I was in middle management before I changed companies and I often had to hand out write up, PIPs and once a termination I didn’t really agree with.
I had to ask people on the overnight shift to take on an extra shift on their night off but ended up manning that ship myself a time or two.
I had to deny people time off because we were short staffed on their requested day off, and I’ve filled in when the team was bombarded.
If I fucked up the schedule, I worked the fucked up shift, I didn’t just say oops my bad.
Some teams are just really toxic and I’m still shaking off the stress from when I was in that role but I often wonder what I could’ve done differently to support some of them.
I didn’t have space to say no I’m not making this write up without getting my own or demoted.
I couldn’t just hand out raises to people like they deserved.
I couldn’t set the workload or client expectations. All I could do was jump in as much as possible. But maybe I’m missing some key opportunities to learn from this group.
I’d love to hear opinions from people on what middle management can do more of?