Introduction
Leadership remains a major subject of discussion and of special interest. This is based on the fact that leaders bear a lot of responsibilities with regard to the progress and overall success of a project, business or running of an institution. Leadership begins with oneself before extending to teams, institutions and regions.
While leadership remains a major topic of concern, the need for understanding the structure of leadership is of immense significance. It allows us to interact with middle managers who are key performance players in any leadership structure.
This paper addresses the issue of middle leaders by critically synthesizing their challenges and expounding on some of the ways in which they are professionally equipped to deal with these challenges. To achieve this target, reference has been made from reputable and authentic authors and publications.
Research Objectives
The following are the objectives of this analysis with reference to the subject matter:
- To describe middle leaders in terms of their functions and characteristics
- To investigate major challenges facing middle leaders and how these challenges affect their performance
- To analyze the extent to which middle leaders are professionally equipped to deal with leadership challenges facing them
Middle Leaders
Who are middle leaders? Within the context of a school, a middle leader can the described as one who is in charge of major subjects, pastoral services and major phases among others. They may be involved in the leadership of the school or and even in other schools.
Jeevan argued middle leaders play a pivotal role in ensuring the success of any institution or business organization.
In his research, Middle Leaders Face in Raising Achievement, he noted that successful middle leaders are those who are able to connect between being a great teacher and the drive to achieve as a team leader (Jeevan, n.d.). Although middle leaders are identified and analyzed based on their class performance, middle leadership calls for skills that are different from the ones applied in classroom teaching.
Regardless of the environment, successful leadership requires the participation of every individual and have roles within the organization distributed among leaders for effective execution of duties (National College for School Leadership, 2010).
As a result, leadership ought to be shared among all management levels within the school in order for the intended achievements to be realized without straining some leaders’ capabilities. Since senior leaders work through with all other leaders within the chain of management, middle leaders have a significant role in ensuring the success of an institution.
Of significance is the fact that middle leaders’ functions are usually enshrined in the development plan of a given school. They therefore lead a unique phase of learning and teaching in the school.
As part of performing their duties, middle leaders monitor and evaluate the progress of the school as directed by the development plan and further play a key role in building and leading teams to implement change accordingly (Uyterhoeven, 1989). They are considered to be quite influential to their colleagues and to the entire learning institution.
Moreover, the success of middle leadership depends on support from both sides of the leadership chain with the senior management taking a leading role. Their support and commitment to the success of an institution is of paramount importance in setting performance pace for middle leadership (Uyterhoeven, 1989).
To maintain and improve the quality of learning and teaching in different educational centers, middle leadership has to be holistically involved in order to guarantee performance improvement among pupils and students.
Based on the role of education centers in any system or set up, there is every need for schools having the right people taking up responsibilities as teachers. This is mainly rooted in the fact that effective teachers have to be leaders (National College for School Leadership, 2010).
A criterion for the identification and selection of such individuals is essential in equipping a learning institution with personnel that is solely driven by the maintenance of quality and continuous improvement of learning and teaching outcomes. Development of these leaders is also important in ensuring that delivered work is of quality for better outcome. Nevertheless, this can only be realized through support from senior leadership.
It is clear that middle leaders play a pivotal role with regard to restructuring and change in the entire education system and even within their respective teaching and learning institutions which are mainly schools and colleges (Jeevan, n.d.).
While serving in these positions, they encounter challenges that end up affecting their individual performance and event the net outcome of the quality of teaching and learning in these learning institutions. What are these challenges?
Middle Leadership Challenges
As mentioned above, middle leadership exists in almost every system that has a leadership or management structure. According to Maxwell’s 2006 publication and research, frustrations and challenges characterize the experiences of most of the middle leaders in the world (Maxwell, 2006, p. 23). He noted that most of these challenges are common across the board with leaders experiencing almost similar issues.
Maxwell considered tension as the first challenge that most middle leaders encounter. Like any other leader, they have power and authority which has to be exercised for effective results to be realized. They however find themselves not sure of where to stand and perform these duties because of their limited domain of leadership.
Even though they may have the power to instruct and organize, Maxwell noted that such authority is always on loan and could be withdrawn or reduced any time by those in higher authority (Maxwell, 2006, p. 24).
This also applies to educationists working in different centers. For instance, teachers have power and authority which does not go beyond school heads and directors. This has become a challenge for most of the teachers in cases where their ability to perform is limited.
How Tension Impacts Middle Leadership
The impact of tension varies from one person to the other because of the interplay between personality and response. Leaders have variation in terms of temperament with a wider range of tolerance before responding to a given experience (Maxwell, 2006, p. 26). Therefore, the manner in which tension impacts leaders depends on countless factors. The first factor is empowerment.
This defines the amount of responsibility and authority that is shared by the senior leaders and how clear the lines are in separating these. The potential of the challenge of tension affecting a middle leader is therefore inversely related to clarity of authority. The more visible the lines are, the less the impact (Nourse, 2009, p. 18).
The second factor which determines the impact of tension on middle leadership is the initiative of a leader to balance between performing his/her duties and overstepping set boundaries. Effective middle leaders give preference to opportunities other than focusing on existing boundaries within an institution.
The ability of a person to initiate new ideas and cause things to happen is what makes them exemplary and better than the entire team.
Nonetheless, this may result into greater potential for tension to take its course (Nourse, 2009, p. 18). High initiators are likely to encounter conflicts with colleagues and senior leadership especially in cases where the process is considered as a contradiction to the mission and vision of the main leadership.
Additionally, the uniqueness working conditions and the environment significantly determines the impact of tension on middle leaders (Maxwell, 2006, p. 28). It is therefore important for leaders to assess their respective working environment in order to understand tension mitigation measures.
A good example is in the education sector where colleges and schools may have distinct working conditions for teachers leading to variation in the impact of tension. Many authors further agree that job parameters significantly give way for tension to affect middle leaders.
Familiarity with tasks and duties is essential in reducing tension levels (Nourse, 2009, p. 19). Unfamiliar tasks increase tensional impact due to the fear of making avoidable errors and under performance which would definitely be against the expectations of senior leadership.
Introduction to Leadership
Middle leadership comes with duties and responsibilities which could be different from what one is used to as a normal employee of an institution. Middle Leaders in the education perform beyond normal classroom teaching. Other tasks like monitoring and evaluation of the learning and teaching process within a given institution would certainly be part of the job description.
Being a collegial profession, most teachers may find it challenging to take up authority over their colleagues when promoted to serve as middle leaders (Jeevan, n.d.). They may consider themselves as team advocates instead of being leaders expected to monitor and evaluate the learning and teaching process.
Vision Formulation
Besides having authority over others and gaining respect, middle leaders face the challenge of setting a strategic vision to drive the performance of team members and ensure that respective goals are achieved through performance. Although vision rating is considered to be one of the most significant qualities of middle and future leaders, it can be an uphill task for new middle leaders (Jeevan, n.d.).
Moreover, any vision set cannot be of any benefit if other members of the team are in disagreement and discontentment. It is therefore the role of middle leaders to inspire team members in order for them to have trust in the vision through emotional intelligence.
It is therefore important for middle leaders to understand that the formulated vision should aim at improving learning and teaching within the institution through support and acceptance from team members.
Performance Management
It has been found that most middle leaders in complex schools especially in urban regions are usually young and inexperienced. This exposes them to the inability to handle team members who may have better working experience. The notion further makes middle leaders to become more sensitive to future judgment that would be based on performance (National College for School Leadership, 2010).
Consequently, many middle leaders in these schools struggle to develop confidence which is a significant prerequisite to hold team members accountable. They find it difficult to converse with staff members and discuss some of the issues which could impediments towards good performance and improvement (Jeevan, n.d.).
It has to be understood that most of the middle leaders feel incompetent to handle most of the responsibilities which come with change of title due to lack of training equivalent to the one given to teachers during their early years of working.
Time Management
Time as a resource is very important in executing ones authority. Every leader irrespective of their capacities need time to accomplish their objectives and contribute to the realization of the goals of an institution. Teachers need time to supervise pupils, mark registers, prepare schemes of work and teach different subjects among other responsibilities (Jeevan, n.d.).
Moreover, a lot is expected from middle leaders who gain extra management responsibilities. Teachers who pick up jobs as middle leaders therefore find time management as a major concern with majority finding it difficult to share the available time among tasks to be performed. To overcome this challenge, new middle leaders are encouraged to prioritize their workload.
This allows allocation of enough time to core tasks that have to be performed without causing any delay in the operations of the school (National College for School Leadership, 2010).
Delegating of duties is equally important in ensuring that the overall success of the institution is achieved through teamwork. Delegation further allows prioritizing of workload and gives a chance for junior members to develop skills necessary for transitional leadership.
Overcoming Challenges
Based on the invaluable role of middle leaders in the management of education institutions and business organizations, the need to address these challenges that undermine their performance cannot be overlooked. This segment analyses some of the strategies which have been put in place or have to be implemented in ensuring a more effective professional development for this category of leaders.
Becoming comfortable with the middle leader is viewed as one of the ways of dealing with tension which affects countless middle leaders in learning and teaching institutions (Maxwell, 2006, p. 29). Through conversations and discussions with the boss, this category of leaders is able to understand what is expected of them in terms of responsibilities and performance.
Additionally, these conversations would be important in understanding the environment better and ensuring that whatever that they do is acceptable.
Not to mention that middle leaders gain a better understanding of the existing authority boundaries through discussions with senior leaders in order to avoid conflicts while executing assigned duties and responsibilities. This approach is healthy and augments development of effective leadership among middle leaders.
Another way in which middle leaders have been empowered in schools is through the establishment of structures which promote proper functioning of middle leaders (Jeevan, n.d.). This is done through induction processes especially for fresh middle leaders.
This acquaints leaders with skills to develop confidence and understand the task ahead. Similarly, training of middle leaders in various phases of middle leadership is essential in equipping them with knowledge to handle their responsibilities correctly.
Leadership support from senior leaders is also essential in boosting leadership development and improvement among middle leaders. Through line-managers, they discuss various issues which may affect their performance and may also promote emotional stability that is required in leadership (Uyterhoeven, 1989).
Above all, setting good example as senior leaders allows juniors to tap from their character and mimic them. This further allows a middle leader to develop strategic time management structures in performing his/her duties for the better results.
Conclusion
Middle leaders constitute a major component of any leadership plan and structure. A part from linking senior management and lower leadership, they play a pivotal role in determining progress and performance of learning institutions. While these remain to be their core roles, they are faced with challenges which undermine their ability to deliver expected results and quickly adapt to new leadership positions.
Tension among these leaders is regarded as the main challenge with others including but not limited to time management and management of performance. Strategic measures are therefore necessary to mitigate these challenges in augmenting more effective professional development for this category of leaders.
References
Jeevan, S. (n.d.) Challenges Middle Leaders Face in Raising Achievement. Web.
Maxwell, C. (2006) The 360 Degree Leader Workbook: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization. Thomas Nelson Inc, Nashville: Tennessee.
National College for School Leadership. (2010) Effective Middle Leadership. Web.
Nourse, K. (2009) Managers who thrive: The use of workplace social support by middle managers during Hurricane Katrina. New York, NY: Cengage Learning.
Uyterhoeven, H. (1989) General Managers in the Middle. Harvard Business Review. Web.