The Invisible Pressure of the Middle
What Mental Health Awareness Month Has to Do with the Future of Leadership
May is Mental Health Awareness Month.
And if we’re going to talk about mental health at work, we need to talk about the quiet crisis facing women in middle management.
Because while the pressure of leading from the middle is already immense—carrying the weight of strategy from above and the needs of teams below—women in these roles face an even more complex landscape:
The emotional labor of managing people and perceptions
The constant pressure to prove value in systems that weren’t built for them
The exhaustion of navigating leadership without clear authority or support
Recently, Harvard Business Review published a sharp piece asking the question many have been quietly thinking:
Is middle management becoming obsolete?
With AI automating more and more, and companies trimming layers in the name of innovation, the role has been rumored to be on the brink of extinction. But the article’s conclusion was clear:
Middle management isn’t dying—but what we ask of it must radically change.
According to Harvard professors Raffaella Sadun and Jorge Tamayo, the future of this role isn’t in task management—it’s in transformation. They write that middle managers should be:
Guiding employees through skill transitions
Facilitating collaboration across silos
Integrating new technologies into daily operations
Yet too many women in these roles are still being asked to:
Manage what should be automated
Absorb decisions they didn’t help shape
Carry teams emotionally, logistically, and strategically—without the structural authority to lead
It’s no surprise that women in middle management report some of the highest levels of burnout, emotional fatigue, and disengagement in today’s workforce.
And it’s not just about workload—it’s about misalignment.
At The Nourished Leader, we teach this truth:
A nourished leader is a leader who has the capacity to influence change.
But influence doesn’t grow in environments that constantly extract and rarely replenish.
We cannot expect transformation from leaders who are barely surviving.
If you’re a woman in middle management—or leading women who are—this HBR article is essential reading.
It doesn’t just explore the pressures of the role. It offers a vision for what the future could look like—if we let go of outdated expectations and start investing in aligned leadership.
Read the article:
With clarity,
Natalie
Founder, The Nourished Leader