I recently came across a LinkedIn post that began with the sentence: ‘Middle managers have gotten soft.’ The author argued that middle managers, as a group, are no longer driving team performance to a sufficient level and are therefore to blame for many companies’ struggles. Upon reflection, I don’t think the author was looking at the problem deeply enough.

I wholeheartedly agree that assessment of a manager’s performance must align with the performance of their team. As the famous football coach Bill Parcells once said, ‘You are what your record says you are.’ If the team is losing, the coach can’t claim they’ve done a great job.

However, I disagree that the final blame for poor performance rests with managers. If some managers have gotten soft, it’s because they’ve operated in environments that allowed that to happen.

In my experience, this takes place for three reasons:

1. Promoting the wrong people to management roles: It’s always tempting to promote high-performers into leadership positions. After all, it seems logical to promote someone who already knows how to succeed at a high level.

The problem with this thinking is that the skills necessary for leadership are often quite different from those needed to succeed in a production role. To use a sports analogy, the best players are rarely the best coaches.

This doesn’t mean strong individual performers can’t become strong leaders—it just means they have to be willing to embrace a beginner’s mind and be growth-minded enough to develop new expertise. At the same time, the company must support them in doing so.

2. Lack of training: Successfully leading and influencing people requires a wide range of skills. If a company’s approach to managers acquiring those skills is ‘Figure it out on your own,’ that company should expect the consequences of trial and error—such as frustrated teams, diminished morale, and inconsistent results.

3. Lack of clarity: Many managers are tasked with leading people while maintaining a production role. This isn’t inherently wrong, but problems arise when the manager doesn’t know which duty takes priority. Should they focus on leading or producing? The slightest confusion will frustrate everyone. For example, imagine a sales manager who is compensated more for achieving their individual sales goals than for team performance. Which responsibility will they prioritize?

It’s easy to point fingers when things go wrong, but nobody operates in a vacuum. Managers, executives, and employees form an interconnected web, relying on and influencing one another. The buck doesn’t stop in the middle of the org chart.