Change, change, change – everywhere and all the time.  It just doesn’t let up.  If it isn’t leadership changes (politically and in business), its client needs changes or changing family expectations.  Middle managers are feeling overwhelmed.  They feel desperate, more and more.  And desperation is the most effective repellent to middle managers getting what they want out of their teams and leaders.  

Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines desperation as “a loss of hope and surrender to despair.  A state of hopelessness leading to rashness.”  While this definition suggests that people only experience desperation in severe situations, many of us are experiencing it daily. 

When we talk about desperation, there are some common themes: 

• Middle managers have a plan/goal. But they are feeling out of control about how the plan will play out as they don’t have the ability to influence everyone and thing that could affect its success. 
• Often, the actions and successes they planned don’t work out – they feel like they can’t trust and believe in anyone or themselves.
• The future is unpredictable, which triggers feelings of shame, anger or fear.  They become frantic and busy, rather than calm and clever about what actions to take.
• The more desperate they feel, the less they lean into their and their teams’ strengths.  This makes it more and more difficult to get what they want.

If desperation is a repellent, how can middle managers shift to attract? 

At RainTree, we ask our managers to explore how successful they are at managing when they operate from deserving.  Deserving is a defined by Merriam Webster dictionary as “having good qualities that deserve praise and support”.  We’d like to add that deserving is someone that has “good qualities and deserves praise and is confident about achieving and realising what they want”.

When we talk to middle managers that operate from deserving, what helps them to achieve the success is described as: 

• They have a plan/goal and feel confident and calm about coping with the changes that life (or their leader) throw at them. 
• They are flexible and resilient about solving the problems.  They trust themselves and their ability to achieve what needs to be achieved.
• They feel curious, challenged and even excited by the future.  They have a deep belief in what they are working towards.
• The more deserving they feeI, the more they lean into their strengths, find the answers, and attract the best possible solution/outcome.

Feeling deserving starts as a conscious choice.  A middle manager who is operating from deserving is able to confidently support themselves and others.  They have a clear understanding of what deserving means for them.  It could mean confident, calm, clear and skilled or courageous, solution oriented, critical thinking and smart.  Each manager has their own definition that reflects their strengths and personality in a way that feels good and is true to who they are.  Recognising how deserving feels allows them to visualise and experience deserving through memory.  As the brain does not know the difference between visualised/felt and actual deserving, accessing these positive feelings is used as a trigger that shifts them out of desperate and back into action, moving towards what they want. 

Shifting from desperation to deserving is a superpower that successful middle managers apply.  They recognise when they have moved into desperate, disconnect from that feeling, and reconnect with deserving.  They separate the problems from themselves and turn them into a challenge they solve.