Leading from the Middle: Power, Reality, and the Courage to Work Together

Now that we are well into February, my summer holiday feels like a long time ago. What has stayed with me, though, is the boost of optimism I felt in the week I returned from the beach to the leadership education and development work we do at NIODA. This came from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, which stood out as something rare amid the noisy chaos of the disturbing and dispiriting geopolitical events of recent months. As I’ve been re-engaging with a wider circle of friends and colleagues, I’ve found that many are still talking about it.

In naming the breakdown of the rules-based international order, Carney did something that often proves difficult for leaders: he articulated what is really going on, without nostalgia or denial, and invited others to respond from that reality rather than from wish or habit. And unlike political leaders who retreat or recalibrate in the face of criticism or threatened consequence, he held his position, later confirming his principled stance in a conversation with the US President.

I call that courageous leadership.

I found Carney’s argument about the underutilised strength of middle powers particularly compelling. In a world no longer anchored by a predictable centre of global authority, he suggested that middle powers cannot simply rely on past arrangements, but must work together to shape what comes next. Nations like Canada, Australia, and others may have more influence than they sometimes recognise; not by acting alone, but by forming alliances and shaping collective responses. The alternative, he implied, is fragmentation, isolation, or passive compliance with forces that do not necessarily serve the common good.

I was struck by how closely the dynamics of “middle power” mirror what we see play out every day in organisational life.

The Middle Manager's Dilemma

At NIODA, in our teaching, research, and consulting work, we regularly encounter leaders occupying the middle of systems. Leaders in the middle live with competing demands: managing up, delivering outcomes, translating strategy, and supporting their teams. They are often closest to the complexity of organisational life, yet feel least empowered to influence it. From my own time as a middle manager in a statutory authority in the Victorian public sector, I know how it can feel as though organisational power sits elsewhere, concentrated at the top, while those in the middle absorb pressure and reconcile competing expectations and feeling like there’s little opportunity to shape the broader direction.

We observe this dynamic in real time in one of the experiential exercises we run in our classes and client workshops. We create a temporary organisation and randomly assign roles within a hierarchy — CEO, middle managers, and workers — with a task to undertake. The simulation runs for less than an hour, yet it consistently reveals compelling assumptions bubbling beneath the surface as people take up roles and attempt to work together. This kind of experiential learning — where theory meets live organisational dynamics — is central to the teaching and consulting that we do at NIODA..

Most often, those in the middle manager roles in the temporary organisation orient their attention vertically: upwards to the CEO and downwards to the workers. They work hard to interpret the CEO’s expectations and to manage delivery from the workers. Their role-taking exhibits integrity, respect, and care, and many overtly seek to balance outcomes with the well-being of the whole workforce. Yes, it is only 50 minutes, but the consistency of this approach is noteworthy.

What is often missing is lateral engagement.

Middle managers in these simulated roles rarely pause to confer with one another, share intelligence, form agreements about how the work will be done, or build alliances that could strengthen their collective position. The opportunity to act together is there, but it often goes unused.

This exercise is based on Barry Oshry’s work, and his insights into the power inherent in different roles within a hierarchy help explain the missed opportunity for those in the middle. Oshry points to the middles’ positioning as creating the potential to act as the connective tissue of the system: integrating information, coordinating action, and strengthening the organisation’s capacity to respond to its environment. However, as the experiential exercise repeatedly demonstrates, that potential can easily be lost in the urgency of the task and the pressure to respond to the vertical demands of roles above and below. As in real-life organisations, the pressures of middle roles can lead to habit and anxiety, pulling leaders into isolation, competition, or compliance.

Recognising Collective Agency

This is where Carney’s speech resonates beyond geopolitics. His call for middle powers to work together is not simply a strategic proposal; it is a reframing of identity and possibility. It invites those in the middle to recognise their collective agency and to take responsibility for using it.

Part of this is reconsidering how power actually operates. The idea of eco-leadership, developed by Simon Western, reframes leadership as a distributed, systemic, and ethical process rather than the actions of a single heroic individual, gives language to the lived reality that influence moves through networks, relationships, and shared work as much as through formal authority. Power is generated through connection and coordination, not solely through position. Seeing these networks — and the nodes of influence within them — can clarify where collaboration and relational work matter most.

We see echoes of this more networked approach in organisations moving away from command-and-control models and developing flatter, more distributed ways of working; not always smoothly, and not without friction. Some are redesigning structures to reduce layers of management; others are creating cross-functional teams with greater autonomy; still others are encouraging leadership to emerge through expertise and followership rather than formal authority. These efforts do not eliminate hierarchy altogether, nor do they resolve the tensions inherent in power and accountability. Informal hierarchies still emerge, accountability can blur, and coordination can become more complex.

Yet these ways of working recognise something essential: in complex systems, no single role or position holds all the answers. Leadership is less about control and more about enabling movement, sense-making, and cooperation across the whole.

Seen this way, the challenge facing middle managers, and middle powers, is not simply to assert themselves within existing hierarchies, but to cultivate the conditions for working together differently. Hierarchies are unlikely to disappear altogether. In many contexts, they provide needed structure and containment. The challenge is not to dismantle hierarchy, but to prevent it from becoming rigid or isolating. The real question is how power is exercised within and across hierarchical levels, and whether those in the middle recognise the collective agency available to them.

This requires curiosity: the capacity to reflect on what is really happening in organisational and wider systems, including the emotional and relational forces at play and the ways power is exercised. It requires courage: the willingness to face uncomfortable realities rather than retreat into familiar scripts. And it requires commitment: staying with the work when collaboration becomes slower, messier, and less immediately rewarding than acting alone.

Carney’s speech reminds us that leadership is not only about having answers, but about naming reality and inviting others into a different way of engaging with it. For middle powers — and for middle managers — the challenge and opportunity may be the same: to recognise the strength that comes not from standing alone, but from working together from a clear values base and a willingness to stay with the work.

Ready to Lead from the Middle?

If the patterns described here resonate with you and you’d value a conversation about how NIODA might help you navigate the middle of your organisation, Book a 30 minute discovery call to explore how we can work with you.

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