14 November 2025
In most organisations, a middle manager will sit between entry-level/junior staff and senior management and plays a critical role in an organisation’s successful operation. However, these roles are often underappreciated and given little focus or attention; therefore, I wanted to highlight their importance.
To explore this unique intersection of a middle manager who has to be both operational and strategic in their role, I interviewed a candidate I appointed earlier this year, Samira Hussain, Dean of Law at Regent College, to gain her perspective. She has also previously been a middle manager as Head of School of Law at Arden University, so she is well placed to highlight her thoughts in both positions.
How do you manage to balance a role where you are expected to be operational in terms of your team, but at the same time strategic?
I’ve been responsible for both operational and strategic management. I have found ways to think creatively about how to interpret high level strategies into operational priorities as this is probably one of the key elements of the middle manager role.
The reality of such a role however, often means that you become so occupied with operational issues such as staff management, that you can’t do the strategic work. You end up falling naturally into one area or the other. At Arden University, I was primarily responsible for the School and ensuring it operated successfully day to day. The senior leadership team focussed on the strategic side.
In essence, you’re wearing those two hats and it doesn’t always work. Would it be more effective to split these two areas into two separate roles?
Given the financial challenges in the wider HE sector, I don’t think there is the money, capacity or the desire to split the role. I do think it becomes less fulfilling for the person in the long term. When you’re joining a new organisation, you’re happy to talk about and focus on operational issues because most of the time that’s why you’re brought in—either the organisation is going in a different direction or there are structural issues to address. But once you’ve made progress, you want to be involved in the strategic work, because that is what keeps the role meaningful.
But there’s a lot of insecurity at the executive senior leadership level across the sector. As a Head of School, as a middle manager, you are actually safe. You are responsible for a School or subject area, often a profit-making entity, you’re responsible for staffing and for programmes. Anything above that, especially associate roles, deputy roles – those roles can be at risk.
That’s exactly what I’ve seen in the market as well…
I’ve been in the sector now for more than a decade. I’ve been an external examiner, I’ve consulted and I sit as an Executive Officer on the Committee of Heads of University Law Schools, many of the conversations within the legal HE community are similar.
If some senior managers want to retain strategic responsibility that makes it hard to progress in your own career…
I think it can be challenging and quite limiting. It’s important to work closely with your line manager and develop a relationship so they can then support you with mapping what you need for the next step in your role or career.
I was fortunate and could be very open with my line manager, Professor Finola Farrant (former Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Arden University and current Head of School of Law and Education at London South Bank University) and she in turn would be very open with me. She would share opportunities and actively encourage me get involved in cross institutional and strategic work.
She was genuinely interested in my progression and wanted to know what I was passionate about. I’ve held on to how she encouraged me. She was supportive in my professional development and I hold her in high regard for this.
Middle management roles often introduce the responsibility of managing staff. What is your management style?
My style is to empower staff – I don’t want to micromanage my team. Even if I don’t agree with how they are approaching something, they need to work according to their own style and learn if a different approach would have been better. As a middle manager, if you are involved and operating on that level, then staff won’t grow or develop, and you’ll be involved with the minor issues all the time.
And as a manager how do you translate the strategic overview of an organisation to your team from a purely operational perspective?
I think that’s where the challenge is – the communication strategy of any organisation needs to be clear and strike the balance between effectively communicating the strategic decision and empowering staff to act on it. Delays in communication and lack of communication can create a culture of uncertainly. Also, nothing stays confidential for long.
Given what you’ve shared what do you feel was the biggest challenge being a middle manager?
I think for me, the biggest challenge is having to deliver on poorly made strategic decisions. I find it quite difficult to instruct staff to work or operate in a manner that doesn’t align with my values.
It can be quite difficult to manage the speed of change and implementation of reactive short term projects to align with the widening governance and regulatory issues in the sector, rather than actually focusing on what is the crux of the role to ensure high quality teaching and student experience.
Final question, what’s the one thing you would change that would positively impact middle managers?
Whereas sector wide we have clear progression paths for lecturers, senior lecturers and principal lecturers, I would welcome cross sector collaboration to define clearer progression paths for roles such as Head of School and Associate Dean, particularly given that these roles and responsibilities vary from institution to institution.
I think there is a level of desire to collaborate across the HE sector, but everyone’s dealing with their own institutional pressures and that doesn’t give you the breathing space to collaborate. I think cross-collaboration, a better understanding of what we want from middle managers, how we can support middle managers, and then how we then can empower them by providing opportunities and for senior leadership teams to think how they can make these opportunities more fair and without bias.
I would like to thank Samira for her time and fascinating contributions in this interview, which outlines the complex challenges and pressures faced by middle managers. She highlights the difficulty of managing a role which is designed in many cases to balance operational and strategic responsibilities and how hard it can be to progress in your career. I’m very interested to hear your thoughts – please do get in contact if you’d like to discuss.
Crossing sectors – an interview with Alan Fitzgerald
Az Ahmed is a Senior Consultant with over ten years supporting the public sector in local and central government as well as higher education. He is guided by his desire to support higher education institutions in appointing credible, transformational leaders who drive forward change. You can contact him at az.ahmed@andersonquigley.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.
