Do I repeat myself? Yes, I guess I do. Recently I posted a funny one about technology from David Brooks, here. Today’s, titled “The Quiet Magic of Middle Managers” is more serious, but no less worth reading. (NYT subscribers: here.) It’s in keeping with Brooks’ center-right leanings ala Edmund Burke. But I would argue it extends from middle managers to teachers, coaches, parents, and indeed anyone not a hermit who exerts an influence over their neighbors, regardless of political philosophy.
Brooks takes as his model his old boss Jim Lehrer of PBS NewHour fame. He uses words like “moral” and “ethical” a lot. If either of those facts disqualifies his view in your eyes, I’d urge you to reconsider. Hey, anybody who quotes both Ted Lasso and Mary Oliver is OK in my book. They at least deserve a second look.
Nobody writes poems about middle managers. Nobody gets too romantic about the person who runs a department at a company, or supervises a construction crew, or serves as principal at a school, manager at a restaurant or deacon at a church. But I’ve come to believe that these folks are the unsung heroes of our age.
Amid a wider national atmosphere of division, distrust, bitterness and exhaustion, these managers are the frontline workers who try to resolve tensions and keep communities working, their teams united and relationships afloat. At a time when conflict entrepreneurs (see: Tucker Carlson) and demagogues are trying to rip society apart, I’m beginning to think that these members of the managerial class, spread across the institutions of society, are serving as the invisible glue that gives us a shot at sticking together.
So how do these managers work their magic? When I hear people in these roles talk about their work and its challenges, I hear, at least among the most inspiring of them, about the ways they put people over process, about the ways they deeply honor those right around them. A phrase pops into my mind: “Ethical leadership.” This is not just management. Something more deeply humanistic is going on. Let me give you a few features of ethical leadership:
Knowing that moral formation is part of the job. Here we turn to the gospel of Ted Lasso. When Lasso was asked about his goal for his soccer team, he replied: “For me, success is not about the wins and losses. It’s about helping these young fellas be the best versions of themselves on and off the field.” The lesson is that if you help your people become the best versions of themselves, the results you seek will take care of themselves.
Creating a moral ecology. I love talking about my old boss Jim Lehrer. When I was starting out at “PBS NewsHour” and I said something he thought was smart, his eyes would crinkle with pleasure. When I said something he thought was crass, his mouth would turn down in displeasure. For 10 years I chased the eye crinkles and tried to avoid the mouth downturns.
Jim never had to say anything to me, but with those kinds of slight gestures he taught us how to do our jobs. He communicated: This is how we do things on the “NewsHour”; these are our standards. Jim is gone, but the standards and moral ecology he helped create live on. Morally healthy communities habituate people to behave in certain ways and make it easier to be good.
Being hyperattentive. The poet Mary Oliver wrote: “This is the first, wildest and wisest thing I know: that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attentiveness.” The leaders we admire are paying close attention to those who work with them. They are not self-centered but cast the beam of their care on others, making them feel seen and lit up. In how you see me, I come to see myself. If you cast a just and loving attention on people, they blossom.
Knowing that people are watching more closely than you might think. We like to believe that it’s our fancy pronouncements that have a big impact on others. But what usually gets communicated most deeply is the leader’s smallest gestures — the casual gifts of politeness, the little compliment or, on the other hand, the cold shoulder of thoughtlessness.
The Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke wrote, “The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and color to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals, they supply them, or they totally destroy them.”
Generativity. The economists tell us that people are basically self-interested, but there comes a time in the lives of many managers when the capacity to guide and foster the next generation is more rewarding than just serving themselves. And yet they do this mentoring with respect, not condescension. The most generative leaders don’t see themselves as doing things “for” people. They know that “with” is more powerful than “for.” The chaplain Samuel Wells once observed that modern societies often “attempt to construct a world that works perfectly well without love.” But, he adds, mature love between equals is walking “with” and not doing “for.”
The absence of a heroic sense. Albert Schweitzer was genuinely heroic. In 1905, he decided to leave his successful careers in music and academia to become a missionary doctor serving the poor in Africa. But he never thought that he was doing anything special, and he never hired people who thought of their work in those terms. If you’re going to last in a life of sacrificial service, he concluded, you have to treat it as something as normal as doing the dishes. He wrote, “Only a person who feels his preference to be a matter of course, not something out of the ordinary, and who has no thought of heroism but only of a duty undertaken with sober enthusiasm, is capable of becoming the sort of spiritual pioneer the world needs.”
The same humility is observed in the best organizations — the willingness to do the uncelebrated work, day after day.
Preserving the moral lens. People in most professions are driven by mixed motives. Doctors want to heal the sick but are pressured to speed through enough patients to make the practice profitable. Lawyers defend their clients but also have to rack up billable hours. In day-to-day life it is easy for the utilitarian lens of metrics to eclipse the moral lens that drew us to our work in the first place. Ethical leaders push against the creeping pressures of utilitarianism, so that the people around them remember the ideals that drove them into their work in the first place.
A posture of joy. We assume we are being judged on our competence, but mostly we are judged on our warmth. Ethical leaders communicate a joyfulness in what they do and attract followers in part by showing pleasure. Look at the example set by the great Russian martyr Aleksei Navalny. He was funny and teasing, even in the most brutal circumstances.
America’s founding fathers understood that when private virtue fails, then relationships fail and the constitutional order crumbles. The crucial struggle of our time is not merely the global macro struggle between democracy and authoritarianism; it’s the day-to-day micro-contest between the forces that honor human dignity and those that spread dehumanization.
The democratic fabric is held together by daily acts of consideration that middle managers are in a position to practice and foster. The best of them don’t resolve our disputes but lift us above them so that we can see disagreements from a higher and more generous vantage point. Democracy is more than just voting; it is a way of living, a way of living generously within disagreements, one that works only with ethical leaders showing the way.
All comments welcome, pro or con.
