Duties of Middle Manager

            Many middle managers began their careers as first-line managers. Typically a middle manager spent several year as a first-line manager, gaining knowledge about the business and learning technical skill. Even so, promotion first-line to middle management is often dificult and sometimes traumatic. This is because number of task that increased.

            The heavier emphases on managing group performance and on allocating resources represent the most important differences between first-line and middle managers. The middle managers is often involved in reviewing the work plan of various groups, helping them set priorities, and negotiating and coordinating their activities. Middle managers are involved in establishing target dates for work or services to be performed, devolping evaluation for performance, deciding which projects should be given money, personel, and materials and translating top management’s general abjectives into specific operational plans, schedules, and procedures.

            Two ways middle managers accomplish their duties are through the delegation of authority to carry out top management’s decisions and the coordination of schedules and resources with other managers. The major role these manager play are interpersonal and informational because they face problems that are people-centered, rather than technical. Middle managers often spend about 80 percent of their time talking on the phone, attending committe meetings, and preparing reports.

            Middle managers are also removed from the technical aspects of production work. Lacking hand-on experience, many of them must develop new skill to cope with top management’s demand. One important skill is the ability to negotiate succesfully with first-line managers to gain acceptence of top management’s objectives. Another is the achieve compromise and consensus in order to win support. Attending meetings with other middle managers and top managers demands oral communication skills that are better developed than those of first-line managers. And, finally, middle managers must be adept at deloping their subordinates, opening lines of communication for them, and making them visible to other middle managers and to top managers.