As a middle manager, your well-being should be a top priority.
“I have to first take care of myself to be then able to work through it with everyone else,” Lai said. She added that it helps to talk with other middle managers within your company who might have the “missing puzzle piece that [you’ve] been trying to figure out.”
To prevent burnout, it also helps to understand the extent and limits of your power as a middle manager, Appio said.
“You can be influential, but you cannot actually control other people’s behavior — your team members’ or your leaders’,” she said. “Therapy and coaching can be helpful with recognizing and tolerating this.”
In some cases, it can help to ask executives to meet with your team and explain their decisions, said organizational psychologist Laura Gallaher of the consulting business Gallaher Edge. That way, “you can all work to get on the same page, and you have less weight on your shoulders to play the ‘middle person,’” she said. “This is especially useful for very critical changes, or changes that create a sense of loss for your teams.”
And make sure to use the support that your company offers. Maison said she had a supportive workplace that allowed her to have the time off that she needed. She advised middle managers to take advantage of company-sponsored mental health benefits or ones that you’re entitled to in your state.
Also, it helps to know that middle management is not for everyone. Quitting is a perfectly fine option, too. Maison, now a New York City-based tech consultant, said that during her disability leave, she realized that her situation was untenable and resigned.
“The environment that I was in was causing the anxiety, and going back into that environment would have led me to the exact same place of burnout,” she said.
Maison said that her middle management burnout completely recalibrated her expectations for what she wanted from her life and career. She said she is now much more fulfilled as an individual contributor, because this role allows for more flexibility in her schedule and ownership over her time.
“I thought that as a very driven person, that the path for me was very linear and that path was an upward line. But it doesn’t look like that to me anymore,” she said. “It looks like, ‘How does work fit into my life?’ not just, ‘How does my life revolve around work?’”
People in other positions should be conscious of middle managers’ well-being, too. Although it can sometimes be a thankless job, middle managers are still necessary for any company. They deserve a shoutout for their hard work.
A little gratitude and grace can count for a lot. Lai said that she still remembers a direct report who actively thanked her. That’s because middle managers’ jobs are both tough and rewarding under the best of circumstances.
The “most effective middle managers are the systems thinkers,” Lai said. “They’re the ones who understand how this impacts five people over here, or how one person’s unhappiness could trickle into other things.”
Lai said that most leaders in senior roles care about people, but middle managers are the ones who express that care and make people feel cared for. This involves “checking in with someone and having a conversation, [asking] them how their day is going. And that goes a long way,” Lai said. “I truly believe that that actually then makes the work more motivating. … It helps team morale.”
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
