Podcast
In this episode of Get Reworked, Ryppl Effect founder Joe Makston shares how his experience as an employee experience leader and head of learning and development shaped his approach to some hard leadership conversations.
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"When you start to understand, oh, the customer implementation process that I just took somebody through, contributes to the department goal of whatever and contributes to that line of business and ultimately rolls up to we're supposed to book $500 million in this specific category, if I can understand that by closing that implementation, that work contributes to actually getting to the $500,000 — that is gold for an employee, they see the broader picture. It's leaders understanding when you're writing goals, when you're talking about performance, how to tie it to, frankly, the strategy and that breakdown between strategy and the tactical piece," said Joe.
Highlights of the conversation include:
- Why now's the time to discuss how leadership is struggling.
- How shortcomings in leadership development led to the ongoing management boom—bust cycles.
- How management impacts culture, engagement and productivity.
- Why he thinks being a manager and an individual contributor at the same time isn't a good idea.
- How managers can give leadership a view into the day-to-day operations.
Plus, hosts Nidhi Madhavan and Siobhan Fagan talk with Joe about how organizations can identify who is right for management roles, why some people may need to be pushed to grow and the parallels he sees between being a pastor and being a leader. Listen in for more.
Have a suggestion, comment or topic for a future episode? Send it to [email protected].
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Show Notes
- Joe Makston on LinkedIn
- Gallup's research into the impact of middle managers
- Gallup research on middle management squeeze
- Reworked article: Workers Are Lonely. Here's What Leaders Can Do
Episode Transcript
Note: This transcript has been edited for space and clarity
Siobhan Fagan: 2023 has been a hard year for managers. It started off with Meta's year of efficiencies, which saw the company cutting middle managers across the board and went through the rest of the year all the way up to Citi Group's recent reorganization, where it cut out huge swaths of the middle management. We brought on our guest today to discuss this topic. His name is Joe Makston. And I'm hoping Nidhi can tell us a little bit about him.
Nidhi Madhavan: Joe is a leadership and culture consultant of Ryppl Effect, and a speaker, coach and best selling author. He served at Early Warning Services, the parent company of Zelle where he held key roles as head of learning and development and employee experience. Earlier he led teams at Bank of America, PNC Bank and served as a pastor. With a bachelor's degree in leadership, he focuses on equipping leaders and organizations with practical skills to make an impact in people's lives. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona with his two kids.
You ready Siobhan?
Siobhan: I am.
Nidhi: Let's Get Reworked.
Siobhan: Welcome to the podcast, Joe.
Joe Makston: Oh, thank you so much for having me.
Let's Talk Middle Management
Siobhan: Well, I am really excited to have you here today. We brought you here to talk about middle management. It was a topic that I honestly didn't know that we would be talking about until you raised it as a potential area to discuss on the podcast and I was hoping to just get a little bit of your background, what you're working on now and why this particular topic speaks to you so much?
Joe: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
So I have spent years in leadership and have had leaders report to me, I've been a leader, I was the head of leadership development at my last company. And the reality is I kept seeing leaders feel like they were failing, leaders who had direct reports, and then that next tier where you see leaders that are trying to translate strategy into the tactical work, and then just feeling overwhelmed. And knowing that it really is those leaders and then the next tier of leaders that make the biggest impact within the organization.
And so as pandemic has continued to finally settle in, and move beyond that, I still see leaders struggling and feeling like, I don't have the support that I need. I don't know where to go. I'm not quite sure what my next step is. I feel overwhelmed. So I felt like this still is a very important conversation. Because we can't keep saying, well, we just need to do training and that will fix the leadership issue. There is something bigger happening, and we need to be having that conversation.
Siobhan: I do think that this is a great time to have the conversation. We're going to be airing this in December, we're kind of staring down a new year. And it's at the end of a year where management has really kind of had a lot of setbacks, it started off with Meta's self-declared "year of efficiencies," Citi recently went through a restructuring where they were simplifying the bank. And the end result in all of these cases was that they removed huge layers of management. So I'm wondering why this is happening now?
Joe: Well, unfortunately, this is true to form, whether it was at the beginning of the year, middle of year or right now, if a company needs to reduce costs, it's the easiest thing to do. And I don't say easy, lightly. The reality is it impacts people's lives. It impacts both of the people that are still at the company, and certainly the people who have been laid off. The struggle here really is around how it impacts everybody. Well why are we doing this now? Well, we need to cut costs, the economy is still a bit in the crapper. And so the way that both Meta and Citi Bank's industries are looking at is like, well, let's get rid of the middle manager because the leader above them can solve the problems. They're more skilled, they're more experienced. So we'll just fill in the gap and have that leader above them just lead the frontline workers.
But we see that that doesn't happen because this type of stuff has been happening since really kind of the '80s. I didn't enter the workforce until the late kind of mid '90s. But knowing that there's this cycle of, well, let's get rid of the middle managers. It goes back to the point of we're not really addressing leadership development holistically. We're just trying to get somebody to lead people so they can be productive. And I think that's really inefficient.
Nidhi: I am curious, is there any merit to removing middle management? Or do you think that it's a net negative?
Joe: I do think that there is merit behind removing some leadership, there is redundancy in work, we've continued to function in silos. And that creates redundancy.
So I don't think that we should just get rid of all of it. I think, really, what should be happening is having this approach around, how do you measure leadership? Who's doing it well, and executive leadership accepting some responsibility of, hey, this isn't working? Why are we continuing to do this every couple of years? I think they need to be able to answer those questions. And identify, oh, well, it's the structure, it's living in silos, it's we don't have a strong leadership foundation within our organization in addressing those issues. And being able to say, hey, we're not doing it, well, we've got to stop this cycle from happening and start addressing the issues.
The Role of Middle Management in an Ideal World
Siobhan: So Joe, something that you just said, kind of struck me and it was about companies looking to have people in these management roles just to get people to be more productive. From the sounds of it, you think that managers can be doing so much more of this.
So what role ideally, do you see managers playing in an organization?
Joe: I think managers are critical to culture, to productivity, to employee engagement. So you can't just remove that, there is a saying that people don't leave companies, they leave leaders. And so you have to have a leader that is engaged with people doing the day to day work.
And then that just rolls up, you know, if you're a leader of leaders, then you need to be engaged with your leaders, so you understand what's going on.
I think there's this balance between leaders leading and then making sure they understand what's happening in the line of business. So they have to have a strong pulse of what's happening in let's say, a call center, what's happening in sales, what's happening in finance, and then also what's happening in the business partner relationships.
So if we talk about middle managers, there's an opportunity for them to have a better understanding of what's happening within the business. So it becomes two-fold, how do I lose my role fit within the organization as a leader and understanding that? And then how do I lead my team better because I have that access to that information?
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Nidhi: So, it's interesting, you bring up roles, right? Because I think, you know, looking at how we can retain middle management, what kind of role do you think they should ideally be playing, you know, towards the people below them and the people above them?
Joe: It becomes a teacher, mentor, you know, I have a philosophy of you should be helping somebody ahead of you working with somebody beside you, and supporting somebody behind you.
And this leadership role, it is being the eyes and the ears for senior leadership, it's supporting your peers, and helping them be more effective. And then actually doing some of the day-to-day work. When you think about the role of a manager, you really need to understand the business understand the pulse of what's happening. I ran call centers for like 10 years. And I was the head of departments. So I had a structure of managers underneath me, and then I had supervisors. And then I had frontline workers. So I'm a little bit of kind of the the leader that that we're talking about of like, oh, should we get rid of middle managers? The reality is, I was too far away from the day-to-day work.
And so when you think about what roles we need to have within organizations, I made the decision to go and sit on calls. And as I was building that department out, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't asking my team to do something I wasn't willing to be a part of. And so I would have the employee sat next to me and I would just take calls for 30 minutes, and over a quarter, I would spend time with all of my contact center employees, and they would actually score me on our quality metrics, and then they would debrief it with me and man alive. It was so unnerving, because I knew that they were going to hopefully score me as critically as our quality team scored them.
And what I learned out of that was that it helps me understand the employee and the customer experience so much better than if I'm sitting in a conference room. And my managers are reporting out to me, here's how we're doing with quality. Now you can approach it a number of different ways. But, but that was one way that I knew I understood what was happening in the employee and the customer experience.
So when we think about middle managers, it is so important to have the pulse because then that manager is able to say, hey, this is what's happening with our customers. And we're realizing that we have some other issues that we need to solve, because this is coming up real time for us. So they become problem solvers. They become firefighters, they also become a support system for the frontline worker.
Individual Contributor and Manager: Can You Be Both?
Siobhan: Joe, that's a really compelling view of what a middle manager can do. And it's interesting, because you're talking about how they have to view outside of their fiefdoms, basically.
But I was thinking about how so many middle managers have been asked to continue being individual contributors, while at the same time managing other people. And I'm wondering if you see a distinction between what you're describing, where a manager has that day to day experience in the front lines versus those who are fully doing another part of that job while managing, can you make that distinction?
Joe: Yes, and I don't know how popular this is going to be. I don't feel like being an individual contributor and a manager is really effective. Because you have your own goals that you have to manage to. plus, you're trying to lead a team of people.
I would reflect back to my time in operations and retail banking. So part of my job, when I was working at the bank was to support all of the customer service managers, and talk with them about how to do lobby management, which is like so strange now, because you could walk into almost any branch in America now and nobody's there. But back then, you know, there would be very long lines. And so we would talk about, okay, you've got 15 people standing in line, and you have five tellers, what do you do to get the line down? And so we talked about the practices of lobby management, going out and working with the customer, being behind the line supporting the teller or opening a teller drawer, and which one of those was most efficient?
If you saw yourself as an individual contributor, you'd say, I would open a teller drawer. And we've thought, okay, well, and and why would you do that? The reality is, when you are working in an individual contributor role, and you're the leader, you can't help the people that are relying on you, to support them. So I don't think that it is effective for you to do both of those roles, you have to be able to delineate, and as leaders, you are spinning so many plates and keeping them going, it is really difficult to be able to say okay, now I'm going to switch into my individual contributor.
It is much more effective to be able to understand, right? How do I support my team, which may mean their goals have to be higher, because you're one less person it I have been in this role, though, where I've had to do both, and it is very tricky, in will ultimately we were able to get to a place of we could be more efficient if I was leading everybody and supporting them to help solve problems and remove blockers, then if I was also trying to be an individual contributor.
Nidhi: So you know, you've made the case for how, you know, it's important to have that holistic sense of the business and to be integrated with what's above and below you. How can you make that case to leadership, though, is there any data to back up you know, this idea that inclusion and removing silos makes for better results?
Joe: Well, Gallup reported over the past several months, middle managers actually critical to the organization to build culture, engagement and results. And they found that managers are responsible for 70% of team engagement. So they can make or break a team's performance. So they need to understand how the team integrates within the organization.
So talking to senior leaders around why it's important for me to understand what's happening in the other businesses, if we think about what else should you be doing, if you're not individually contributing, it should be building relationships across the organization so you are not in a silo. If I'm in sales, I should know what's happening in product and I should have strong enough relationships so if I have a problem, I can go to them, but also know what's happening in the future so I can actually sell better to my customers, I can solve problems better because I have a pulse on what's happening across the organization.
So it is shifting the role of management to having ownership as part of the company instead of solely just leading or being an individual contributor.
You're More Effective When You're Engaged
Siobhan: So Joe, I'm listening to you and you just cited Gallup, and Gallup had another study that was talking about basically the importance of having close relationships in the workplace and basically categorizing it as an epidemic of loneliness in the workplace.
Listening to you now, I'm thinking of that role that managers play, to kind of combat that not only just in the terms of you know, it's not that people just need the best friend at work, which was what Gallup posited, but that they are showing people's connection to the broader workplace and what the goals are that they're working towards, which is another form of connection that kind of makes more sense in the business context. Can you speak a little to that?
Joe: You know, I'm a firm believer, when you're truly engaged, you understand how your work contributes to the organization. And that is part of leadership's role, you know, from executives to directors, or vice presidents, or whatever the titles are all the way down to supervisor, team lead. If I don't understand how my work contributes to the organization, I am disconnected. And just thinking, OK, well, this is a job.
But when you start to understand, oh, the customer implementation process that I just took somebody through, contributes to the department goal of whatever and contributes to that line of business and ultimately rolls up to we're supposed to book $500 million in this specific category, if I can understand that by closing that implementation, that work contributes to actually getting to the $500,000 — that is gold for an employee, because they see the broader picture. It's leaders understanding when you're writing goals, when you're talking about performance, how to tie it to, frankly, the strategy and that breakdown between strategy and the tactical piece.
When we get to more frontline leaders, they're spending so much time in the day-to-day to tactical piece that they don't see the correlation, or their leaders are not helping them understand how to actually get to the strategic piece, they play this role around performance. So there is a deeper level of ownership for the frontline worker for the coder for the salesperson when you understand that full picture.
From Church to Contact Center
Siobhan: Joe, I'm going to diverge from the script a little bit, I noticed in your background that you were a pastor. So we've talked a lot about your career in contact centers, etc. But I'm wondering if you find any of the skills that you learned as a pastor, do you find yourself using them in your mentorship of leaders today?
Joe: Yeah, absolutely. The reality is, people need to know that somebody cares about them. And I think in leadership, it is a tough job. It is so hard to be a leader because you're balancing so much being fully present for the people that you're supporting for the organization for the leaders that, that you're you you work for.
And in all transparency, I was actually laid off as a pastor, I had been in the corporate space, my church asked me to come on full time. I did that for two years, they reorganized, and my job was eliminated. And I was devastated. And I didn't want to go work for another church. I felt like I was supposed to go back into the corporate space.
And and that's when I actually started working in call centers. And what I found was people needed space to be human. And so I had this I have this giant board in, sign, in my living room that says the world needs who you were made to be. And I believe that each person should have the opportunity to know who they were made to be.
And so as I transitioned from being a pastor, back into the corporate space, I chose to dedicate my leadership to helping people know that somebody cared about them, because the world really needs who they are as an individual.
So whether it was leaving contact center where whether it was designing a leadership development program that was beyond here are all the tactical things you have to do. You need to be able to take care of yourself before you can lead others really well. I knew that that was actually something different than what I was hearing. And that's what I wanted to make sure that people knew about who Joe Makston was.
So I'm grateful for that time as being a pastor, and brought those skills with me, for the really kind of the next part of my career of being the head of learning development, designing and building out employee experience at Early Warning. And then even what I'm doing now of having my own consulting business on leadership developments and creating that unique voice for myself.
Siobhan: I'm so glad that I asked that question. And thank you for sharing the story.
And I also have to admit that I am shocked by the idea that pastors get laid off, and the church is reorganized. So you just blew my mind on many levels just then.
Joe: Yeah, well, if you look at it, if you have any, if you've attended any faith-based organization, the reality is it is still a business. And I think the business of faith-based communities, the pressure is extraordinary, because you are being entrusted to use every dollar to impact people's lives. And if you think about that, at it from a business perspective, and I would actually use these words, every dollar we're given to design leadership development programs, we've been entrusted to use it the most efficient way that brings the biggest impact.
And I, because I learned that from my church, that every dollar somebody gives to a nonprofit organization, including a church. I'm putting my, I'm literally putting my faith and trust in you that you were going to use this to the best of your ability.
So it helped actually shift my perspective on money and managing a P&L, making sure that I meet goal, making sure that I that I meet budgets, because those dollars are entrusted to me.
A Better Way to Develop Path for Managers
Nidhi: To move back to what we were talking about a little earlier about this idea of individual contributors versus managers. I'm also kind of curious to know how, if there's a better way we can approach management roles? So we're kind of breaking away from that cycle of using them as a career path for successful individual contributors, how can we develop a way that's a little more successful than that?
Joe: I think this is a fascinating question. Because I've struggled with this being the head of learning and development at Early Warning, and then even overseeing and designing the leadership development program, because I had employees come to me and say, I really don't want to be a manager, like I love working for this company. And I don't want to lead people. And there's not really any where for me to go.
So I think this is still a very open conversation. I don't know of another organization that is doing this really well. It does bring up a conversation that I had with an executive around people process and technology. And as I have conversations when I'm mentoring, or I'm talking about career advancements with individuals, and they're asking, Well, where do I go at? I say, well, okay, well, let's, let's just write down everything you do on a weekly basis, very high-level. And then let's go ahead and identify is that people, is it process, or is that technology? And then from there, I asked him, okay, go ahead and put a checkmark by the things that you really enjoy. And then put a minus next to the things that you don't like.
And then ultimately, that gets us to a place of being able to say, oh, you enjoy being around people. Let's uncover that story more. Oh, I see that you marked a several things, negatively around technology. Tell me more about that. So having this like broad approach for an organization, I think there's a lot of work to be done, but helping employees understand what they do well, what they love, and then areas of where, okay, is it just development that they need to do or is it oh, that's not your skill set, and let's lean into your skill set. I think what we do better finding, oh, we have people we have processes, we have technology and there have obviously there's other categories. But if we identify those categories a little bit better, I think we can ask more thoughtful questions to help people get into other roles.
So it's not just well the only thing that you can do next is management. For me in my career, I started out in banking as a part time teller Bank of America, 18 years old. And then I worked my way up on the operation side. And then I moved into a support role for some computer implementations, and then ultimately made my way to another bank. But I mostly stayed on the operation side. And then one day, my leader said, hey, you've been doing this job for 3 years, I think it's time for you to grow. I'd like for you to go and do this sales job. And you're going to start in a month. And so there wasn't anything where I had a choice, it was like, you need to get out of the nest and go and try something else.
And I'm so glad that they asked me to do that, or told me, Volun told me to do that. Because I realized that it is a skill set that I had not cultivated. I didn't love the job. And ultimately, I did it for six months. And the company approached me to do a different job. But it helped me evaluate, what am I really good at? Am I good at people process or technology? I was great at people and process. So they could use me in other places.
So kind of let me circle back here to trying to answer your question like, how do we address kind of this natural progression of, well, the next thing you should do is management roles. I think we need to do a better job of asking questions around really kind of the categories in which people can be a part of, and we need to design roles around those categories. Instead of saying, well, you can be the analyst one, analyst two, analysts three, and then as a team lead, I think the latter approach, we've seen ladder approach before. And it gives us depth does not give us breadth. And so I think it gives you a chance to learn a lot more.
Siobhan: I want to play devil's advocate here for a moment, because I do think that even that story that you told where you were moved into a position that you didn't necessarily see yourself in, that you didn't necessarily end up enjoying, but it did end up resulting in growth.
Most people would not say they have a calling for management. I'm sure there's exceptions out there. And I know that there are many, many, many excellent managers, but most people are kind of thrown into it.
Is there something to be said for potentially pushing people into that management role so that they can grow? And then possibly thinking of this in a more flexible way, so that when you're a manager, you're not a manager for life. You cycle out of it, as you did when you changed roles. Is there something to be said for that approach?
Joe: Yes, I agree that we don't have to stay in the same path. Challenging somebody to take the next step, when we can't see what the next step is, I think is really healthy.
Obviously, the way we do it is really important, you know, that leader had, she had spent a significant amount of time building trust with me. And I think that that's key here, that we look at the human side of leadership, especially senior leaders, and I don't want to go too far down that road. But we should always remember that that that person is a brother or a sister, they're a mom, or a dad or uncle, cousin, you know, there are so many facets to that person that you're maybe sitting across from or you're looking at on on a computer, as your leader. And when we're able to understand the human side of the people that we work with, work for, the even the CEO just recognizing that then it helps build a deeper connection.
So the trust that the leader name was Nan, that she had cultivated with me. Although I didn't want to do it. I trusted Nan, and she knew that I needed a push. So I went into that sales position. I realized, gosh, I wasn't very, very good at it. But it got me to a place to move into the next role. And now in my current environment, I am leading my own company. It's just me.
Before that I was the head of employee experience at Early Warning, which was the first time in 25 years that I would didn't lead people. And at first I was like, oh my gosh, I'm having a bit of an identity crisis. Because I've been so used to leading people. Now I have to leverage influence. I have to build different relationships. And I ultimately I was like, oh, you know what, this is refreshing for me. I get to learn new skills, because I'm not in a leadership role. And so it allowed me to just do my day to day job differently, I spent more time with people across the company and actually built deeper relationships with more people, because I, I used that time that was spending with my team, to now spend with teams across the organization.
So I think it's extremely helpful. You have to go back to the motive and the way it's being positioned.
AI Can Be a Great Tool in Your Leadership Toolbox
Nidhi: Thanks for bringing that up Joe, I think that's a huge question. For a lot of people, especially as you know, a lot of younger workers are reconsidering really what they want their career paths to look like. And, you know, I think there's no way we can wrap this conversation without touching on, you know, the impact that generative AI has had.
So given all that AI has done over the last year, and the current moment we're in, what do you think that means for the broader need for us to rethink how work is done? How do you see the role of managers changing in an AI-driven workplace?
Joe: I love AI, I think it is going to be transformational.
I was listening to a podcast a week or two ago, and somebody was talking about, well, what is AI going to do to businesses, and they had said, the train left last year. And so if if you weren't on that train, you have to catch up, and you need to, and that goes specifically for leaders.
And I think AI will actually help leaders lead better, it gives them access to resources, where they're not as dependent on employee relations, human resources, even getting beyond peer-to-peer, you know, when you think about when the internet first came on to the scene where everybody just had access to the internet, and it was like the world is so much bigger and smaller at the same time.
And I think AI is doing the same thing in a lot of different ways for industries. But when you specifically talk about managers, just having the ability to have another resource of like, how do I deal with this? And so literally, I'll use ChatGPT as an example, because I've been using that for over a year to say your leadership development experts or you are a call center manager and need ways to motivate your team give me 12 different ideas that I can implement by month. And then to get those results back. It's such a great starting point where you can now go and customize that for your team.
Or if you're dealing with conflict, I've got two employees that just keep bickering back and forth. Give me some tips to help resolve the issue. I think we need to approach to like how do I use this in my day-to-day as a starting point or to create ideas.
Because I do believe right now AI is still in this space of giving you a good starting point, you know, but there is still humanity that has to be included. It has to understand your culture, it has to understand the dynamic of your team. So I believe AI is a beautiful tool that you will be able to add to your tool belt.
Siobhan: Joe, thank you so much. I love that approach of using this as a tool as a start. And also as a coach and sounding board to a certain extent, so it's not that it's going to give you straight answers, but it's just going to be like what about this really fun way to look at it.
So if our audience wants to find you if they want to learn a little bit more about you where is the best place that they can go Joe?
Joe: They can find me on LinkedIn, Joe Makston. You can certainly find me on both Instagram and Facebook. I feel like I'm a little too old to be on TikTok so I'm not. But you can you can find me on Instagram and Facebook. You can just search Joe Makston.
Siobhan: I too feel as if I'm too old to be on TikTok. Well, thank you so much, thank you for speaking with us today, Joe.
Nidhi: Thanks so much for being here, Joe.
Joe: It has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
Siobhan: If you have a suggestion or a topic for a future conversation, I'm all ears. Please drop me a line at [email protected]. Additionally, if you liked what you heard, post a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you may be listening. Please share Get Reworked with anyone you think might benefit from these types of conversations. Find us at reworked.co. And finally, follow us at Get Reworked on Twitter as well. Thank you again for exploring the revolution of work with me, and I'll see you next time.
