Vanishing act: the curious case of the burnt-out middle manager
Burnout tops the list of challenges facing managers in Australia, and that’s not just speculation: one in three says burnout is their biggest hurdle.
Burnout tops the list of challenges facing managers in Australia, and that’s not just speculation — it’s backed by hard data. My company profiled 1,000 Australian middle managers, running thousands of lines of data, and the results are undeniable: one in three says burnout is their biggest hurdle.
It’s a shocking statistic, but let’s be honest — we all suspected it. The real questions are: what’s fuelling this extreme burnout? Why is workload peaking? And despite all the talk about burnout and the record investments in ‘wellbeing’ initiatives, why aren’t we seeing real change?
About 18 months ago, I set out to find the answer, as well as finally prove what ‘good’ looks like in our middle manager ranks, what’s in their way, and pinpoint where we need to sharpen our focus.
The inaugural BoldHR B-Suite Benchmarks report reveals a number of eye-opening facts about middle managers — a vital segment of our workforce historically overlooked and understudied.
What we found is that they are burnt out, feel invisible, and are on the brink of vanishing.
One in three middle managers are burnt out
It’s no surprise that one in three managers are burnt out, or that one in five are contemplating exiting leadership altogether.
Bigger teams to lead and more initiatives to manage is bringing remaining managers to breaking point. As a result, they’re increasingly bogged down by individual contributor tasks while grappling with soaring leadership and management responsibilities.
Alarmingly, the report reveals that high-impact leaders are burning out faster than their low-impact counterparts. This means we’re losing our top middle managers to burnout, not our underperformers.
The reality is that burnout hits hardest in the middle of one’s leadership career. Junior leaders and C-Suite executives experience burnout at nearly half the rate of the average middle manager, spotlighting an urgent need for systemic change in how we support the managers in the middle.
Junior managers don’t burn out as much because the expectations and the reality of their potential impact are lower, which keeps burnout levels relatively low.
Executive leaders at the top of the organisational hierarchy have access to resources, information, and decision-making authority — all factors that help alleviate the symptoms of burnout.
But in the middle, where expectations of impact are relatively high and seniority relatively low, we see burnout emerge as the primary challenge.
The price of impact is burnout
This brings us to the root cause: the report clearly shows that burnout is increasing because we are asking for more impact without vesting more power.
Burnout can arise when employers expect managers to deliver high impact — compounding emotional stress, personal responsibility, and complex decision-making — without the empowerment typically associated with more senior positions.
Even without formal authority, greater empowerment can protect against certain kinds of burnout, particularly related to workload, autonomy, and access to resources.
The report clearly show that expecting high impact from leaders, without also empowering them, drives higher levels of burnout.
When I shared this analysis with a middle manager recently, she said “Truer words have never been spoken”. Many feel the weight of soaring expectations without the necessary authority to effect change. It’s a recipe for burnout that cannot be ignored.
So, what can we do about it?
Organisations must take a more proactive approach to prevent this burnout peak, as the replacement pipeline is an insufficient safety net. I’ll share data on that soon, but we cannot allow burnout to persist unchecked as a chronic driver of attrition.
Here are a few tactics that actually work to combat burnout — backed by research.
- Push leaders up: Promote them into roles with greater organisational authority. This is an expensive option with diminishing returns; only about 14% of mid-level leaders are motivated to pursue a promotion, and this rate decreases among younger leaders.
- Push the power down: Increase middle manager authority and autonomy by involving them in greater delegations of authority, roles on committees, and streamlining approval processes.
- Change the expectation: Stop the narrative of ‘do more with less’, and start the narrative of ‘do less with less’ by redesigning their roles.
- Empower them to negotiate expectations at all times.
- Fewer direct reports, instead of broader spans: managing people requires significantly more time than managing tasks.
- Fewer projects: projects are increasingly complex and demand more collaborative time.
- Invest in targeted, smart technologies as a key companion to middle managers to reduce their administrative burden.
Middle managers are ‘vanishing’
Retirement is driving the largest exodus from leadership in our history. In what Forbes coined the Silver Tsunami, Australia is losing 500 experienced leaders per day to retirement. For a leadership community of relatively modest size, this is astronomical.
We are also laying off middle managers at a rate of 3 to 1, according to recent data from Employment Hero. Yikes!
At this point, you might be thinking, “Well, with retirement, we won’t have to lay them off, and AI will come in and take all their jobs, so no need to worry!”
However, if AI were to “take all their jobs,” it’s unlikely to be fully operational across multiple industries in under two years, which is a typical market cycle.
While we wait for the AI-manager to materialise, real-life middle managers are burning out faster than anyone else. Between retirement and retrenchment are the leaders who shoulder the remaining weight of organisational culture and performance, and its crushing them.
So when our temporary economic circumstances inevitably ease and we look to replace leaders — as we have done so many times in the past — we must not be surprised to find that they have permanently vanished. So, take action now to support and retain our middle managers before it’s too late to reverse the damage.
They feel invisible (and getting frustrated)
Eighty-two percent of middle managers feel ‘invisible’ or ‘frustrated’, citing:
- Being a dumping ground for ill-defined tasks, which leads them to having more individual contributor work than ever. Gartner research estimates up to 51% of their jobs today consist of tasks they used to do;
- According to Perceptyx, 39% of mid level leaders say pressure from executive leadership has increased since last year; and
- 37% report increased pressure from their direct reports to dedicate more time to coaching and development. Some younger team members even expect their managers to act as therapists, highlighting how the role of a middle manager has evolved far beyond traditional expectations.
Middle managers don’t all want to be C-Suite leaders — increasingly, fewer do — but they do want the ability to exert their agency, use their judgement, and be respected as valued contributors.
That’s why we know that a B-Suite leader with C-Suite impact is the new essential career destination for the majority of leaders today and in the future.
Sadly, the truth is that only 6.5% of managers are operating at this standard — already a B-Suite leader with C-Suite Impact — and many aren’t being given the opportunity to do so. So much has to change, and the data tells us you should start with the above.
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