my paper resume, and somebody who owned a recruiting firm said, “What are you looking for? Can you do HR?” And I said, “Yeah, I could figure that out.”

I returned to school and got a master’s degree in human resources and every certification known to man. I ended up in a growing architectural engineering firm. I was their first HR person. By the time I left, there was an entire team. We were in multiple countries and got bought out a few times. Then I went to another technology firm and eventually started my own business, The HR Lady.

Nolan: What made you stick in HR? What drew you to the HR, training, and talent landscape?

Wendy: I love fixing things. I love finding solutions or problems—and they’re not usually the people, it’s something else, but we blame them. I like finding the problems and helping the people we blame to fix them because they’re often just part of an issue, and nobody’s listening to them. I just like to help people get out of their own way. It’s usually upper management and ownership that’s in everybody’s way.

Defining Middle Management

Nolan: That’s really fascinating. There’s always some problem to solve. You never go home with the job fully done. And somebody who probably feels that pain more than anyone is these middle managers. It’s a tough job being in that space. How do you define the middle manager? Where do these people really sit in the organization?

Wendy: I’m going to answer about the misconceptions of middle managers. So many people at the top, including HR, think of middle managers as task managers—they’re there to execute. But they really should also be part of the strategic team. They are strategic drivers of business outcomes. Too often, they’re just viewed as a doer or a worker bee.

The reality is that they’re a bridge between the higher-ups—the executives and VPs—and the actual employees who are doing the work. We need to think of middle managers as much more influential than we think they are. We leave the entire strategy to chance if we don’t invest in their development.

Nolan: Have you seen that shift? Is what middle managers are asked of today different from what they used to be?

Wendy: It’s definitely different from what it used to be. First of all, there used to be no middle management. There was top, and there were supervisors, and that was it. Now, as companies grow in any size, you could be a small company with different management levels or a giant company across the globe.

I’ve been in HR for almost 30 years, and I’ve definitely seen a lot of change where the smart companies are looking to middle managers, saying, “I need you.” Some companies still just put the management title on somebody to get them to stay with the organization. However, then they just have them still do the other things instead of actually developing them, training them, letting them lead, letting them manage.

Most employees are loyal to their managers, not necessarily to the company. So, it’s smart to ensure that your middle managers are involved in leadership decisions. Maybe they’re not going to make all the decisions, but at least get their opinions because they are the ones who are touching, feeling and seeing what’s going on the frontline.

The Cost of Neglecting Middle Managers

Nolan: What are the consequences of not developing middle managers? What if they continue operating as they are, holding a title without the necessary growth? What challenges can this create?

Wendy: A couple of things. One is that they do nothing, and they stay. They’re ho-hum; their engagement is down. They probably have a bad attitude because you’re not putting them to work the way you said you would when you promoted them. So, they either quit or they “quit and stay.”

If they quit and leave, they take that institutional knowledge with them. By the way, they probably take the employees with them too, because, like I said earlier, employees stay for managers; they don’t stay for the company.

If they “quit and stay,” meaning they’re there doing the bare minimum of the job, they’re bringing everybody’s morale down. It’s not just their own morale; it’s everybody around them, too. That will cause productivity issues, issues with your brand, whether with external customers or just your brand with candidates, and a revenue problem.

Engaging Middle Managers

Nolan: How do we engage them? How do we align these middle managers with the business’s goals rather than being the best widget maker with a better title? How do we hook them into the business?

Wendy: One thing that I like to do with my clients is either surveys or committees, or often both. When rolling out a new project or revising something, don’t just get the executives involved—no offence, executives—but you usually don’t know what’s happening. Everybody else knows what’s going on with the project. They know the widgets that fit in what holes and what needs to be addressed.

We forget to ask the actual worker bees, the supervisors, and the middle managers. Everyone should be at the table when we’re making changes. I love having temporary committees, where maybe we meet weekly for three months with everybody all hands on deck. Then, people roll off that committee when we solve the problem. But we asked everybody who should be at the table to come with their ideas.

You could also do surveys, but nobody’s filling out your survey if you already have low engagement or lack trust. They don’t want anything to track back to them. But if you invite them to a meeting, they might say, “Yeah, I’ve got a problem and want to talk about it.” And if you let them talk and listen to them, they may say, “You know what? The company’s trying, I’m going to stick around and I’m going to help.”

Nolan: It’s a hard line to balance. Sometimes getting feedback through an outside partner is easier because we have no axe to grind. We’re there just to capture information. There’s a benefit to the person saying, “Oh, these people care enough to bring in somebody else,” and a benefit to the company of getting that outside perspective.

What to Do with Survey Data

Nolan: We did the strategy, and now we have a pretty good sense. Once we have these surveys, what do we do with that information?

Wendy: That’s a very good question. Too often, companies will do surveys and don’t even look at the results, or they see the results, just like, “We can’t do this. This is impossible. We’re just going to ignore it.” Well, if you do that, those employees will never give you feedback again. Your good talent will walk out the door because you asked them for feedback, they gave feedback, and you didn’t do anything about it.

Even if you can’t address everything immediately because of money or other constraints, at least have that conversation with your staff to say, “This is the feedback we got. We can’t do this, but we could do that. We’ll work in small increments.” People understand that not everything can be done immediately because it costs money or a board must approve it.

But don’t expect employees to stick around if they say, “I need this change in the company or I can’t stay here.” Expect turnover. Some companies have a lot of turnovers and are okay with that. If that’s the case, you’ll need a huge recruiting budget and probably a big budget for your law firms.

Prioritizing Initiatives

Nolan: Out of these surveys, how do you prioritize what to work on? We don’t have unlimited budgets—some of us have no budget. How do we prioritize what comes out of that survey to make something that is actually meaningful to these middle managers?

Wendy: You probably need to do a skills assessment. Who do we have who works at this company? What are their skills? They may have skills that we don’t even realize they have because we just put them in a box. This applies to everybody, not just managers.

You can make a skills assessment that fits every budget. You can do it alone by asking your employees, “Give me an updated resume or fill out some information.” Figure out what skills they have that you’re not putting to use and what skills they would like to be using so they’re happier and more engaged.

I had one client, a mid-sized tech company, that was struggling with turnover at the middle management level. The issue was that managers felt caught between the leadership’s high expectations and their frontline employees’ needs. They said, “We can’t do both of these, given the number of employees we have to manage and the time we have.”

They didn’t have the skills or authority to move forward, so we created a development program that combined leadership training with real-time business problem-solving. Instead of generic management workshops, we aligned the training directly with their current business challenges.

We conducted an employee survey and implemented much of the feedback. After that, there was a 35% improvement in manager engagement scores and a 20% drop in middle management turnover. We built a leadership pipeline that worked because those middle managers stayed longer and eventually got promoted to VPs. Everybody else saw, “I could stay with this company and advance if I wanted to.” Not everybody wants to be a manager, and I don’t blame them.

Common Themes in Middle Management Development

Nolan: What themes have you seen across your recent projects? Are there common issues that organizations need to improve in their middle management?

Wendy: Engagement and retention are huge. Performance metrics are also critical—what performance metrics do you have in your organization? Has productivity improved in teams led by trained managers versus those led by people randomly promoted?

I want to ask the listeners if you even have performance metrics at your company. You might have key performance indicators (KPIs). I use SMART goals because they’re easy to understand. For example, I put together a SMART goal for a receptionist: “Improving front desk efficiency by reducing call wait times to 20 seconds and visitor check-in to 1.5 minutes from three minutes within three months.” How? Implementing a digital log, updating phone scripts, and completing customer service training.

Everybody in your organization can have performance indicators. If managers don’t know the performance indicators, then employees don’t either. They’re just coming to work and dealing with urgent issues every day, and then we’re frustrated with them, even though we never gave them clear performance goals.

Training is very important for the company, especially for middle managers. I often get asked what we should train managers on. If they’re managing people or projects, they need training on business acumen—understanding financials, operations, and market dynamics. They don’t need to be experts, but they need to understand enough to follow conversations.

Communication is the biggest thing. Managers influence so many people, actions, and reactions, including customers. We have to make sure we’re teaching managers how to communicate. The old school thought, “I have the title, I’m in charge, I have the authority,” has been gone for a long time. You must communicate to influence people to want to work with and for you.

And then there is data-driven decision-making. When people say, “I have a gut feeling,” it makes me want to explode. Guts don’t have feelings. It’s probably based on a past incident. You should be making decisions with data, not just by saying, “I’m having a good day today.”

Overcoming Obstacles

Nolan: All of these projects usually start with good buy-in, but we all know that we face roadblocks or stumbling blocks along the way. What are some of those brick walls that get in our way, and how do you help people solve them?

Wendy: The biggest thing is that most humans are resistant to change. All of us, including me, love change—well, I love it when it’s over. However, we must understand that most people resist change, and depending on their personality style, personality trait, and experiences, they may have greater resistance.

Managers, HR, and executives need to get to know every single one of their employees. If you know someone will react strongly to change, why don’t you give them advance notice? Say, “Hey, I’ve got to tell you some confidential information in the meeting tomorrow. I know you’re not going to like it, so I want to give you 24 hours to think about it so that you can remain calm in the meeting.” They’re probably upset, but they will respect that you knew them well enough to prepare them.

For senior leaders, I ask you to show middle managers how whatever you direct them to do or not do directly affects business results—how it affects the outcomes we’re all looking to achieve, whether it’s retention, better revenue, or innovation.

For middle managers, make training hyper-relevant to their daily challenges. If they don’t feel that it’s useful today, it will go in one ear and out the other. There’s also powerful potential in peer influence. If you’re having a difficult time with one middle manager, see if there’s another middle manager who’s doing well. If they’re friends, see if you can get them to do some coaching. You must tread carefully with this approach, though—that’s where you need to get HR involved.

The Future of HR and Middle Management

Nolan: Before we end this session, what final thoughts do you want to share with the audience?

Wendy: I see several shifts in the future of HR and middle management. AI and data-driven leadership are huge. We still need to collect the data, though. If you’re not collecting performance metrics, AI can’t help you analyze anything. We need to use data-driven decision-making and leadership. Managers need to make decisions based on analytics, not just gut feelings or experience. HR must work with them to equip middle managers with data literacy skills.

Second is the hybrid work evolution. The role of managers in driving culture, engagement, and performance continues to evolve. More employees want to be remote or at least partially remote. If you can do the same job fully or partially remote, which makes you happier and saves money, why wouldn’t we want to help people? Even for roles that can’t be fully remote, can one day a month be remote, where they’re doing forms or something similar?

Third is HR as a coach, not just a policy enforcer. Forward-thinking companies are transforming HR into a true business advisory function. This means supporting managers with insights, training, and data analytics—helping managers help employees do their job, not just saying “you violated a policy.” If I had a wish, HR would be a coach and mentor, not just a policy enforcer.

Conclusion

Nolan: I agree, Wendy. Thank you for sharing so much time and wisdom with us. Wendy Sellers is “The HR Lady,” has her own podcast, and has a ton of great content. Connect with her on LinkedIn. She’s phenomenal. If you follow her for a week and don’t learn anything new, then maybe call me and be on the podcast, because you must know a lot. Thank you so much, Wendy. This has been a blast.

Wendy: Thank you, thanks for having me. Take care, everybody.