For years, the future of middle management has been in question. But while some have speculated about its end, the numbers tell a different story. Since 1983, the proportion of middle managers has actually grown, now making up 13% of the U.S. labour force. Yet, the warnings persist. With AI poised to automate many tasks, and reports of managerial roles being cut, it’s worth asking: what does it take to be an effective middle manager today and in the future?
The answer lies in a fundamental shift in the role itself. The modern middle manager serves as a vital bridge between frontline workers and senior leadership. They have direct access to customer insights and are uniquely positioned to translate those needs up the chain of command. Furthermore, they are becoming essential coaches and mentors, helping employees adapt to new technologies and responsibilities. They motivate teams to learn new skills and even guide them in interpreting and working with AI. This new role moves beyond simple oversight to facilitation and capability-building, transforming managers into agents of change.
Essential Skills for the Modern Manager
To succeed in this new landscape, managers must cultivate a diverse set of skills. According to the Indeed Career Guide, core skills include communication, problem-solving, and leadership. However, as technology becomes more integrated, soft skills like empathy, emotional intelligence, and creativity are becoming increasingly critical to their success. These are the skills that prevent the workplace from becoming a "cyberised" environment and allow managers to act as stewards of their teams' well-being.
A New Approach to Development
Developing these skills requires a deliberate approach from both the individual and the organisation. A framework like CliftonStrengths® can be used to help managers understand their innate talents, such as analytical thinking or relationship building. By identifying and leveraging their personal strengths, managers can enhance their leadership effectiveness and tailor their approach to communication and team development. This method also helps improve team dynamics and creates a shared language for talent within the organisation.
The Need for Upskilling and Re-evaluating
In addition to soft skills, managers must pursue technical upskilling to stay ahead of automation. As AI takes on lower-level problem-solving, managers must focus on higher-order challenges, developing the analytical and strategic skills that complement technology rather than being replaced by it.
Ultimately, companies that want to build a resilient and agile organisation must change how they select and evaluate managers. Rewarding top salespeople with managerial roles, for instance, without assessing their ability to mentor and coordinate, is a mistake. Managerial success must be measured by a manager's contributions to coaching, mentoring, and cross-functional collaboration. By investing in and properly valuing their middle managers, organisations will not only survive but thrive in an era of rapid change.
Interested in learning more? Connect with Gerald Ang, if you like to manage your teams leading with Strengths!
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Why Understanding and Leveraging Your Strengths is Your Key to Future Success
The future of work is here, and it's moving fast. With 59% of the global workforce needing additional training by 2030, the professionals who will thrive aren't necessarily those with the most certifications, but they're the ones who truly understand their natural strengths and know how to leverage them in any situation.
The Numbers Don't Lie: Change is Accelerating
Organisations worldwide are scrambling to adapt, and the statistics paint a clear picture:
- 85% prioritise workforce upskilling as their primary competitive strategy
- 70% actively seek staff with new skill sets beyond traditional qualifications
- 50% are planning significant role transitions as entire job categories evolve
These aren't just numbers; they represent the biggest career opportunity in decades. While everyone else rushes to learn the latest trending skill, those who understand their core strengths have an unshakeable competitive advantage.
Why Strengths Matter More Than Ever
When everything around you is changing, your natural talents become your most reliable assets. Unlike technical skills that become obsolete, your core strengths remain relevant and transferable across any role or industry transformation.
CliftonStrengths® coaching provides your roadmap for navigating this uncertainty:
- Personalised insights into your natural talents help you focus energy where it matters most
- Strategic guidance for career development reveals opportunities others might miss
- Tools to leverage your strengths in any role ensure you stay valuable regardless of how positions evolve
- Support in navigating workplace transformations builds resilience through change
Your Strengths-Based Action Plan for 2030
The future job market rewards preparation, and CliftonStrengths® coaching offers the most strategic approach to getting ready for whatever comes next.
A deep understanding of your unique talent profile provides the self-awareness necessary for smart career decisions. When you know exactly how you naturally think, relate, influence, and execute, you can evaluate opportunities with clarity instead of chasing every trend.
Strategies to apply your strengths to emerging opportunities help you spot connections between your talents and new possibilities. As AI, sustainability, remote work, and other trends reshape industries, you'll know exactly where your strengths can create maximum impact.
Guidance in developing complementary skills ensures you build on your foundation rather than trying to fix weaknesses. This accelerates development because you're enhancing your natural patterns rather than working against them.
Support in building resilience through your natural talents becomes crucial as workplace stress increases. Your strengths aren't just for performance—they're your tools for managing challenges and maintaining energy through uncertainty.
The Science of Strengths in a Changing World
Research consistently shows that people who use their strengths daily are significantly more engaged, productive, and adaptable. The CliftonStrengths® assessment identifies your top talents from 34 distinct themes, creating a unique profile that serves as your personal success blueprint.
Your strength themes don't change significantly over time, meaning this investment pays dividends throughout your career, regardless of how many times industries transform. Strategic thinkers excel at navigating ambiguity. Relationship builders thrive in collaborative environments. Influencers drive change adoption. Executors ensure great ideas actually happen.
Your Unshakeable Competitive Advantage
Individuals who truly understand themselves have an unbeatable advantage. They know not just what they can do, but what they do best. They can articulate their unique value, adapt while staying true to their nature, and find fulfilment even when everything around them shifts.
The organisations succeeding in the future actively seek this level of self-awareness and adaptability. They want people who can grow into new roles, understand their contributions, work effectively with diverse colleagues, and maintain performance through significant change.
Your Strengths, Your Future
With 85% of organisations prioritising upskilling and 70% seeking new capabilities, the demand for self-aware, adaptable professionals has never been higher. Your talents are your most reliable assets—they don't become obsolete, can't be automated, and can't be replicated by others.
The future belongs to those who understand their natural strengths and know how to apply them in an ever-changing world. While others struggle to keep up with trends, strengths-aware individuals focus on maximising their hidden talent DNA and finding new ways to create value through their unique talents.
The workplace will continue to change, but the question is whether you'll be ready to thrive in that change by leveraging your greatest assets. The time to discover and develop your strengths is now.
Upgrade Your Personal Operating System
We're constantly told to "reinvent" ourselves, but what does that really mean? It sounds like a massive, overwhelming task. Instead of a complete overhaul, what if you thought about it like upgrading your personal operating system (OS)?
Just like the software on your phone or computer, you have a personal OS, a set of core beliefs, habits, and values that shape how you navigate the world. For many of us, this is the "out-of-the-box" system we've used since we were young, shaped by our upbringing, friends, and early experiences. It's a default setting, but it might not be the most effective for where you want to go.
Why an Upgrade is Essential
In the fast-paced world of the future of work, where careers and identities are constantly evolving, relying on an outdated OS can hold you back. An upgrade isn't just about learning new skills; it's about making a deliberate choice to examine and improve how you manage your time, attention, and energy.
Think about a prodigy athlete or a musician. They don't just hope for success; they develop a personal OS built on discipline, consistent practice, and a focus on their goals. This system allows them to be deliberate about how they use their resources to achieve what they want. You can do the same.
What to Look at When Upgrading
So, what are the fundamentals of a personal OS upgrade? It's about taking a good look at your current system and identifying what's working and what's not.
- Your Beliefs: Your operating system is built on your beliefs. Do you believe you're not a good leader? Do you believe you're too old to change careers? These stories you tell yourself can be limiting. The first step is to recognise them and decide if they're still serving you. An upgrade starts with changing the narrative in your head.
- Your Strengths: Your personal OS is also shaped by your innate strengths, the things that give you energy and allow you to thrive. Understanding your natural talents helps you work with, not against, your core self. An effective OS allows you to lean into these strengths and recognise when you need to adapt.
- Your Habits and Routines: The daily rituals you follow are the software applications of your OS. Are they helping you achieve your goals, or are they draining your energy? Simple changes, like prioritising sleep or dedicating time to focused work, can have a domino effect on your overall system.
The Goal of Upgrading
The goal isn't to become a different person, but to become a more authentic and effective version of yourself. Upgrading your personal OS is an ongoing process of self-awareness. It's about knowing your limits, understanding what gives you energy, and making purposeful choices.
The best leaders in the world aren't living two separate lives—one for work and one for home. They have one authentic OS built on consistent values. While the reality is that businesses move quickly, and you have to adapt, having a strong personal foundation makes you more resilient and able to navigate change with purpose, rather than just reacting to it.
The Missing Playbook: How Founders Navigate Identity Shifts
When Derek stepped down from ViddSee after nearly a decade, people kept asking: "What's next?" He couldn't answer. Not because he lacked ideas, but because he didn't know who he was without the company that had consumed his identity.
"It didn't even feel like just a work identity," Derek told the podcast hosts. "It was a very personal identity that became work. And to be stripped away from that, I was like, Who am I really?"
The Identity Fusion Problem
Derek's story reveals why typical career transition advice fails founders. This wasn't losing a job—it was losing an extension of himself. For years, people had said, "Derek is ViddSee, ViddSee is Derek."
When well-meaning friends advised, "your work is not your identity," Derek found it impossible to accept. "It wasn't work," he explains. "It was my existence there. What I built."
This fusion between founder and company creates unique grief when separation occurs. Unlike other professionals, founders aren't just leaving a role; they're severing from their vision, values, and years of emotional investment.
What Founders Actually Grieve
Derek's experience illuminates the multiple layers of loss:
Loss of Purpose: VidSee represented Derek's mission to empower Asian storytellers. Losing that vehicle meant losing his primary source of meaning.
Loss of Identity: Being known as "ViddSee's founder" shaped how Derek saw himself and how others saw him.
Loss of Structure: The consuming daily rhythm of running a company suddenly vanished, leaving him unmoored.
Loss of Community: Teams, investors, and industry peers formed his primary social network.
Loss of Future Vision: His imagined trajectory—for himself and the company—required complete rebuilding.
Why "Getting Over It" Doesn't Work
Derek initially gave himself a deadline to sort everything out by year's end. When December arrived without resolution, his frustration compounded the sense of being lost.
The breakthrough came when he stopped managing his grief and started feeling it fully. "If you're sad, feel sad. If you're angry, feel angry," he reflects. "Why are we suppressing what we're supposed to feel?"
This meant waking up at 3 AM with anxiety, writing in caps lock when frustrated, and sitting with the full weight of loss. Rather than pathologising these responses, Derek began understanding them as necessary.
The Turning Point
Derek's perspective shifted after watching a simple YouTube video with the message "everything ends." This basic truth helped him contextualise his experience within natural cycles rather than personal failure.
"As much as the founder, building and building and building, you cannot have things end," he explains. "You got stakeholders, you got investors—you can't have things end. So I was never in that psyche or that language."
Rebuilding, Not Rejecting
Friends suggested Derek "throw away" his past and start fresh, but the healthier path involved integration. "There were people around me that were like, no, don't throw away, you rebuild. You stack on top."
This reframe helped Derek see VidSee as one vehicle for deeper values that predated the company and would continue beyond it. His current venture, BE (The Be Company), represents evolution rather than departure—still empowering creators but with expanded scope.
What Actually Helps
Derek's journey reveals what founders need during transition:
Permission to Feel: Explicit support to sit with difficult emotions without timeline pressure.
Protected Time: Derek describes his "adult gap year" as essential for reflection without productivity demands.
Story Sharing: Talking with strangers about his experience helped Derek realise he wasn't alone.
Community: Connecting with others navigating similar transitions provided validation and practical advice.
The Hidden Gift
Derek's grief forced examination of patterns he'd ignored during company building—overwork, neglected relationships, leadership blind spots. "If I were to work on myself better, then maybe it could affect how I show up in relationships with co-founders," he reflects.
This self-examination became the foundation for more sustainable approaches in his next venture.
Redefining Success
Rather than measuring how quickly founders bounce back, we might consider:
- Depth of self-understanding
- Quality of rebuilt relationships
- Development of sustainable practices
- Integration of learning into future work
By these measures, Derek's year-long process wasn't delayed—it was a thorough preparation for better leadership.