Episode 27: The challenges of being a middle manager and more with Lena Reinhard
Aug 3, 2024
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Lena Reinhard, a Berlin-based leadership coach and former VP Engineering, dives into the trials of middle management. She shares her journey from accidental leader to supporting directors as an independent coach. The conversation touches on the complexities of navigating organizational changes, emphasizing the need for empathetic communication. Lena also discusses strategies for new managers, highlighting the balance between autonomy and involvement. With insights on cultivating strategic thinking, she offers practical advice for thriving in management roles.
Lena Reinhard emphasizes the importance of building relationships and influence when transitioning from managing direct reports to overseeing multiple teams as a middle manager.
She highlights the value of managing energy over time, promoting self-reflection and inclusive communication to effectively navigate organizational change.
Deep dives
Lena's Journey as an Accidental Leader
Lena Reinhard reflects on her path to leadership, describing herself as an accidental leader who has navigated her career without fully realizing her leadership potential. Despite identifying as an introvert, she often found herself guiding group projects, ensuring everyone was heard and included. Early on, she grappled with the perception of leadership as a traditionally aggressive and masculine role, ultimately realizing her unique approach centered around collaboration and group cohesion. This allowed her to transition into formal leadership roles, including significant positions in startups and engineering organizations, where she learned to balance instinct with the responsibilities of her title.
Managing Managers and Broader Responsibilities
Lena illustrates the challenges of managing other managers, emphasizing the increased complexity and breadth of responsibilities compared to direct management roles. She notes that her first experience in managing managers required an intentional approach, as she transitioned from leading a startup to a VP of Engineering role. In these positions, building relationships and influence became essential, as success hinged on collaborating with multiple teams and executives. Lena emphasizes that the shift from managing direct reports to overseeing a larger context involves navigating organizational dynamics and expectations, often with less guidance from upper management.
Strategies for Effective Context Switching
Lena shares strategies for dealing with the significant context switching that comes with managing multiple teams and priorities. Her key advice includes managing energy rather than time, encouraging leaders to track energy fluctuations to identify optimal working conditions. By decluttering schedules and setting clear expectations with team members, managers can better cope with the demands of their roles. She emphasizes the importance of creating a support system, where tasks and insights are shared among teams, alleviating the pressure on any single individual to carry the weight of management responsibilities.
Navigating Change as a Middle Manager
Lena provides insights into how middle managers can effectively navigate organizational change, particularly when they might disagree with decisions made at higher levels. She stresses the significance of self-reflection, where leaders assess their responses to change and prepare to communicate transparently with their teams. By understanding the decisions and motivations behind changes, managers can better contextualize information for their teams and facilitate discussions about feelings and concerns. Lena's approach champions inclusivity in conversations about change, ensuring that all voices are heard, which ultimately fosters a more resilient and adaptive team environment.
I’m so pleased I got to chat with Lena, who happens to also be based in my hometown, Berlin. In this episode, we chat about the challenges of being a middle manager, becoming an accidental leader, what she does when she talks about organisational development, the differences of supporting Directors+ as an external independent person (versus being a manager), the challenges she sees as people transition to managing managers. Listen to this episode to hear these themes and so much more.
Guest Biography:
Lena Reinhard has dedicated her career to helping technology leaders build successful engineering organisations. Her background includes roles as VP Engineering at CircleCI and Travis CI, along with being a co-founder and CEO of a SaaS startup. She's committed her career to supporting leaders and their teams during times of rapid change and tough market conditions. Lena's supported with a diverse range of companies across the globe, from early-stage startups, scale-ups, to corporations, and NGOs. She now works as a leadership coach, management trainer, and organisational developer, and hosts the podcast “Leadership Confidential” with real talk about leadership beyond the clichés and challenges of leading teams and organisations, and how to deal with them.