Middle managers have had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad couple of years.

Playing the middleman between senior leadership and frontline supervisors has always been a little miserable, but the role reached a tipping point in the 2020s. Middle managers have led their employees through the pandemic, navigated the Great Resignation, and implemented upper management’s return to office policies to disgruntled workers. They are, unsurprisingly, increasingly burned out. And they’ve become prime targets for the chopping block—30% of laid off workers are middle managers.

Look no further than Meta’s now famous “Year of Efficiency,” which Mark Zuckerberg said would involve removing multiple layers of management (the social media behemoth has cut 20,000-plus jobs).

No wonder middle managers are the least satisfied at work and that no one really aspires to the title anymore. Where, then, does that leave them?

THE CULLING OF THE MIDDLE MANAGER

As companies look to become more efficient, they’re assessing whether their managers are adding any value, says Bryan Hancock, partner at McKinsey & Co. and an author of “Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work.”

It’s putting middle managers at the greatest risk of losing their jobs. And in the process, the ratio of managers to doers is changing, says Nolan Church, CEO of FairComp who has a decade-plus experience recruiting for companies like Google and DoorDash.

“When money was free flowing in this system, no one really looked at that,” he says of the ratio, adding that companies are now under investor pressure to cut costs as the market corrects itself from the Great Resignation’s heights. Some jobs are also going to AI or offshore workers, he points out. It’s all a sign that companies “want more doers and fewer people managers.”

“You don’t need a manager for three people, you need more people doing actual work,” he says, explaining that the span of control is changing with managers overseeing larger teams—especially as they take on the work of their laid off peers.

“There’s going to be an expectation that you can’t just manage,” he says. “You have to be a player coach.”

WHY MIDDLE MANAGERS ARE BURNED OUT

But this is leaving more middle managers under extreme pressure to take on more responsibility and perform better, Church adds. Rather than just eliminate a layer, Hancock says, organizations need to rethink what managers should be doing and who should be in these roles.

That’s because many middle managers—some of whom have been promoted from an individual contributor role but lack leadership skills—aren’t set up for success, he explains. McKinsey research finds they spend half of their time on individual contributor and admin work rather than just managing.

“When the administrative burden is high, when they have their own individual work they need to do, when they have to be in meetings, and then at the end of the day, they also have people who have their own needs—that’s where they’re getting burned out, because there’s so much on their plate,” Hancock says.

Mid-level managers reported the highest levels of anxiety and worst work-life balance in a 2022 Future Fortum Survey. Things didn’t get better by the time software company Capterra published a survey in February, which found that nearly three-fourths of middle managers are feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and burned out.

But companies don’t care about that right now, Church says. “The only thing companies care about is results and performance,” he says. “If people are burned out, companies will terminate and find a replacement quickly.”

HOW AI CAN HELP MIDDLE MANAGERS

This is why reimagining the middle manager role is so important. It involves thinking about individual career paths where people can grow in pay and responsibility, Hancock says. This allows workers advancement outside of management, leaving middle manager roles open for those with the right skills. But organizations also need to simplify and streamline administrative tasks.

He thinks generative AI can help with that, “freeing up managers to spend more time coaching and leading and being someone who actually helps apprentice, guide, and manage people across their career and be the person who makes connections across parts of the organization,” he says. “Managers are going to be leading teams that are going to be a combination of human activity and activity augmented or automated by technology.”

This means that they’ll need to understand the limitations of tech and how to leverage it with the human elements of a team as they coach the next generation of leaders in a tech-enabled world, he explains.

Consider a mid-level law associate who typically manages junior attorneys’ legal briefs. Generative AI may be able to produce a first draft of these, Hancock says, allowing the associate to coach the junior attorney on critical thinking skills rather than drafting. This also leaves them with time to handle more cases.

Hancock believes tech will help middle managers evolve into what it’s always supposed to have been—an inspiring people leadership role connecting with how their organization delivers value to others. “The manager of the future is going to be a human leader and not an administrator,” he says.