Context:
This essay never came together.
There are interesting ideas and observations about how companies treat middle managers is following the same arc that police officers went and are going through.
The link to between the problem of over-stretching people and DW Winnicott1 and his work around “the good enough parent” is not just a cute semantic jump that fits the “performance issue” theme.
At least to me his work and the recent further research around Secure Base Provision by Susan Woodhouse2 struck/strikes me aa a viable path for companies to consider when training managers to be more effective. Especially given the state of flux that the workday is in for many workers.
I just could not find, or could not be bothered [if being honest] a nice “wrap it up with 5 things to do” type of advice at the end of the more meaty stuff.
Maybe it is more a presentation or workshop idea?
If anybody wants to spur me on to do that by expressing interest in hearing me talk about the things, let me know.
I kept the image, because it worked “good enough” with the essay that Mark Earls and Alex Bentley wrote. It was one of the first visuals that I did, where the image told a story without further explanation. And played a port in me making the “Dear Mr Chairman Series”.
So keep it mind, as you read the essay draft, that it is not polished and missing an ending
the good enough manager
Good to Great
When a family member is in the midst of a mental health crisis and their behaviour potentially harms them or others, most will call 911. And when violence is mentioned, police will show up.
Over the years police have increasingly been called to deal with issues outside of their core skills. These calls range from mental health situations, quality-of-life or homeless issues and more.
So many police departments are testing alternative response programs (ARP), in a bid to transfer officers’ workload to more serious crimes and reduce the unrealistic spectrum of skills asked of police to embody.
In ARP’s Mental Health professionals, social workers or others respond to emergency calls instead of police.
Results are hit and miss [like any plan meeting reality], but the underlying diagnosis is undisputed: police officers are being prepared for an imagined job rather than the role they actually perform.
When I saw an ad on the site of a well known HR magazine for a training to “equip” managers to deal with bereavement issues that direct reports experience, the police comparable was too obvious to ignore.
Multiple generations, intersectionality, bias, remote/hybrid/RTO, [corporate] politics on top of resource constraints. And now bereavement?! Much like police, managers are being overqualified [assuming someone is capable of more than the role requires] beyond reason.
Captera’s middle manager survey3 revealed only 37% received training when hired or promoted as manager and 74% said they “rarely” or “never” received ongoing managerial training afterwards.
And as per Gartner4, one in five wouldn’t be a manager if given the choice. And who can blame them? They didn’t sign up to be counsellors, coaches or therapists. Yet here they are.
Great to good enough
In 1953 English paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott introduced the concept of ‘good enough’.
In discussing parent adaptation to the needs of the baby, Winnicott thought that "good enough parents" start out entirely devoted to the baby and quickly see to his every need.
Over time, the parent lets the infant experience small doses of frustration to let them experience a need apart from its immediate fulfilment.
Empathetic and caring, the parent does not rush to every cry. Not "perfect" but "good enough" so that baby only feels a bit of frustration that grows as his resilience grows.
This concept arose in part to defend parents from growing pressures to keep up with fads. And it has held up in the face of gentle & helicopter parents banging down its door.
The crack cocaine guide to parenting
Being good enough may be simple and effective, but it is also very hard due to the reliance on moment-to-moment matching of infant cues & response in a world of two/single working parents and less than adequate parental support systems around us.
Enter Susan Woodhouse, who introduced a new framework, purer and less time consuming to impact; secure base provision.
Her takeaway is two-fold: As a parent Just get the core of the job done - support exploration & don’t interrupt unneeded and welcome babies in when they need comfort or protection. The other part is that you have to get it right about 50% of the time.
You don't have to be perfect, you just have to be good enough and secure attachment is well within reach.
Which is great as secure attachment is linked to better mental health outcomes in child- and adulthood [inc less incidence of externalising behaviours such as acting out and internalising behaviours such as depression and anxiety] as well as greater school & work readiness [bridge to final application paragraph].
Secure base also avoids emphasising the importance of practices often associated with white, middle-class, like moment-to-moment attunement, prompt responses, sweet voice and affectionate verbal comments.
SBP captures strengths also present in parents who may be under economic strain or who ascribe to 'no-nonsense parenting’.
Applications for HR Practitioners, Across Cultures and Corporations
The beauty of things having gone so far in the direction of over-qualifying managers to be so much more than just core job managers, is that there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit. Both in how we design manager support and work environments.
Especially when middle managers made up 30% of the ‘2023 layoffs at US companies5 [those trendsetter again] under the guise of efficiency.
Given the fact that the managers’ job won’t be rolled back to the scope of the 1990’s it speaks to everybody’s self interest to marry what managers are asked to do and what they actually end up doing.
We have decades of evidence to understand how to shape thriving individuals. We have cases re: thought process & decision making errors that happen when people are overstretched beyond skills and training.
Read the above paragraphs and for “parent” read manager and for “infant” read direct report.
51% of middle managers surveyed by Captera say it’s impossible to give all direct reports the 1-on-1 time they need.
Imagine the stress, anger & guilt a Secure Base type approach could remove from all involved.
So in the remainder of this article we’ll focus on translating the police & parent learnings for managers.…….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_enough_parent
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30740649/
https://www.capterra.com/resources/middle-manager-burnout-strategies/
https://www.reworked.co/talent-management/what-hrs-top-5-priorities-say-about-the-year-to-come/
https://www.businessinsider.com/middle-managers-layoffs-2023-meta-tech-companies-jobs-employment-2024-3#:~:text=Times%20are%20tough%20for%20the,little%20under%2020%25%20in%202018.