For the past few years, my colleagues and I have been working with an organization to explore how they develop leaders at different levels. We began with the executive team, helping them clarify their purpose as a team and the unique contribution they needed to make. This involved shifting their focus from leading in the organization and managing its operations and functions to leading as leaders of the organization, setting its direction, and holding its overall accountability. As we turned our attention to the organization’s middle managers/leaders, a contrasting challenge emerged. While the executive team could clearly define their purpose and role, the middle managers/ leaders struggled to do so.

Many in this group had risen through the organization, progressing from individual contributors to team members, and then to team managers/leaders. Promotions were often based on their technical expertise, but now, as middle managers/leaders, they found themselves navigating a complex space between management and leadership. We noticed that at times they referred to themselves or each other as middle managers and sometimes as middle leaders highlighting this complex role definition even further. Balancing these demands, understanding their unique contribution, and operating effectively in the “middle” was far from straightforward.

Middle managers frequently move between systems, shifting hats as leaders, managers, or collaborators.

To address this challenge, we drew on a model developed by John Bazalgette and his colleagues at the Grubb Institute the Transforming Experience Framework (TEF). Having worked with the model for several years with John and others at the Grubb Institute, I knew it was an invaluable tool for supporting clients in finding, making, and taking up their roles in organizations.

The TEF was developed through years of working with organizations and places the concept of role at its core. It is designed to help individuals gain clarity on their role and their unique contribution to their team or organization. What I find particularly valuable about this model is its integrated nature, orienting around both purpose and role. It sheds light on an area that is often opaque, offering a structured way to navigate this complexity At the heart of the model are three interconnected components person, system, and context which overlap at the central point of the role. Together, they form a dynamic framework that highlights the factors influencing how we find, make, and take up our role and, crucially, why we take it up.

Understanding the TEF

Person
The first component, the person, acknowledges that we bring our “person” to work. Our values, assumptions, desires, and life experiences shape how we engage in our roles. This is an essential insight because it draws attention to the mindset we carry into the workplace. Edgar Schein’s iceberg model illustrates this well, showing how much of what influences our behavior assumptions, and values sit“below the waterline,” unseen but powerful.

In organizations, we often hear opposing ideas: Leave yourself at the door” versus “Bring your full self to work.” The TEF offers a middle ground. It recognizes that while we bring ourselves—our values and beliefs, assumptions, skills, and experiences to work, how we choose to show up is also influenced by the other two components: system and context.

Middle Managers often act as the linchpin between executive priorities and the needs of teams who deliver on those priorities.

System
The second component, system, refers to the social systems we are part of. For many, our first experience of social systems often comes from family or community, where we learn to navigate spoken and unspoken rules. Organizations are another form of the social system, with their cultural norms, values, and behaviors Within these larger systems, there are often multiple subsystems, such as departments, teams, or hierarchical levels, each with unique cultures and expectations.

For middle managers, this complexity is particularly pronounced. They frequently straddle multiple systems, each with its boundaries and norms. A key part of the TEF is developing an awareness of which system you are operating in at any given moment and understanding its boundaries. This can be especially fluid for middle managers, who must navigate between roles such as managing, leading their teams, and collaborating with peers.

The system component acknowledges that middle managers operate within complex organizational ecosystems.

Context
The third component, context, refers to the external factors shaping the system. For instance, a sales department in a financial services company operates within the broader context of the financial industry, shaped by regulations, market trends, and competitive pressures. These contextual factors influence the system’s demands and, in turn, how an individual takes up their role within it.

Bringing It Together
The TEF brings these three components person, system, and context together to offer a nuanced understanding of the role. It acknowledges the interplay between our values and experiences, the systems we are part of, and the external context influencing them.

But the model goes further. It doesn’t just explore how we take up our role; it also addresses why. The TEF emphasizes that our role is ultimately in service of the system’s purpose. What this means, is that as we consider our role we need to orientate ourselves to the purpose of the particular system we are in. This focus on purpose makes the framework particularly valuable for middle managers.

The classic story of the cleaner at NASA who saw their role as “helping to put a man on the moon” illustrates the power of creating a clear “line of sight” between role and organizational purpose.

For middle managers, clarity on purpose is often harder to achieve than for executives. While executive teams typically operate within a well-defined system, middle managers frequently move between systems, shifting hats as leaders, managers, or collaborators. To take up their roles effectively, they must continually ask: Which system am I representing at this moment? What is the purpose of this system? Without this clarity, it becomes difficult to orient their role and navigate the complexities of the middle space.

Applying TEF to Middle Managers
Middle Managers often act as the linchpin between executive priorities and the needs of teams and staff who deliver on those priorities. This asks middle leaders to navigate the needs of executives, their teams, and peers putting additional pressure on role clarity and understanding of which purpose they are working The TEF helps them to navigate these complexities in the following ways.

High performance is about ‘what’ you deliver, and also ‘how’ you deliver.

The “Person” Component: Self-Awareness in Role Clarity

The person component of the TEF reminds us that middle managers bring their values, assumptions, and past experiences into their work. These personal factors shape their approach to leadership and decision-making. However, the demands of middle management require balancing these personal drivers with the expectations of others. Role clarity, enhanced through self-reflection and feedback, helps managers manage this balance effectively. The TEF encourages middle managers to surface these influences and consciously align them with organizational goals. As leaders of others, it also stresses the importance of being aware of what motivates others, and what their values and assumptions are. Knowing this enables the middle manager to build relationships, and understand what motivates team members and what culture will enable their teams to thrive. Understanding the person is also key to supporting their staff to build resilience and enhance their well-being.

The “System” Component: Navigating Social Systems

The system component acknowledges that middle managers operate within complex organizational ecosystems. These include not only the overarching company culture but also the subcultures of teams, departments, and levels. Middle managers must navigate these systems while managing relationships both upwards and downwards.

TEF provides a way to map these systems, understand their boundaries, and identify the cultural norms at play, enabling managers to adapt their behavior to fit different contexts. With the clear focus on system purpose, it also forces middle managers to seek out and clarify what the purpose of the system is, a question that is often left unexplored. It encourages middle managers to have the right conversations with the right people to create alignment and clarity on what purpose they are working This also helps to support their leadership of others and enables others to get clarity of their role in service of the 'system ' purpose.

The “Context” Component: Responding to External and Internal Drivers

Finally, the TEF emphasizes the importance of understanding the external drivers and their impact on the systems in which managers operate. By developing systemic thinking and aligning their actions with contextual demands, middle managers can better bridge the gap between strategic priorities and operational realities. Bringing in the component of context also encourages middle managers to look up and out, see the bigger picture, and understand the interdependencies within the organization.

In practice, the TEF offers middle managers a roadmap and a way of understanding and clarifying their role. When I work with clients, we often apply it in the following ways:

• Map the systems Take time to map the various systems that they interact with daily and identify what the key purpose is of each of these systems. Also, take time to understand the cultural norms within the systems. For example, we worked with a group of middle managers in a healthcare organization to map the systems they navigated daily. Within the team, their focus was on meeting departmental targets, such as driving sales and revenue. When collaborating with other middle managers across the organization, their role shifted to aligning market insights with the organization’s broader purpose of maximizing customer satisfaction. In community health meetings, they represented the organization, prioritizing collaboration and relationship-building. Seeing the various systems and the purpose of those systems, enabled the middle managers to find, make, and take up their roles with clarity.

• Engage in team and organizational conversations having taken time to map the systems and identify the purpose of the systems, we encourage middle managers to engage in team and organizational conversations to ensure clarity and alignment of purpose and role. This helps to create a connection of expectations across the organizational hierarchy and within and across teams.

• Looking in and looking out in mapping the various systems, we then encourage middle managers to notice what falls into the context, both from within the organization and further outside the organization. This focus on context, means that middle managers are lifting their eyes up and out to see what lies beyond the boundary of the system they are in. For example, when the middle managers are sitting in the departmental system, the organizational purpose and priorities or industrial standards fall into the context. This is a reminder to look beyond their departmental boundaries when setting work tasks to keep in mind the wider context.

• Enrol those around you role clarity is not just an individual responsibility but also a system/ organizational one. Enrolling other leaders in this way of thinking strengthens team cohesion and organizational effectiveness.

• Cultivating a reflective practice take time to reflect on what is influencing your leadership and management. What values are driving your behavior Assumptions are key drivers to how we behave. Bringing reflection to notice and naming your own and others' assumptions is key. The more we can become aware of which assumptions we need to challenge as they no longer serve us, or hold lighter. By this, we mean not to hold onto them so tightly as “truths”, but to give space for the possibility of their being another assumption that can be more helpful to hold. The more aware you are of what is driving your practice, and the more curious you can get about what is driving others practice, the more you can step into your leadership with intention and awareness.

Extending the Purpose of Role Clarity

In our experience, the organizations that are most effective and focused are those where the organizational purpose is explicitly and continually linked to role purpose. This means that employees at all levels understand not only what their role is required to deliver, but also why it matters within the broader organizational mission. For instance, the classic story of the cleaner at NASA who saw their role as “helping to put a man on the moon” illustrates the power of creating a clear “line of sight” between role and organizational purpose.

To take this alignment to the next level, organizations need to articulate not just what a role must achieve but how the role should be performed. In doing this attention is brought not only to the task and output, but the relationship or dynamic and outcome the organization is seeking from the individual. This requires defining, by role and by level:

• What good outcomes look like: Clarity on the tangible deliverables and results expected from the role.
• What good leadership behavior looks like clear descriptions of the behaviors and values that support those outcomes.

In our experience, this clarity can be rigorously reinforced through mechanisms such as performance management, talent development, and even remuneration strategies. For example, we worked with an organization, where individuals are annually appraised not only on what they deliver but also on how they behave as leaders, mamanagersnd team members.

This approach encourages individuals to evidence their performance, fostering both accountability and reflection. It shines the light on the idea that “high performance” is about what you deliver, along with how you deliver. This also encourages a different kind of conversation and culture in the organization. It asks managers to have challenging conversations (or what we call the essential conversations) that face questions of behavior engagement with others when they you their role in the organization. We have noticed that organizations that have this built into their appraisal system and lean into these essential conversations tend to have healthier cultures. All of this helps to foster and reinforce the importance of purpose-driven management and leadership.

As organizations continue to navigate complexity and change, middle managers remain vital to bridging strategy and execution and leading to embedding purpose-led role clarity. By embracing frameworks like the TEF, they can gain clarity and confidence in their roles, which the multiple systems and contexts they encounter. This clarity enables them to act with greater intentionality, aligning their contributions with the organization’s purpose while supporting their teams to do the same.

Moreover, as middle managers cultivate this understanding, they foster stronger connections within and across teams, building resilience and cohesion that ripple throughout the organization. Their ability to map and navigate systems, understand contextual drivers, and engage in purposeful leadership becomes a catalyst for organizational agility and sustained success.

The question that remains is this: how can organizations ensure that middle managers are not just supported but empowered to find, make, and take up their roles fully? By embedding frameworks like the TEF into leadership development strategies, organizations can create environments where middle managers thrive, driving not only their growth but also the broader mission and purpose of the organization.