Between the board and the team: the loneliness of the middle position

“And what do you think about it?”

The question came in the evening, at the kitchen table, from her partner, who had spent half an hour listening to how her day had gone. At nine she had explained to her team why the board was freezing recruitment, defending a decision she herself disagreed with. At eleven, in the management meeting, she had defended her team, which had been running on empty for three months. In the afternoon she had told one of her people that there would be no promotion this year, and in the same breath assured him that she was fighting for him. All of it sounded convincing. But when her partner asked what she thought, she fell silent. She realised she hadn’t said it to anyone all day. Not even to herself.

This is the loneliness of the middle position. It isn’t dramatic and from the outside you hardly see it — the person is surrounded by people all day long. But it is a particular kind of loneliness, because it comes from the role itself: you have to be loyal in two directions at once, speak two languages, and somewhere along the way you lose your own.

When we say “middle management”, we think of department or team heads. But a managing director is often in the middle too — between the owners or supervisory board on one side and the employees on the other. This post is for everyone who carries decisions downwards and worries upwards, whatever their job title happens to be.

A translator in both directions

In 2017 the researchers Ethan Anicich and Jacob Hirsh published an article on what happens psychologically to people in the middle of a hierarchy. Their central idea is simple: someone in a middle position switches roles many times a day. In front of their superiors they are in the lower-power position — listening, adapting, watching what they say. In front of their team they are in the higher-power position — deciding, directing, carrying responsibility. They called this switch vertical code-switching, by analogy with people who move between languages in the middle of a conversation.

Every switch means a different posture, a different tone, a different judgement about what can be said. Research on power suggests that higher-power positions generally push people towards action, while lower-power positions make them more inhibited and cautious. Anicich and Hirsh propose that it is precisely the constant switching between the two — and not either position in itself — that wears down the person in the middle. Because they are never fully in one role, they are never quite at home in either.

That conflicting expectations are a burden is not a new insight. As far back as 1964, Robert Kahn and colleagues, in a large study of stress in organisations, described role conflict: a situation in which different people expect things from you that cannot all be fulfilled at once. People in such positions reported more tension and less job satisfaction, and placed less trust in those sending them contradictory messages.

One important caveat: Anicich and Hirsh’s article is a theoretical model that draws together other research, not a large empirical study. Yet many who read the description find it strikingly familiar.

What the data show

One of the few studies to compare the mental health of people at different levels of the workplace hierarchy was published in 2015. Seth Prins and colleagues analysed data from a large American survey and divided people into owners, managers and supervisors, and workers. The result was not what many would expect: depression was most common precisely in the middle. Around 18 per cent of managers and supervisors reported it, compared with about 12 per cent of workers and about 11 per cent of owners. They found a similar pattern for anxiety.

The authors explained this by the contradictory position people in the middle occupy: they carry out decisions they have little influence over, and answer for people they did not choose. This too should be read with care — these are American data, from a cross-sectional study, showing an association rather than proof of cause. Perhaps middle positions attract certain kinds of people; perhaps other factors are at play. But the finding fits something people in the middle often describe themselves: that they are neither here nor there.

Loyalty in two directions

Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, one of the founders of family therapy, described a concept he called split loyalty. It is the position of a child whose parents put them in front of a choice: being loyal to one means betraying the other. A child in that position cannot win. Whatever they do, they disappoint someone — and so they often learn not to have an opinion of their own at all.

A workplace is not a family, and a department head is not a child. But something from this description repeats itself in the middle of a hierarchy. The board expects you to represent its decisions as if they were your own. The team expects you to fight for it as if you were one of them. Both are legitimate. And both at once are often impossible. Someone who grew up in a family where they had to placate both parents recognises this position from the inside — and is often remarkably skilled at it. Which is exactly why they rarely leave it.

When you’re the third in the triangle

In systemic and relational family therapy we talk a lot about triangulation. When tension between two people is too uncomfortable to resolve directly, they pass it on to a third. A mother doesn’t talk to the father; she complains to her daughter. A father doesn’t tell the mother he is angry; he becomes strict with his son.

In an organisation, the middle manager is often exactly this third person. The board doesn’t tell the team directly that it is dissatisfied — it tells the manager to “sort things out”. The team doesn’t tell the board that it is exhausted — it tells the manager to “pass it on upstairs”. The manager becomes the messenger, carrying tension that did not start with them. And as we know from families, the messenger is often the one on whom both sides’ anger finally lands.

Triangulation isn’t malicious. It is one of the oldest ways systems reduce tension. But the price is always paid by the third person. I described how these patterns become tangled among members of a leadership team in Corridor politics: how conflict in leadership affects health.

Why there’s no one to talk to

Loneliness in a middle position has very concrete causes. Looking at them one by one makes it clear that this isn’t about someone being bad at relationships:

• You can’t with your team. When you became their manager, you stopped being a colleague. Former friends from the corridor no longer tell you everything, and you mustn’t tell them everything — least of all what you know about upcoming decisions.
• You can’t fully with your superiors. In front of them you have to appear on top of things. Admitting you can’t cope could affect your future.
• With your peers it’s complicated. Other managers at the same level are allies and rivals at once — for budget, for people, for the next promotion.
• At home it’s hard to explain. Your partner hears “the board again”, but doesn’t know the people and can’t judge why exactly this hits you so hard. After a few months you start protecting them from your stories.

In 2018 Hakan Ozcelik and Sigal Barsade showed that loneliness at work is not just a private pain: employees who experienced it were less emotionally engaged with their work, colleagues saw them as less approachable — and their performance was worse. So loneliness doesn’t just hide inside a person. It echoes outwards.

When loneliness lasts longer, it also changes how we see people: we become more cautious, quicker to perceive rejection, less willing to open up. You can read more about this in the knowledge base under loneliness.

A conversation heard from outside

This is how a conversation might sound between a department head and a former colleague who recently left the company (a composite, not a real person):

“How are things?”
“Good. Lots of work, but good.”
“You sound like you’re saying it in a meeting.”
“Maybe. I don’t know how to talk any other way any more.”
“When did you last tell anyone you disagreed with something?”
“I can’t tell the board, because I have to be loyal. I can’t tell the team, because I mustn’t upset them. And at home I’ve already worn everyone out.”
“So where are you, then?”
“Somewhere in between. As always.”

Those last words matter. “As always” often tells you that the position is not new. Someone who stood between their parents as a child will recognise the translator’s role as familiar — and will perform it brilliantly, even when it is wearing them out. I wrote about how early patterns repeat themselves at work in Attachment at work: how the pattern shows with your manager and colleagues.

Where this view doesn’t hold

I don’t want to give the impression that a middle position is doomed to loneliness. That isn’t true.

Many people in the middle are glad to be there. The middle is where strategy meets reality, and those who can translate in both directions are valuable to an organisation. Some find in this very role what makes them happy: being a bridge, understanding both sides, being able to move things. Research speaks about averages, not about you.

Second, loneliness isn’t always a consequence of the position. If it was there before your promotion, or if you feel it in relationships outside work too, the answer probably lies elsewhere — in how you attach to people, or in a low mood that is worth looking at with a doctor as well. In that case changing jobs won’t help.

Third, some organisations are simply built in a way that squeezes the middle. If the board makes decisions without consultation and the teams are permanently understaffed, even the best self-care can only soften the consequences. Therapy can help you understand which part of this story is yours — but it can’t fix a structure you didn’t build. Sometimes the most mature step is to leave.

And finally: when moving from a specialist into a leadership role, many people face, for the first time, the doubt about whether they are good enough. Part of the loneliness is sometimes this very doubt, hidden from everyone. The post Impostor syndrome: why successful people doubt themselves may help with that.

Exercise: three voices

This exercise helps you hear yourself again in the middle. You need a sheet of paper and twenty minutes. You can do it this evening — ideally with a decision that is troubling you this week.

1. Divide the sheet into three columns. Head the first “What the board wants”, the second “What the team needs”, the third “What I think”.
2. Fill in the first two columns. This will go quickly — you know these two voices by heart, because you represent them all day.
3. Stay with the third column. Write down what you think, not what is sensible or what would be acceptable. If nothing comes, write: “I don’t know.” That is information too.
4. Read the third column aloud. Notice where in your body you feel it. Is there a sentence that makes your throat tighten?
5. Choose one person and one occasion to tell one sentence from the third column. Not everything, and not necessarily your superior — it could be a friend, your partner or someone outside the company.

The aim of the exercise isn’t for your opinion always to win. The aim is that it doesn’t disappear. It can be expressed clearly and respectfully at the same time — something the concept of assertiveness describes better than any leadership technique.

When to seek help

Loneliness in itself is not an illness. But when it lasts a long time and other signs join it, it’s worth acting. Pay attention if you no longer sleep well because you keep replaying conversations from both sides; if you feel tense all the time, even at weekends; if you no longer enjoy things that used to give you pleasure; if you increasingly think that everything is pointless. The signs described in Burnout is not laziness: signs your nervous system is asking for a break are common among people in the middle and deserve to be taken seriously.

For physical symptoms and long-lasting insomnia, your first port of call is your GP. If thoughts of suicide appear, don’t wait: in Slovenia you can call the crisis line Klic v duševni stiski on 01 520 99 00 (every day from 7 pm to 7 am) or the Samaritans helpline Samarijan on 116 123 (24 hours a day). In an emergency, call 112 in Slovenia.

Psychotherapy is a place where you don’t have to represent anyone. There you can look at why the translator’s role feels so familiar, where you set boundaries and where you don’t, and what would happen if you sometimes said what you think. I see people in person in Ljubljana, and I also work in English. When the pattern of standing between two sides goes back a long way, a longer session with a genogram, A Look into the Past, can be a good place to start. And I have described what the health of those above you means for everyone below them in Leaders’ mental health: why it’s a question for the organisation, not just the individual.

If you are in a transition right now — in a leadership role for the first time, in a new company or at a new level — you may also find the post New job, new city, new chapter: the psychology of life transitions helpful. Transitions are when loneliness is most to be expected, and when we most easily mistake it for our own failure.

What to remember

• The middle position is lonely because of the role itself: you have to be loyal in two directions, speak two languages, and in the process your own voice often goes quiet.
• Constantly switching between a lower-power and a higher-power role is tiring in itself, even when every day looks “normal”.
• People in the middle are often the third in a triangle — carrying tension between the board and the team that did not start with them.
• If the translator’s role is familiar from home, you will perform it brilliantly — and find it hard to put down; that is worth looking at.
• Find at least one place where you don’t have to represent anyone, and say there what you think.