Leading from the Middle as a Midfielder

As a team leader, you have a choice: you can remain a sandwich man or woman who does nothing more than absorb pressure from all sides, or you can develop yourself into a midfielder on the playing field with a completely different mindset and impact on all the players around you.

When you do that, you work in all directions: forward, backward, left, and right.

You see yourself as someone who gives direction and leadership to the entire playing field. You are certainly not a victim, but rather a tactical leader who knows the talents of your whole team and can deploy them in the right place at the right time.

You lead in all directions:

Upward, to your manager, by putting the right topics on the agenda at the right moments. By partnering with your manager to build a healthy organization. But also by giving feedback and appreciation where it is necessary and meaningful.

Sideways, to your fellow team leaders, by actively engaging in dialogue with them to find solutions together. Through your support for them, you consciously help build the bigger picture.

Outward, by leading the communication with and service to your customers, patients, or students. Your vision is to serve your customers as optimally as possible together with your own team, with your peer teams, and with the support of your managers.

And finally, of course, you lead your own team. You guide how your team collaborates optimally, communicates with each other and with others, and delivers top quality in their work. Here, you hold direct, active responsibility to support each of your team members in their professional development.

As a midfielder, you know yourself and your talents so well that you can immediately deploy them to lead and serve all the players around you. That requires a healthy dose of self-leadership too: knowing what you can and cannot do, knowing where you want to grow, knowing what gives you energy and what costs you energy, and knowing how to keep your resilience strong over the long haul. Being a midfielder is much more of a marathon than a series of sprints.

What makes you so valuable as a midfielder?

1. You are the driver, organizer, and developer of your organization's productivity.
2. You are the one who, together with your teams, shapes the customer journey and can cause the level of customer service in your field to blossom into an excellent customer/patient/student experience.
3. You are the leader who stands closest to all those professionals in your organization. Attracting and retaining talent is largely determined by how you interact with them, engage them, and develop them.
4. You are the culture-impacter at the foundation of the entire organization. People at the top can come up with all kinds of wonderful values and cultural traits, but the person who is actually going to live them out in practice together with their team: that’s you.
5. In times like these, every organization and business must constantly adapt to new challenges coming our way—from politics, the economy, and social disruptions. All these changes require 'change agents' who bring along, motivate, support, and convince the professionals at the grassroots. As a midfielder, you are the number one change agent in the entire company. You can make change happen or block it. You can bring your people along or let them freeze up with cynicism. But you are also the one who is often best equipped to assess how you can actually realize change.
6. In times of change and challenge, a business or organization can only grow healthily if a 'high-trust culture' is built and preserved. As a midfielder, you are the 'trust-builder' par excellence. You can consciously work on trust relationships in all four directions: between you and your managers, between you and your fellow team leaders, between you and your customers, patients, or students, and especially between you and your team members.
7. You are the 'home builder' with and for your own team. A culture of trust, appreciation, feedback, and constructive challenges—that is what your team members need. 'Your' people spend a large part of their lives at work. You are one of the people building a work environment that enables 'your' people to thrive.

Are you starting to see your impact a bit more clearly? Without your leadership in all directions, it will remain difficult for your organization or business to survive healthily in the coming years.

At the same time, I can almost hear you sighing: "Yeah, right! How? My managers need to do their job first and make sure we have everything we need to work properly!" That is a fair thought. And right here lies your challenge: will you continue in the sandwich role, or will you take on the challenge to grow step by step into your role as a midfielder—with all the challenges and learning opportunities that come with it?