How do you maintain integrity when the final decision isn’t yours to make? This question strikes at the heart of middle management’s greatest challenge – being caught between your team’s needs and organisational decisions beyond your influence.
I’ve wrestled with this tension throughout my leadership journey, and I’ve seen countless managers struggle with the same dilemma. They want to fight for their people, but they worry about making promises they can’t keep or appearing powerless to their teams. The result is often either overcautious silence or well-intentioned commitments that later become sources of disappointment and eroded trust.
Let’s dive deeper into the topic of ‘how to maintain integrity as a middle manager’…
The real problem: knowing how to use your voice as a manager
The challenge isn’t that you lack control over outcomes – it’s that many managers misunderstand what integrity requires in these situations. Too often, we confuse integrity with guaranteed results, when in reality, integrity is about being genuine, accountable, and consistent within the scope of influence we actually have.
When you shy away from advocating for your team because you can’t guarantee success, you’re actually compromising your integrity by failing to use your voice and position on behalf of the team. Equally, when you make promises about outcomes you can’t control, you’re setting yourself up for failure. And it’s this small promise that damages trust and credibility in the long term.
It’s all about trust, and avoiding rejection
Your team’s trust depends not on your ability to win every battle, but on your willingness to fight the battles that matter. Teams are looking for a manager who will support them, have their back and be their voice. Your honesty about the process and results when you’re being that voice is key to success.
When they don’t feel supported, they’ll stop bringing important concerns to you, creating an information vacuum that hurts both their engagement and your effectiveness as a manager. They may start to see you as either unwilling to support them or dishonest about the organisational realities – the cynicism and/or scepticism kicks in.
Research consistently shows that employees value leaders who support for them, even when it doesn’t always have the outcome everyone wanted. What they can’t tolerate is leaders who don’t try or who aren’t transparent about their efforts. When they feel unsupported they reject you as a leader and that’s when we see people leaving – something we don’t want!
How to be a middle manager with integrity
There are five things for you to think about if you’re struggling being in the middle:
Get the foundation right with transparency and honesty
Keeping your word, being genuine and being accountable for them form the foundation of integrity. You also need to be honest, transparent and reliable if you want your team to trust you.
Share the specific actions you’re taking on behalf of your team, who you’re speaking with and when, what responses you’re getting (within appropriate boundaries), and what obstacles you’re coming across.
There’s no reason you cannot discuss how decisions were made, why they were made, and provide space for people to understand more about the process. Your team deserves to know that their concerns are being heard and acted upon, even when confidentiality prevents you from sharing every detail.
Keep your word about the process, and focus less on the outcomes
Since integrity centres on doing what you say you will do, shift your commitments from outcomes you can’t control to processes you can manage.
Instead of promising results, commit to specific actions: “I will raise this in next week’s leadership meeting,” “I will follow up on this quarterly,” or “I will keep you informed of any updates.”
These are promises you can keep and keep you must. This approach maintains your credibility while setting appropriate expectations about your role and influence in the changes that are going on in the wider organisation.
Go broader than your own team and use your network
Being capable as a manager includes knowing how to navigate tricky organisational politics, hierarchies, influencers, and key players. Demonstrate integrity by strategically timing your conversations here, building alliances with others, understanding the wider context that influences decisions, and presenting compelling cases rather than just passing along requests.
This helps you add broader context for the conversations with your team and helps you use your position and relationships to create the best possible outcomes for your team.
When you can’t deliver, own it
When efforts don’t succeed, the vulnerable approach is to own that reality honestly rather than making excuses or blaming “the organisation” or “the leadership team.” You might say something like: “I discussed this in three separate meetings and here’s what I learned about why it’s not possible right now. I’m disappointed too, and here’s what I think our options are moving forward.”
This kind of honest communication builds trust even in the face of disappointment because it demonstrates that you’re genuinely invested in your team’s concerns and willing to be transparent about limitations. You’re also looking forward with solutions which is important to keep the team moving so they don’t get stuck or disengaged.
Maintain a safe space for the team
Ensure your team knows that bringing concerns to you won’t result in punishment or dismissal, even when you can’t fix everything. Make it clear that you value their input regardless of whether you can act on it. This ongoing commitment to psychological safety ensures that important issues continue to surface and that your team feels heard and supported.
Doing this with the other four things will go a long way to making sure your team trust and follow you.
Making middle management work
These five elements create a system of credible leadership that builds trust over time.
When you’re transparent about your efforts, keep process-focused commitments, manage relationships strategically, communicate vulnerably about setbacks, and maintain psychological safety, you create an environment where your team believes you’re genuinely fighting for them, even when you don’t win every battle.
The key insight is that integrity isn’t about having unlimited power – it’s about being genuine, accountable, and consistent within your actual area of influence. Your team will respect this more than false promises or mysterious silence.
If you’re a middle manager who feels stuck in the middle, book an Effective Leadership Call with me so we can chat about what’s happening for you and how we can move things forward.
