Article Summary
Why middle managers are the most influential—but most overlooked—change leaders in organisations today.
How poor support and overwhelming expectations create a change bottleneck, fuelling fatigue and resistance.
What organisations can do to empower managers as change agents, including skills development, trust-building, and involving them early.
Middle managers remain one of the most overlooked levers of organisational performance. Seminal work by Ethan Mollick at the Wharton School illustrates why. Analysing more than 850 projects worth $4 billion in revenue, Mollick found that individual differences – especially among middle managers – explain far more of an organisation’s performance than is often assumed. Their impact on outcomes exceeded even that of people in explicitly innovative roles, highlighting the pivotal part managers play in turning creativity and strategy into results.1
Subsequent studies echo this finding. When middle managers align daily activity with strategic goals and improve business practices, they directly influence productivity, customer satisfaction and profitability.² In the US financial services sector, for instance, managers who can pinpoint and prioritise value-adding work are shown to drive both higher performance and stronger alignment across teams.³
And it’s this ability to translate vision into action that makes middle managers indispensable to change. They are the bridge between leadership intent and frontline reality, where strategy becomes behaviour. When they’re equipped and empowered, change takes root; when they’re overlooked or under-supported, transformation stalls.
The pressure point of constant change
Yet today’s environment is testing that capability like never before. As organisations pivot continuously to meet new demands, middle managers are bearing the brunt, tasked with translating shifting strategies into action while maintaining engagement and performance. New Investor in People research reveals that 43% of middle managers are more stressed as a result of unrelenting change and a third (33%) feel demotivated. Nearly half (47%) say they are simply tired of constant transformation, while only 14% feel energised and ready for change.
This fatigue has real consequences. When managers lose energy the entire organisation loses momentum. Our earlier whitepaper, The Broken Ladder: Why people are avoiding manager roles – and how to fix it, identified middle management as a “high stress, low reward” zone, with 74% of people describing these roles as stressful. Combined, the two studies paint a stark picture: the very group organisations depend on to make change happen are often those least equipped to lead it.
Finding the Frequency
How to build change-ready cultures that accept and embrace transformation
Find out the real impact transformation is having on individuals and organisational performance – and what levers leaders need to pull to create change-ready over change-resistant cultures.
Why the middle matters
The instinct in many organisations is to focus development at the top – the senior leadership teams who set direction. But it is the middle that determines whether change sticks. According to Gallup 70% of variance in team engagement is determined by the manager.4 Managers directly influence not just engagement but wellbeing, productivity and retention.
Investors in People’s own data shows that, when middle managers are supported to lead effectively, the impact cascades through culture and performance. In our whitepaper, Finding the Frequency: How to build change-ready cultures that accept and embrace transformation 80% of HR leaders reported concerns about change fatigue. Their reflections highlight what makes the difference between fatigue and follow-through.
As one HR leader we surveyed noted: “My most effective approach has been combining clear communication about the reasons and benefits of change with active listening to address concerns. I also involve people in the process where possible, which helps reduce resistance and build trust.” Another added that supporting people through change is “less about ‘managing’ them and more about guiding them”.
Together, these comments reinforce that change succeeds when managers act as facilitators, not messengers – creating the trust, clarity and ownership that turn disruption into progress.
The capacity gap
The problem is capacity. Managers today are expected to be performance coaches, wellbeing guardians, DEI champions, finance planners and technology translators – all at once. In The Broken Ladder CMI chief executive Ann Francke described this as a “multitude of tasks” that managers are simply not trained for. CMI research finds that 82% of managers are ‘accidental managers’, promoted for technical skill rather than people leadership.5
This mismatch creates a dangerous bottleneck. As transformation accelerates, managers who lack confidence or clarity about their role become cautious, reverting to control rather than empowerment. According to Finding the Frequency, 31% of middle managers worry communication during change will be poor or confusing and 41% want more support from their own leaders to protect work–life balance. Without that support, many retreat into survival mode – doing just enough to deliver targets but unable to inspire their teams to adapt and grow.
As Professor Julie Hodges of Durham University explains in Finding the Frequency: “All managers should be able to facilitate change: asking questions, listening to people and creating a psychologically safe environment where people feel they can raise issues, concerns, fears and ideas.” It is this facilitative capability rather than technical competence that distinguishes high-performing change leaders.
Reframing the manager role
To build truly change-ready cultures organisations need to rethink what management is for. Managers do not exist to merely control efficiency but are there to liberate energy and humanity.
That shift demands a different kind of development. Managers need sustained coaching in empathy, communication, decision-making and resilience. It also means giving them the time and permission to lead. When management becomes purely operational, people management falls by the wayside and, with it, the trust and engagement required for change to succeed.
Case studies from Finding the Frequency show what this looks like in practice: IIP Platinum accredited company, NIE Networks train managers to facilitate small-group dialogue about safety and culture, fostering openness and learning; New Technology Group, who hold We invest in people Gold accreditation, empower both managers and employees to shape the plans, with an open-door policy in terms of asking questions and making suggestions to senior leader. These two examples demonstrate that, when managers are treated as leaders of change rather than conduits for policy, performance follows, engagement rises, trust deepens and transformation sticks.
View from the Community
Middle managers are the bridge between strategy and reality, yet they’re often undersupported and over-stretched. To unlock their potential, HR must move beyond instruction and into partnership. That means equipping middle managers with what matters, investing in their development, giving clear support and feedback to avoid ambiguity, and allowing them space to reflect.
Managers thrive where they feel safe and supported, so focus on developing a culture of care, including offering flexibility where possible and creating collaborative networks. HR is a driver of transformation, translating vision into action and helping managers communicate the why and tackle any resistance to change.
Liam Linacre
Investors in People practitioner
Trust, transparency and two-way communication
Involving managers early in the change process is essential. Finding the Frequency research finds that 66% of employees feel involved in change but that figure drops sharply to 43% among entry-level staff – the very teams middle managers lead. This communication gap risks eroding trust and amplifying fatigue. As Professor Hodges notes: “Transformational change gets stuck when middle managers aren’t involved in decision-making.”
By contrast, organisations that practise ‘change with’, not ‘change to’, create energy rather than resistance and do so through an emphasis on creating transparency and trust, and empowering and involving people. When managers are given clarity of purpose and trusted to shape how change lands locally, they model the very autonomy and confidence their teams need to thrive.
In an era where constant transformation is the norm investing in managers is a performance imperative. As Finding the Frequency concludes: “HR must focus on supporting and empowering middle managers to facilitate and drive sustainable transformation.” Without this, even the most well-designed change programmes will falter under the weight of human fatigue.
How HR can enable managers as change agents
To turn managers into true catalysts for change HR leaders need to create the right conditions, where clarity, autonomy and values alignment reinforce one another.
The We invest in people framework offers a clear roadmap for organisations that understand the key role of middle managers hold in bridging the gap between leadership intent and frontline reality when it comes to transformational change:
- Lead and inspire through capability: Equip managers with the skills to guide and motivate teams through uncertainty, from communicating purpose to coaching individuals through change. This means developing leadership capability not as a one-off intervention but as a continuous, supported practice.
- Empower and involve through trust: Give managers the autonomy and tools to shape change locally. When they can adapt messages, test ideas and involve their teams in decisions they move from enforcing change to enabling it and engagement grows across every level.
- Live the values through action: Encourage managers to model organisational values in how they lead through transformation. Their day-to-day behaviour is what sustains trust and ensures change feels authentic and consistent with the organisation’s culture.
Conclusion
Middle managers are the engine room of change—but only when given the tools, trust, and autonomy to lead. This article makes clear that sustainable transformation isn’t about more strategy, it’s about smarter support. When HR teams equip managers to lead with clarity and humanity, change becomes a shared journey, not a top-down instruction. Involving managers early and meaningfully is no longer optional—it’s essential.
This article is expands on the findings of Finding the Frequency: How to build change-ready cultures that accept and embrace transformation. Download the Finding the Frequency whitepaper to find out the real impact transformation is having on individuals and organisational performance – and what levers leaders need to pull to create change-ready over change-resistant cultures.
Sources
- Mollick, Ethan R., People and Process, Suits and Innovators: The Role of Individuals in Firm Performance (March 1, 2011). Strategic Management Journal, 33 (9), 1001-1015, 2012, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1630546 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1630546
- Chanana, N., & Sangeeta. (2021). Employee engagement practices during the COVID-19 lockdown, Journal of Public Affairs (14723891), 21(4), 1–8.https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2508
- Payne, M. R. (2025). Leadership Behaviors and Practices That Enhance Middle Managers’ Leadership Skills to Be Highly Engaged (Doctoral dissertation, Walden University) https://www.proquest.com/openview/c5a1bf74bc07b2bcb63b488a93b395bc/1?pqorigsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y
- Gallup, Who’s Responsible For Employee Engagement?, 2024 https://www.gallup.com/workplace/266822/engaged-employees-differently.aspx
- Chartered Management Institute, Taking Responsibility – Why UK PLC Needs Better Managers, 2023 https://www.managers.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/CMI_BMB_GoodManagment_Report.pdf
