With a key role in moldmaking companies, middle management, by proximity and communication with their teams, are those who can develop processes of change crucial for business growth.

The changes that the world has undergone since 2019, with the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine, to highlight that all the instability that is being experienced today must have, on the part of companies, responses that ensure trust and well-being to people. The role of middle management is, therefore, fundamental, since it facilitates change.

Among other issues, it is up to these leaders to prepare and transmit to the teams the adaptation process for change, and they should have as a priority a human and community-centered work environment. They must also be able to recognize the impact of skills on the growth of wealth production capacity, defining priorities, investing in training people and preparing them for a disruptive future.

This is achieved by promoting team engagement and healthy work environments. But the middle management role has to be aligned with the top of the organization, so that it can guide the teams around the priorities. In other words, a middle management is squeezed between the top and the bottom of the organization, in a kind of 'hamburger effect', not always easy to manage.

It is essential, from the beginning, the alignment of these supervisors with the management of the company. If something is not defined, it is difficult to create progress, innovation, and continuous improvement, and as such, it also hinders the process of defining directions and priorities. Therefore, it is important to have clear objectives in the companies to get the whole team aligned, and the team can help the management in this path of innovation, because it is important that it is not only the management that thinks.

You don't have to be a good technician and know everything to be a team leader. Leadership "is about understanding who is around you, being aligned with the company and the team, setting the pace, and moving forward. That's why it's crucial to take the time to get to know people.

However, a good technician is not always a good leader. Companies in the moldmaking industry are, in their majority, of a size and projects that were born from a single person and, in general, never had middle management. And if, at a certain moment, they are created, it means that the company has grown in dimension and this growth has to be accompanied by maturity, otherwise the role of that leadership will not be properly valued and the whole process will fall apart.

The topic of middle management was under discussion in the Talentum Program that, created by CEFAMOL, seeks to draw attention to the themes of organizational innovation and people management in Portuguese moldmaking companies.