Invest in middle managers as your leadership partners, expert tells African CEOs

African leaders and CEOs have been urged to invest in middle managers as leadership partners in order for them to build resilient enterprises.

Making this call to action, Caroline Lucas, Director, Special Projects at TEXEM UK the United Kingdom-based leadership development organisation in a statement on www.texem.co.uk, said they should stop viewing middle management as an administrative layer.

Lucas said further that middle management is the engine of any resilient enterprise and as the backbone, it should be strengthened.

“In an era defined by rapid volatility and shifting global landscapes, “resilience” is no longer just a corporate buzzword—it is the ultimate competitive advantage for the African enterprise.

“As leaders, we often focus our strategic lens on the boardroom or the frontline, yet we frequently overlook the most vital organ in the corporate body: the middle management layer.

“If the vision of a resilient enterprise is the “what,” middle managers are the “how.” They are not merely conduits for communication; they are the critical carriers of resilience,” the leadership development expert said.

She also described middle management as the bridge between ambition and execution.

“In the context of the African business environment, where agility is required to navigate complex market dynamics, the gap between boardroom strategy and operational reality is often vast. Middle managers serve as the indispensable bridge that spans this divide.

“They do not just receive directives; they translate, interpret, and contextualize them. When a CEO declares a pivot, it is the middle manager who stabilizes the team, manages the anxiety of change, and recalibrates daily workflows to ensure that operational performance remains sustained, even in the face of disruption,” Lucas said.

She said middle managers are the resilience architects because they are the emotional stabilizers in every organisation.

“Resilience is as much psychological as it is structural. Middle managers are on the frontlines of human capital. By fostering psychological safety and maintaining team morale during turbulence, they prevent the burnout that stalls growth,” Lucas explained.

While referring to them as the translators of strategy, she said a strategy is only as resilient as its implementation.

“Middle managers possess the unique ability to convert high level, abstract goals into actionable, daily tasks that maintain momentum without sacrificing quality,” Lucas asserted.

She said middle management serves as important feedback loop to the leaders or CEOs.

“True resilience requires sensing danger before it arrives. Because they are closest to the friction of daily operations, middle managers provide the ground-truth intelligence that CEOs need to make proactive, rather than reactive, decisions.

“We must equip them with the tools for adaptive decision making, empower them to own the outcomes of their departments, and recognize that their ability to absorb pressure and maintain operational continuity is the single greatest predictor of our organizations’ long-term survival.

“Resilience is not a top-down mandate; it is a middle-out practice. If we strengthen our middle management, we secure the foundation upon which our future African success stories will be built,” Lucas said.

She then asked African leaders and CEOs: “As you lead your organizations through the complexities of this year, how are you currently empowering your middle management layer to move beyond task management and into strategic resilience?”

The statement also announced that TEXEM will be hosting a programme
from 19th to 23rd July in Nairobi, Kenya titled: The Resilient Organisation, where African leaders and CEOs will acquire more insights on resilience in leadership.

Three reputable TEXEM faculty, Professor Nic Cheeseman, Dr T. B. (Mac) McClelland Jr. and Professor Hafiz Alaka will deliver the programme.

Nic Cheeseman is a former Professor at Oxford and a best-selling author and advisor to world leaders.

He has featured on CNN and his analysis has featured in the Economist, Le Monde, Financial Times, Newsweek, the Washington Post, New York Times and BBC.

Dr T. B. (Mac) McClelland Jr. is a former United States Marine Corps leader, former CEO of a subsidiary of a global multinational corporation, trusted adviser to world leaders, award-nominated author, and Chairman of the The Luxury Council International.

Professor Hafiz Alaka is the founding director of the Big Data Technologies and Innovation (BDTI) laboratory (for construction and infrastructure) at a UK University. He also leads the ‘Prediction of Climate and its Impacts’ group in the Centre for Climate Change Research.

His focus area is the application of technologies like big data and artificial intelligence/machine learning to construction, infrastructure, business/finance, and agriculture, among other sectors.

Interested participants in the Nairobi programme are expected to click on the link: https://texem.co.uk/the-resilient-enterprise/

The following testimonials from past delegates of TEXEM programmes were also shared in the statement.

“We’re dealing with an organisation that’s relevant in today’s world and bringing in all that knowledge to bear. And so its quite a remarkable organisation. So TEXEM will be good on my lips for recommendations going forward. Thank you,”.-Previous TEXEM delegate, Mr Abel Nsa Senior Technical Adviser (TSA) to the Minister of State Petroleum Resources (Gas), Ministry of Petroleum Resources Abuja.

“Wow! It’s so fully packed and the quality of the faculty is second to none…I think the quality of their presentation really got to me. I’ve realized… that practical and operational issues can be left to the middle-level officers in the organisation while I focus more on the strategy to deliver and make my organisation better able to achieve its objective”. -Previous TEXEM delegate, Mr Oluwatoyin Ahmed Edu, Executive Director, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Bank of Industry.

“The programme is quite rich, the content is very insightful, impactful and the content is in fact directed and tailored towards the contemporary leadership challenges we have in the country, or specific and that are directed towards leadership challenges in the country which is strategic leadership in the digital age because we are evolving and we have to be futuristic”. -Previous TEXEM delegate, Kingsley Emeka Egwuh, Assistant Comptroller General, Nigeria Customs Service.