It is common to hear that the task of middle management in an organization is one of the tasks that is more complex. In effect, it is a position within the company that receives, on the one hand, the pressure for results from the management and, on the other, the claims of the people in charge. In popular parlance it is defined as a "fuse" post capable of "jumping" under pressure from distinctive directions.
In this context, the characteristics of these jobs in SMEs show us scenarios of the most varied; from middle managers without authority or function - they do not have "command", they are only in the middle - to people who exercise vertical leadership without any identification or representation of the people in charge - they have "command" but not "mediate ”-.
To the previous scenario we must add a new dimension; Becoming a middle manager in a company implies a double possibility: either it is assumed through a career development or it is achieved derived from another sector or company. Both situations revert difficulties to travel: the average manager who assumes his task by career, finds difficulties in finding that necessary space of differentiation with those who were previously peers, and the one who directly assumes that position from the outside, finds it difficult to find the legitimacy required to exercise its function.
In these complexities the task of the middle command navigates, in finding his right place; its midpoint.
As its name implies, middle management is an intermediate position that implies the management of the work of others, but that unlike the owners of the company, it occupies a collaborator position that equates it to the personnel in charge of which it must differentiate itself to to be able to fulfill its task. We entered there, what I consider the maximum complexity of this position: the difficulty of finding that right midpoint that is not defined in the jobs. It is then a search that runs the risk of being off-centered “from the middle”, to locate a little higher or a little lower, generating either profiles that are simple spokespersons for the management or, on the contrary, profiles that cannot assume responsibilities or face their role in managing the work of others.
From the above; We must ask ourselves: where is the midpoint then? How to find the balance of the function of a middle command? Is there a middle ground that can be considered definitive and permanent when we talk about relationships with others?
We enter there the second complexity of the role: the impossibility of defining a definitive midpoint in the relationship between management and collaborators. There is no definitive and permanent midpoint at which we can stop and carry out our work from there; The task of a middle management is in the construction of a balance that allows to build a meeting space between the interests of the management and the needs of the personnel in charge, knowing that often the interests are opposed and the visions different.
The main task of a middle management is to mediate, to build a shared scenario, negotiated from the differences, where the parties find a common point of their interests. Because it will be useless in the medium and long term to achieve the objectives proposed by the management if the cost is the lack of motivation and the reluctance of the personnel and it will not be useful not to reach the objectives that allow the sustenance of the jobs.
The task of a middle management is therefore eminently communicational, it is about building mediated spaces, knowing that their position has no center or medium and that it is built in each situation and moment depending on each person, the objectives to be achieved and the context of homework.
