When organisations go through change, most of the attention goes in two directions.
Upwards, to strategy, design and decision-making.
Downwards, to how teams are responding on the ground.
But the crucial layer in the middle often gets missed.
These are the people translating change into daily reality. Heads of service. Heads of department. Deputy directors. Senior managers overseeing managers. The people expected to hold direction, reduce ambiguity and keep momentum going, often while they are still making sense of the changes themselves.
If you want change to stick, this is the group you cannot afford to overlook.
Managers of managers are not just another audience in change. They are the people who make it workable.
They turn strategic intent into practical priorities.
They help managers below them interpret what matters.
They shape whether change feels purposeful, confusing or exhausting.
When this layer feels equipped, teams are more likely to experience change as structured and manageable.
When this layer feels under-supported, change often becomes:
That is why organisational change rarely fails because the vision was wrong. More often, it falters because the people responsible for carrying it through were expected to do too much with too little support.
Managers of managers sit in an especially demanding position during change.
They are expected to give confidence upwards and clarity downwards.
They need to:
That creates a particular kind of pressure. Not just workload pressure, but interpretive pressure.
They are not only managing tasks. They are managing meaning.
And that matters, because teams do not respond to organisational charts. They respond to how change is explained, modelled and lived by the people closest to them.
When managers of managers are properly supported through change, you tend to see:
These people do not need to have all the answers. But they do need enough confidence, support and shared language to help others move forward.
That is the difference between simply briefing managers and actually equipping them.
This is where change often starts to wobble.
Without enough support, managers of managers can begin to show signs of strain that affect everyone around them. For example:
withdrawing from reflective conversations because delivery pressure feels more urgent
passing pressure down rather than translating it into something manageable
None of this means they are not capable. It usually means they are carrying more than the organisation realises.
In one higher education professional services area, teams were being reorganised around new priorities and functional responsibilities. The intention was positive: more alignment, clearer ownership, better service delivery.
But the managers sitting between senior direction and team delivery found themselves under intense strain.
They were expected to:
What helped was not another update meeting.
It was a more practical kind of support:
That shifted the role from simply holding pressure to helping others work through it.
This is exactly where a strengths-based approach adds value.
In times of change, it is easy for managers to focus only on what is missing:
But if that becomes the only lens, confidence drops quickly.
A focus on working strengths helps managers of managers ask better questions:
That does not ignore the challenge. It simply stops the challenge from becoming the whole story.
You can explore that in more depth here: What Is a Strengths-Based Approach?
One of the most common mistakes in change is assuming that once managers have been informed, they have been prepared.
They have not.
A slide deck, a planning paper or a set of talking points does not automatically give someone the ability to:
If organisations want manager-led change to succeed, they need to stop treating support as optional.
Because managers of managers are not just passing messages on. They are shaping how change is experienced.
Support for this group needs to be practical, developmental and ongoing.
That might include:
Not just hearing what is happening, but making sense of what it means for their area, their managers and their teams.
So they can keep people anchored in what they bring, not just what is shifting.
Brief, structured moments to ask:
Because many of the most important conversations in change happen sideways, not just up and down.
Managers of managers need tools, prompts and habits they can use immediately.
This is where Strengthify’s work is especially relevant. Our Management Development Programme
supports managers to lead in ways that are clear, human and sustainable, especially in periods of uncertainty and pressure.
If you want more strategic agility, stronger collaboration and more resilient teams, the answer is not to ask managers to absorb more.
It is to make them feel more secure in how they lead.
Because you cannot build strategic agility without manager security.
The more supported this layer feels, the more likely they are to:
And that is what turns organisational change from a one-off event into something that can actually be sustained.
At Strengthify, we help organisations strengthen the people who hold change in the middle.
Our work supports managers of managers to:
You may also want to explore:
When change feels stuck, the answer is not always more strategy.
Sometimes the real question is whether the people carrying the change have what they need to make it workable for everyone else.
Because in organisational change, the missing piece is often not the plan.
It is the support around the people asked to lead it.