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Listen to this week’s podcast episode, Ep.234: Personal Development, Self Efficacy and the Future of Work; The Lives of Unseen Managers, with Mickey Fitch-Collins, click here to listen now.

Leadership conversations often focus on those at the top of organisations. We talk about chief executives, founders, senior leadership teams, and strategic decision-makers. We analyse their choices, study their habits, ask questions about what they’ve learned and debate their vision for the future.

Yet in most organisations the day-to-day experience of leadership happens somewhere else entirely. The grassroots, coal-face, rubber-hitting road of leadership isn’t in boardrooms or executive suites or corner offices (other clichés also available!). It’s where the work is actually happening, the rivets are getting riveted, nails hammered, coffees served, customers helped, service delivered, documents written… etc.

It happens in team meetings, project discussions, performance conversations, at the desk or in the mini-kitchen, in the one-to-ones and the problem-solving sessions. It happens through managers and supervisors who translate strategy into action, support their teams through challenges, are there for their people and carry responsibility or stress from multiple directions at once.

In this week's episode of Leading with Integrity, I spoke with Dr Mickey Fitch-Collins, Human Skills Facilitator, leadership development specialist, podcast host, and AI-forward learning strategist at Learnit.

Our conversation covered a wide range of topics, including self-efficacy, burnout, workplace learning, the future of work, artificial intelligence and organisational culture. Yet running through all of these subjects was a common thread: the human experience of work, particularly for middle managers who often find themselves caught between the ‘higher-up bosses’ expectations and the realities of leading actual people.

What emerged was a thoughtful discussion about confidence, capability, growth and why many organisations may underestimate the importance of the very people who hold everything together.

I particularly enjoyed chatting about what Mickey describes as the often overlooked experience of middle managers. Having researched the subject extensively during her doctoral work, as well as living it herself, she spoke passionately about the unique pressures these leaders face. Positioned between senior leadership and frontline employees, they’re frequently expected to implement decisions they had little involvement in creating (despite being best placed to do so) while simultaneously supporting the people affected by those decisions.

It’s a role that can feel isolating; middle managers are often accountable for outcomes without having meaningful influence over the decisions that shape them. They inherit strategic objectives, operational constraints, budget limitations, grand plans and organisational changes, then become responsible for making all of those things work in practice.

At the same time, many receive surprisingly little support themselves. There’s a vicious combination of huge expectations, diminished agency and heightened stress that in turn leads to well established challenges for these managers like burnout or imposter experience. And at the basic level, it’s incredibly difficult to create an engaged, bought-in team when you yourself are struggling, lack the information to buy-in and aren’t really able to properly engage either.

As Mickey observed, organisations frequently assume that because someone has reached a management position, they no longer require coaching, mentoring, or development. The expectation becomes "you've got this, your title says so" rather than "how can we help you succeed?" That assumption leaves managers feeling isolated, unsupported and increasingly vulnerable to burnout.

The irony is that these managers often have the clearest view of what’s actually happening inside the organisation. They understand customer frustrations, team challenges, operational bottlenecks and resource constraints because they encounter them every day. They sit close enough to the work to see reality clearly, yet are often excluded from conversations about future direction.

As organisations continue experimenting with flatter structures and removing layers of management, Mickey questioned whether some businesses may be underestimating the value these leaders provide. The consequences of those decisions may not become fully apparent for several years, but there is a growing risk that organisations could discover they have removed a crucial source of support, communication and organisational insight in the process. And that’s before we even mention AI…

Put simply, self-efficacy is the belief that you can successfully do the thing in front of you. It’s not quite the same as confidence and that distinction became another of the most interesting parts of the discussion.

Confidence is often something we observe externally, we describe people as confident because of how they present themselves, how they speak, how others react to them or how they behave in a particular situation. Self-efficacy operates differently, it’s internal, it’s the belief that whatever challenge appears, you possess the ability to learn, adapt and find a way through it.

Workplaces frequently reward displays of confidence while paying less attention to whether people genuinely believe they can succeed or are equipped with the skills and knowledge to do so, which makes this distinction quite an important one. Especially in the context of leader-managers (because who hasn’t worked for one with an exaggerated sense of confidence but little in the way of competence, self awareness or self-efficacy… i.e. the ability to actually lead and manage..?).

Mickey argued that self-efficacy is something leaders can actively develop. Every new skill learned, every challenge overcome, every capability strengthened, every tough experience survived expands what she described as a personal tool-belt. Over time, people build a broader range of options for handling problems, making decisions, responding to uncertainty and leading.

These days, uncertainty feels like the only constant, leaders are rarely presented with situations where all the answers are obvious. More often, they are required to make decisions with incomplete information and guide others through ambiguity. The belief that you can handle those situations doesn’t come from pretending to have every answer. What matters is trusting your people and your ability to learn, adapt and solve problems when the need arises. Or as an old mentor of mine would’ve said: adapt and overcome.

We also explored the relationship between personal development and burnout, a connection that I hadn’t necessarily made before, so this was the thing I learned today! At first glance, these topics might appear unrelated. Personal development is often viewed as a pathway to promotion or career progression, better pay, even an ‘easier life’… while burnout is usually discussed as a well-being issue, compounded stress (or, if I’m being slightly unfair: a red flag of bad leadership).

However, Mickey connects development and burnout in a way that offers a different perspective. One thing we know about burnout is it rarely arrives suddenly. It develops gradually through a series of small compromises over time, like boundaries becoming weaker, working hours longer, accumulating additional responsibilities. And as pressure increases as a result, eventually people find themselves operating in a state of constant reaction rather than intentional action.

Personal development, in Mickey's view, can act as one of the mechanisms that interrupts that process.

As people build skills, frameworks, habits, learn new things and build greater self-awareness, they become better equipped to handle the demands placed upon them. Learning how to prioritise effectively, set boundaries, communicate expectations, manage time or even say ‘no’ in the right way creates a greater sense of agency. Instead of feeling trapped by circumstances, people begin to see options.

Which can be a powerful, even transformative, shift from helplessness to capability. Mickey explains really well how personal development is most valuable when it’s practical and immediately useful. It should help people solve real problems, improve how you work and strengthen your belief that you can successfully navigate challenges.

An increasingly relevant challenge in modern workplaces is our tendency to confuse activity with impact. “I’m working the hardest of everyone because there’s not even 5 minutes to spare in my meeting schedule each week.” Ok… great… but when are you doing any work? (I know, I know, good meetings *are* work, but you know where I’m coming from, I think!)

Many organisations still operate within cultures where busy-ness is treated as evidence of value. Full calendars, back-to-back meetings, constant activity, that semi-breathlessness of looking busy and talking about how hectic ALL your days are… it creates the appearance of productivity (I would argue only to those who don’t think about it too hard, but perhaps I’m being unfair), most likely though, in these kinds of culture and company, that’s all it is, the appearance of productivity, meanwhile the actual, meaningful outcomes remain unclear, undefined, unachievable, un-visible...

Mickey challenged the underlying assumption directly: Being busy and creating value aren’t necessarily the same thing. In fact, they can sometimes (I say nearly always!) be very different things. The real question isn’t how much activity someone generates but whether that activity contributes to meaningful outcomes.

This is incredibly relevant as artificial intelligence continues to change how work gets done and, as Mickey pointed out, speed is becoming less of a differentiator because technology increasingly allows everyone to work faster. The more important questions concern judgement, creativity, decision-making, communication, impact and the ability to solve complex human problems. These are the areas where leaders and organisations will continue to create value regardless of technological change.

At least until we get into the realms of self-aware, emotive AGI. Or Skynet flips the switch.

For leaders, knowing the difference here and acting upon that knowledge requires a shift in thinking. Rather than rewarding visible activity, we need to become clearer about what meaningful outcomes actually look like and ensure our teams understand the difference as well.

Although artificial intelligence surfaced regularly throughout the conversation, Mickey consistently brought the discussion back to human capability. Technology will continue to evolve, our roles will change, expectations will shift, the very nature of work may fundamentally change too.

What remains constant is the need for people to learn, adapt, communicate, build trust and work effectively with one another.

Those skills are often described as "soft skills," but there’s really nothing soft about them. They influence performance, culture, leadership effectiveness and organisational resilience; even the bottom line. They shape how people navigate change and whether they thrive when uncertainty increases.

Perhaps that’s why self-efficacy emerged as such an important idea throughout the episode. The future of work will undoubtedly involve new technologies, new systems and new challenges. Yet the people who navigate that future most successfully are unlikely to be those who know every answer in advance (if that’s even possible). Rather, they’ll be the people who trust their ability to learn what comes next.

This conversation with Mickey offered a valuable reminder that leadership development is ultimately about people. It’s about helping managers feel supported rather than isolated, creating environments where learning continues long after promotion, recognising that confidence and capability aren’t the same thing and it’s about understanding that growth often begins with a simple belief that you can handle what comes next.

Perhaps most importantly, it highlights the need to pay greater attention to the leaders operating in the middle layers of organisations. They are frequently the translators, connectors, problem-solvers, cheerleaders, supporters and advocates who turn strategy into reality and keep the humans engaged.

The future of work will bring plenty of change, new technologies will continue to emerge, organisational structures will evolve, society will move alongside it all and expectations will continue shifting.

Yet the need for capable, supported, confident leaders remains exactly where it has always been: at the centre of how organisations succeed.

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Catch the whole episode now, find the links (or a web-player) here: https://smartlink.ausha.co/leading-with-integrity/ep-234-personal-development-self-efficacy-and-the-future-of-work-the-lives-of-unseen-managers-with-mickey-fitch

If you prefer video then you can watch on YouTube too: https://youtu.be/6lutzeOYy88

Thanks for reading/listening/watching, join us again next week when I’ll be talking leadership, trauma and coaching from manufacturing to non-profit to entrepreneur-life, with guest Kurt Bush.

THANK YOU for reading, for listening, for supporting Leading with Integrity. There’s no show, no newsletter, no future of leadership without each of you.

Be a Leader Not a Boss,

- David

In case you don’t know me that well, I’m David Hatch and I’m here for new managers and first-time founders working in tech or specialist driven teams to help with their leadership skills, so they can become leaders not bosses, lead with integrity, and build happier, higher performing teams, more effective organisations, and, ultimately: successful teams.

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