Dr. Alexander Lovell on the changing role of middle managers in a flatter, AI-driven workplace

Squeezed between strategy and execution, AI ambition and budget reality, wellbeing rhetoric and performance pressures are – middle managers.

Conversations around their relevance began brewing in late 2024 and intensified through early 2025, with predictions that by 2026, 20% of organisations will use AI to flatten their structures, eliminating more than half of existing middle management roles. 

While headlines have focused on whether middle managers are becoming obsolete, far less attention has been paid to how their role is simultaneously expanding, not shrinking, in the areas that matter most to employees.

Over the last few years, employees learned what it feels like to be kept in the loop during uncertainty. Now they want the same thing in “normal” times, but translated into their day-to-day reality. That translation cannot happen from the top. It happens at the point where strategy meets priorities, priorities meet tradeoffs, and tradeoffs meet individual workload. That is the middle manager role now.

The C-suite can announce decisions. Middle managers make those decisions legible. They connect the “why” to the “what changes for you on Monday.” That’s why transparency is showing up as a core part of the role, not an optional leadership style.

Employees don’t want more information. They want fewer blind spots.

In our research, transparency clusters into four areas that people actually experience at work:

1. Personal work: Clarity on expectations, what “good” looks like, how performance is evaluated, and what growth requires. This is the part most leaders miss. People can’t self-correct in a fog.

2. Community and connection: Open dialogue across teams, peer recognition, and a felt sense that contributions are seen. This is where belonging becomes measurable: collaboration improves, friction drops, and trust becomes normal.

3. Decision-making: Not just the outcome, but the process. Who had input, what was weighed, what tradeoffs were made, and where feedback can still shape the next iteration. This is what stops rumors from becoming the culture. When employees are included in decisions, they’re five times more likely to feel valued, and that changes how much energy they bring to the work.

4. Accountability: Clear ownership and follow-through. Leaders naming what worked, what didn’t, what changed, and what they learned. Trust builds when accountability is visible, not performative.

That’s what “modern transparency” looks like. It’s not radical openness. It’s clear signals.

One of the goals of transparency is helping employees understand how their work impacts business outcomes and how they can refine their own skills to excel professionally. Senior leaders set strategic direction, but they often lack visibility into how work gets done on a day-to-day basis. That means they aren’t able to provide the performance feedback that employees crave. Middle managers, however, have a direct view of how their people are performing and what kind of support they need to level up. That proximity gives them the ability to provide real-time feedback and clarity. 

Because middle managers interact with employees more frequently, they’re also best positioned to consistently practice recognition and accountability, two crucial components of transparency. Recognition, for example, is most effective when it happens at least once every seven days. Senior leaders are often clued into major recognition moments, like work anniversaries, but they often miss the smaller, everyday moments that matter just as much, like when an employee finds a creative idea to solve a problem. Middle managers, on the other hand, are close enough to see those moments as they happen and acknowledge them in real time. That immediacy makes transparency more frequent and more meaningful.

Transparent communication from middle managers is an incredibly powerful culture driver. When employees perceive that communication in their workplace is open and honest, they are nine times more likely to feel a sense of fulfillment at work. They’re five times more likely to be motivated to do great work, and four times more likely to say their organization fosters a culture of honesty.

When employees feel they can speak openly and get honest answers from their leaders, they become more connected to their teams, their leaders, and the organization as a whole. This definition of transparency at work is much more than just understanding a company's decisions – it’s about feeling like their opinions matter.

Transparency takes effort, but it doesn’t have to be all-consuming. The goal is to embed transparency into day-to-day communication rather than treating it as a separate initiative or checklist item. Middle managers don’t need to master all four areas of transparency at once. Instead, to make it feel less overwhelming, they can start by assessing where they’re already strong and where they may need additional support.

Ultimately, transparency boils down to empathy. If middle managers reframe it as an act of empathetic communication versus just a strategy, it becomes easier to implement. Employees want to understand how decisions affect them, but they also want to feel their leaders understand their realities. Transparency strengthens relationships and reduces the emotional burden of ambiguity, for both managers and their teams. 

One of the biggest misconceptions is that middle managers are now solely responsible for being transparent. In reality, the shift we’re seeing in our research underscores that transparency is becoming a shared responsibility across the organisation. While middle managers are taking on a larger role, they’re not the only ones carrying the load. Employees want transparency from their senior leaders, from their peers, and from their direct managers.

That means transparency is no longer just top-down, but flowing from all directions. When organizations foster a culture where transparency is practiced at every level, it leads to stronger communities, more resilient teams, and greater trust across the board.

Middle managers are faced with a difficult job – they need to deliver on business goals, coach their teams, manage performance, and now, serve as the frontline communicators of transparency and culture. As expectations for this group grow, senior leadership needs to step up alongside them. 

Contrary to popular belief, companies can have high expectations of their employees while also maintaining a culture free from burnout, but they need to provide adequate support to meet those expectations. That means having honest conversations around workload and burnout, then taking actionable steps to relieve those pressures, whether it’s removing a project or simply giving managers permission to spend more time building relationships. 

Perhaps the most powerful thing senior leaders can do is to model transparency themselves. Middle managers can’t be expected to communicate openly about business decisions if they’re not receiving that same level of openness from above, nor will they feel comfortable admitting mistakes if their leaders never do. When senior leaders live by the four pillars of transparency, they create a culture where middle managers feel empowered to do the same.

Middle managers are the glue that holds organizations together, but in recent years, we’ve seen a phenomenon called the “great flattening,” where workforces are removing this rung of the career ladder to streamline communication or efficiency. That’s putting additional pressure on managers to get results, which often means that meaningful connections with direct reports can fall to the wayside.

To prevent overload and give managers the time they need to practice transparent communication, organizations need to prioritize meaningful connection as much as they prioritize productivity. 

Senior leaders should start by evaluating workload and ask whether managers truly have the capacity to lead well and build connections with their direct reports through regular 1:1s and team meetings. If a manager doesn’t have time to connect with their people, it’s a reflection of a system that needs adjusting.

Ultimately, transparency means providing the time and space to have honest conversations, and if companies expect managers to lead with transparency, they have to give them the resources to do so.

I think we’re about to see a correction. 

Organisations tried flattening to move faster. Many discovered that speed without clarity creates churn, rework, and quiet disengagement. The next phase is investment in the middle, not as bureaucracy, but as performance and culture infrastructure. Middle managers will be measured less on “supervision” and more on whether they create clarity, trust, and momentum.

Here are two actions that leaders can take now:

1. Practice what you expect: If you want transparency, make decision-making visible, close feedback loops, and name tradeoffs. Culture follows demonstrated behavior, not stated values.

2. Make recognition and feedback repeatable: Don’t just “install” a program. Build a habit. When recognition is integrated into how work happens, it reduces burnout and increases the energy people bring to execution. That’s how transparency stays alive without exhausting managers.