Why Are Middle Managers Breaking Right Now? | Workplace AI| AI for Executives - AI Cafe Conversations | Neuroscience, Neuroleadership, and Human-Centered AI for Executives

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:14):
Welcome back to the AI Cafe Conversations Podcast.
I'm Sahari Ngradi, your AIWhisperer, a neuroscience-based
neural leadership consultant andForbes Coaches Council member.
I want to start today withsomething that happened on a
call I had recently.
I was talking to an HR director,smart, experienced, cared deeply

(00:39):
about her people.
And she said to me, Sahar, Idon't know what to do.
My managers are done.
Not struggling, done.
I asked her what she meant.
She said, they are showing up,they are doing the job, but it's
like the lights are on and noone is home.

(01:01):
And I knew exactly what she wasdescribing because I had been
hearing versions of that samesentence from HR leaders across
the country for the past 12months.
Middle managers are breakingright now.
And it's not because they areweak, it's not because they
cannot handle pressure.
It's because they're being askedto absorb more simultaneous

(01:26):
pressure than the human nervoussystem was designed to hold.
That is what we are talkingabout today.
Why this is happening, what itcosts, and what you can actually
do about it.
So stay with me.
So what is the crisis and what'sactually happening?

(01:48):
Okay.
Let me give you some numbersfirst.
Because sometimes when we seedata, we understand if the scale
of what we are dealing with in away that words alone cannot
capture.
Wiley, one of the most respectedleadership research
organizations, found that 47% ofmiddle managers report stress

(02:12):
and severe stress.
Not moderate, not occasional,severe.
Gartner research found that theaverage employee is currently
navigating 14 separateorganizational changes at the
same time.
14.
Think about that for a moment.
And 73% of employees reportchange fatigue.

(02:37):
Which means that most of yourworkforce is not just tired of
change, they are neurologicallydepleted by it.
Now, here is what makes thisuniquely painful for middle
managers.
They are not just going throughthose 14 changes themselves,
they are absorbing them fromabove, from executives and from

(03:01):
leadership, and thentransmitting them to their teams
below.
They are the humaninfrastructure between a mandate
and a human being.
And right now, thatinfrastructure is under enormous
strain.
Above them, AI mandatesstrategic pivots, workforce

(03:24):
reductions, expectations thattheir team will adapt faster,
produce more, and learn newtools.
Sometimes without additionaltraining or support.
Below them, teams who areexhausted, scared, and in some
cases quietly resistant.

(03:44):
Because 73% of employees reportfeeling change fatigue.
Let that sing for a moment.
That does not mean they're lazy.
It means their nervous systemsare full.
And in the middle, absorbingpressure from both directions is

(04:07):
the manager.
There is a phrase that one of myclients used that I have not
been able to forget.
She said, I feel like thefilling in a panini, getting
compressed from both sides,getting hot, and slowly just
melting.

(04:28):
This is not a metaphor, that's anervous system description.
When a human being experienceschronic sustained pressure from
multiple directions, the braindoes something very specific.
The amygdala, the threatdetection center of the brain

(04:49):
begins to fire continuously, notjust in response to a crisis,
continuously.
Because the environment itselfhas become a crisis.
And when the amygdala fires, itcompetes with the prefrontal
cortex.
The prefrontal cortex is whereyou plan, where you problem

(05:12):
solve, where you regulateemotion, where you lead with
empathy, compassion, andstrategy.
But you can't run both systemsat full capacity at the same
time.
The brain has to choose.
And when the threat signal isconstant, guess who wins?

(05:34):
The survival brain wins.
So when your manager seemsirritable, when they make
reactive decisions, when theycannot think clearly or hold
space for their team the waythey used to, this is what is
happening.
This is not a character failure.
This is neuroscience.

(05:55):
This is neurobiology.
And HR leaders, this is whereyou come in.
Because what most organizationsdo in this situation is they
send managers to anothertraining, another workshop,
another resilience program.
And I'm going to tell yousomething difficult.
A dysregulated nervous systemcannot absorb new skills.

(06:20):
The brain is not available forlearning when it's in survival
mode.
You can train your way out of abiology problem.
And here I want to discuss withyou what is actually costing you
to have that happening.
Let's talk about what happenswhen this goes unaddressed.

(06:44):
Because right now, a lot oforganizations are hoping this is
temporary, hoping the managerswill just push through, hoping
things will stabilize.
But here is what the data tellsus about what is already
happening.
Gallup research shows thatmanagers are 24% more likely to
consider leaving their jobs inthe next six months compared to

(07:09):
non-managers.
24%.
That means your middlemanagement layer, the people who
hold institutional knowledge,who know your culture, who have
relationships with your teams,they are quietly looking for
exits.
That's quarter of your workforcefor middle managers.

(07:33):
Deloitte found that 40% ofmanagers said their mental
health actually declined whenthey took on a leadership role.
Not improved, declined.
So we are asking people toaccept a promotion that,
according to research, has a 40%chance of making them feel
worse.

(07:54):
And then we wonder why thepipeline is drying up.
And from a financial standpoint,I know HR leaders have to make
the business case.
A burned-out executive costs acompany over$20,000 per year per

(08:14):
person just in lostproductivity, in absenteeism,
and poor decisions.
And replacing a senior managercosts on average anywhere from
50 to 200% of their annualsalary.

(08:36):
Again, let that sink.
Burnout is not a wellnessproblem, it's a financial
exposure.
But beyond the numbers, I wantto talk about something that
does not show up in aspreadsheet.
What happens to a team whentheir manager is breaking?
Nervous systems are contagious.

(08:56):
This is not a metaphor.
This is neuroscience.
Humans have mirror neurons.
We pick up on the emotional andpsychological state and
physiological state of thepeople around us, especially
people in authority.
When a manager is dysregulated,anxious, shut down, or in

(09:17):
survival mode, that signaltravels.
It spreads.
The team picks it up.
I have been in organizationswhere the culture felt heavy
before anyone said a singleword.
You walk in and you can feel it.
That is not imagination.
That is the collective nervoussystem of the group and it

(09:40):
starts at the top, whatever teamyou are in.
When managers cannot regulate,teams cannot regulate.
When teams cannot regulate,performance drops.
When performance drops,leadership applies more
pressure, which makes themanager more dysregulated, which

(10:01):
makes the team moredysregulated.
The chicken or the egg.
And this is the loop that isrunning in organizations right
now.
The good news, and there is goodnews, is that you can interrupt
this loop.
Not by adding more to themanager's plate, but by
understanding what the nervoussystem actually needs to come

(10:22):
back online.
This is the work when it getsreally interesting and real.
So let's talk about the solutionand what actually works.
So what do you do?
If you are an HR leader watchingyour middle managers burn, what

(10:48):
is actually effective?
I want to offer you three thingsthat the neuroscience research
actually supports.
And one thing I want you to stopdoing before it's making it
worse.
Let me start with what to stop.

(11:11):
I know this is counterintuitive,I know that.
Oxymoron maybe, but let me shareit with you.
I know leadership development iswhat HR does.
And I'm not saying stopdeveloping your managers.
I'm saying the sequence mattersenormously.
Think about it this way.

(11:33):
If someone comes to you running,a fever of 104 degrees, you do
not sit them down and teach thema new skill.
You address the physiologicalstate first.
You get the fever down, and thenwhen their body can absorb

(11:55):
information again, you teach.
The same principle applies here.
A nervous system in chronicthreat cannot learn.
The research on this is clear.
Cortisol, our stress hormone,causes a measurable shift from

(12:19):
executive function to automatedsurvival behavior.
The alarm system is on 24-7.
It's like having the engine ofyour car running 24-7.
Nonstop.
Just think about it.
What will happen if you do that?

(12:41):
A nervous system in chronicthreat mode cannot learn.
The research on this is clear,like I said.
And I'm repeating this so itwill stick with you.
Cortisol, the stress hormone,causes a measurable shift from
executive function to automatedsurvival behavior.

(13:05):
Your managers are not failing toapply what they learn.
They literally cannot access itunder sustained pressure.
So step one, regulate first,strategize second.
This is actually the foundationof the work I do.
I have a priority framework Icall brain.

(13:30):
B R A I N.
And it's built on the premisethat you cannot create lasting
leadership change without firstcreating the neurological
conditions for that change totake root.
You always go to the root, neverthe symptoms.

(13:51):
That's what I always say.
You cannot, you cannot skip thisstep.
It's not soft work.
It's not woo-hoo out there, andit's not kumbaya, let's hold
hands.
It's neuroscience, people.
It's the prerequisite for allthe other work.

(14:12):
That was step number one.
Step number two, that actuallyworks.
And I have seen this transformteams is naming the pressure out
loud.
There is something that happensin the nervous system when a
human being has their experienceaccurately named and witnessed.

(14:35):
The threat signal softensbecause the brain no longer has
to work as hard to manage theunexpressed.
When leaders sit with theirmanagers and say, not I know
you're all under a lot ofpressure and we need to push
through, thinking this ismotivation and inspiration,

(15:00):
actually, they are demotivatingthem.
They are increasing theirdysregulation and their
misalignment.
But you rather say, I see whatyou are carrying right now.
This is objectively a lot.
And I'm not here to tell you toperform better.

(15:20):
I'm here to figure out how wecarry this together.
Something shifts.
This is not warmth, this isneuroscience.
The ventral vagal system righthere in the chest, the part of
the nervous system responsiblefor social engagement and safe

(15:44):
connection activates in responseto accurate attunement.
You cannot manufacture this witha scripted message, but you can
learn to do it genuinely in anauthentic way.
If not, they're gonna know thatit's not authentic.

(16:04):
Third, look at what you areasking managers to hold.
I mean, literally, audit theload that they have.
14 concurrent changes is not amanagement problem.
It's a design problem.
HR leaders have more influenceover this than they sometimes

(16:27):
realize.
What is not negotiable rightnow?
What is being asked of managersthat could be held at another
level?
Where is the organization itselfcreating the pressure?
Again, I work with differentframeworks, and this for this
specific one, I work with aframework specifically designed

(16:50):
for people-focusedinterventions, human-centered
leadership, human-centered AI.
This is the core of who I am.
That framework is called CARES,C-A-R-E-S.
And one of the things it asks isthis are our systems, our
processes, our demands built inways that actually support human

(17:14):
capacity, or are we designingfor throwput and hoping the
humans can keep up?
They will catch up, right?
No, they don't.
Because the answers to thatquestion are often the
difference between anorganization that retains its
best people and one that quietlyloses them.

(17:38):
I want to tell you aboutsomething I saw in a client
engagement.
I'm going to protect thedetails, but the pattern is
real.
There was a manager, 12 years inthe company, outstanding track
record.
And over the course of abouteight months, he went from being
one of the most trusted leaderson his floor to someone his team

(18:03):
quietly started working around.
Not because he changed, butbecause the environment changed
around him and no one gave himthe tools to protect it or to
process it.
By the time HR got involved, hewas three weeks from leaving.

(18:23):
And the thing he said in ourfirst session together was, I do
not feel like myself anymore.
I used to know how to do thisjob.
Now I'm second guessingeverything.
I'm second guessing myself, I'msecond guessing my thinking, I'm

(18:45):
second guessing my decisions,and I'm second guessing my
actions.
This is not a confidenceproblem.
This is a nervous systemproblem.
And when we addressed it at thatlevel, when we worked with the
actual physiology of what washappening, he came back fully.

(19:10):
He is still with thatorganization, still leading.
And his team's engagement scoreswent up over the next quarter.
That is what is possible whenyou address this at the right
level.
So where does this leave you?
If you are an HR leaderlistening to this, I want you to

(19:32):
think that about one manager onyour team right now, one person
who has been performing at ahigh level, who you have noticed
changing in ways you cannot putyour fingers on or you cannot
fully explain.
That person may not need anothertraining.

(19:53):
They may need someone toaccurately name what they are
carrying and offer a differentkind of support.
If you want to understand whatregulated leadership actually
looks like in practice and howto build the conditions for it
in your organization, I do ano-pitch leadership clarity

(20:16):
call.
30 minutes, just you and me.
We look at what is actuallyhappening in your leadership
layer, what the nervous systemscience says about it.
The link is below in thedescription, the description
notes.
You can just schedule it there,30 minutes.

(20:38):
Leadership does not fail.
Nervous systems do.
And it's time to start buildingorganizations that understand
the difference.
I'm Sahara Andradi.
This is AI Cafe ConversationPodcast.
Thank you for being here.

(20:59):
This was our Wednesday long formpodcast.
Before I leave, I always sayshow me some love.
Save, share, subscribe, leave mea comment, leave me a review.
It really helps us and thank youfor making us on the top 2%
global podcast.
We are unique in the way wepresent neuroscience, AI, and

(21:22):
leadership together in ahuman-centered AI and
human-centered leadershipmanner.
Leadership does not fail.
Nervous systems do.
Till I see you next Friday forour Forbes article like short
podcast.
Peace out.

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Why Are Middle Managers Breaking Right Now? | Workplace AI| AI for Executives

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