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Managing from the Middle

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Hospital Medicine
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Abstract

A middle manager is an employee who reports to executive leaders who make the strategic decisions which shape the organization. However, the middle manager is also directly in charge of the front-line staff who do the work. In this chapter, we explore the unique role of hospitalist middle managers having to report to multiple stakeholders but also being skilled with the emotional intelligence to make higher level decisions actionable for front-line staff. We discuss challenges of middle managers which come with the territory of being the messenger and rarely the decision maker, having to report to multiple stakeholders with potentially different visions and being the one to receive the negative back-lash from leadership decisions that go wrong. We also discuss ways to leverage one’s role as a middle manager for success including taking more chances at decision making, networking with other middle managers and using one’s unique ability to understand the day-to-day work of employees, to leverage career advancement.

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Correspondence to Ada Ibe Offurum .

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Offurum, A.I. (2017). Managing from the Middle. In: Habicht, R., Gulati, M. (eds) Hospital Medicine. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49092-2_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49092-2_18

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-49090-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-49092-2

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