Carmen Deñó

Tasked with applying a broad strategic vision to the realities in front of them, middle managers are key agents of organizational change — and DEI efforts are no exception. In fact, employees’ experiences with their managers have a big impact on whether they view their organization as inclusive or not. And yet, middle managers are rarely included in the development of DEI strategy.

In our executive education sessions, we’ve witnessed many middle managers complain that either they hear a generic plea to support DEI without any concrete guidance or that they’re asked to implement diversity policies that don’t match the realities of their day-to-day life.

More than 70% of organizational changes fail, for various reasons, such as the failure to allocate sufficient resources or to get endorsement from the leadership team. In our experience, not only does DEI-related organizational change present the same challenges, it also must operate in parallel to, and often compete with, existing business initiatives.

To successfully achieve change, organizational leaders must understand the implementation challenges faced by middle managers and incorporate their specific needs into DEI policy development. In our work, we’ve identified two key tensions: the autonomy vs. control tension, and the short-term vs. long-term tension. Below, we describe these tensions and offer strategies for leaders to help middle managers navigate them.

The Autonomy vs. Control Tension

A sense of autonomy is a core psychological need. People are most motivated when they have clarity about their goals, but freedom to decide how to attain them.

In our work, we’ve found that middle managers have their own motivations. They want to differentiate themselves, to exist not just as cogs in the bureaucratic machine, but as autonomous leaders bringing expert perspectives and competencies to the organization.

But research tells us that the most effective way to reduce bias in decision-making is to limit managerial discretion, by, for example, adding explicit criteria to performance management and structured interviews to the hiring process.

To help middle managers navigate the autonomy vs. control tension, leaders should:

Build a DEI narrative that connects the big picture (the “why”) to the implementation (the “how”).

Successful leaders situate DEI within the company’s mission and offer direction on how the company will address DEI goals. At the same time, to get buy-in from middle managers, leadership should also communicate the more tactical implementation plans: What will the organization commit to, in terms of both resources and metrics, to enable success?

Highlight how limiting discretion serves middle managers.

Taking away the freedom to evaluate employees or candidates by their own standards may threaten middle managers’ sense of agency. As you roll out your policy, leaders should explain how new policies aimed at bias — for example, reducing managers’ discretion by standardizing the questions they ask during hiring interviews — provide opportunities to efficiently collect information that is relevant for the hiring decision, reduce managerial workload, and give middle managers autonomy to focus their energy on leading their teams.

Train and support managers on how to navigate DEI challenges.

In order to increase the odds of success, make sure that your middle managers have resources, education, and importantly, forums to navigate new challenges aligned with broader DEI goals. Town halls, Slack channels, regular newsletters, and “Ask Me Anything” sessions with DEI leadership can be effective in 1) normalizing DEI implementation challenges and 2) offering support to navigate them. For example, the CHRO of Dutch financial services company Rabobank introduced “I messed up” sessions in which employees can speak up honestly about making mistakes.

Middle managers in particular can benefit from an environment where DEI-related setbacks are shared. Such conversations serve as a reminder of the shared journey and shared challenges, as well as the importance of self-knowledge, courage, and humility for leadership.

In these conversations, owners of DEI initiatives should welcome constructive criticism of DEI policies, such as fears regarding feasibility or message framing, before they are rolled out company wide. When a company is willing to share control over some of the details of DEI policy with middle managers, it signals that their expertise is valued and increases the likelihood that middle managers will further commit to implementing the policy.

The Short-Term versus Long-Term Tension

Traditional business strategy is implemented based on three key assumptions: 1) Progress towards a goal is additive; 2) A fraction of the goal is achievable in a (proportionate) fraction of the time; and 3) Progress is recognized with rewards tied to short-term metrics.

In our experience, DEI initiatives frequently have a different timeline. Not only do many DEI initiatives yield positive outcomes on a longer time horizon, but they may also be in tension with shorter-term business goals and metrics. For example, research has unequivocally shown that diverse teams produce more long-term innovative outcomes. However, in the short term, more diverse teams may experience more clashes as they learn to respectfully resolve differences that arise from their different backgrounds.

To help middle managers reconcile the time-horizon tension, leaders should:

Run pre-mortems with middle managers to identify competing priorities.

When establishing DEI targets, ask a small group of middle managers: “If this were to fail, what would be the reasons?” Usually, this question surfaces information about immediate competing pressures that may derail DEI progress, that managers might be concerned about.

Build long-term mindsets across the business.

Any organizational “big swing” requires forgoing short-term wins for long-term gains and making bets that may not yield immediate results. Leaders need to explicitly acknowledge from the start that DEI investment will pay off in a non-linear fashion over the long term, instead of comparing pound-per-pound the efficiency of short-term DEI projects with other change efforts.

We have seen many companies overfocus on short-term improvements in diversity numbers in response to stakeholder pressures; more often than not, this means that equity and inclusion receive less consideration, causing stagnation and even backlash against the DEI strategy in the long term.

Change can also make some employees feel excluded and alienated. Leadership must recognize these tensions and encourage middle managers to provide long-term reassurance of commitment to equity and inclusion for everyone.

Recognize short-term effort and long-term outcome.

Short-term KPIs can’t alone determine middle managers’ rewards, recognition, and pay increases when you are aiming for long-term success. By including metrics for effort and progress, not just final outcomes, leadership can create a structure for support and accountability of middle managers’ actions. The 50:50 Project initiated by BBC to attain gender equality in the news, for example, created this structure by recognizing that the source of gender diversity they had leverage over was the invitations extended to guests and contributors, and not the protagonists of news themselves. They therefore instituted gender equality metrics for effort and progress, quantified as extended and accepted speaker invitations on the news show, rather than demanding accountability for the end-outcome of equal gender representation on the screen.

DEI efforts have progressed to become strategic initiatives with budgets, accountability metrics, headcount, and dedicated leadership, so the time is ripe for the DEI change process to mature. As middle managers are the lynchpin to organizational change, proactively including them in your in strategies and addressing the tensions inherent in their role, will help ensure your long-term DEI success.