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Jun 16, 2026
From Middle Management to Leadership with Monica Thakrar
From Middle Management to Leadership with Monica Thakrar
00:00
24:17
Transcript
0:00
Today we are speaking with Monica Thakrar.
0:02
She is the founder of MTI, an organizational consulting and coaching company focused on leadership training, executive coaching, facilitation, and change management, consulting for government, commercial, and nonprofit clients.
0:18
Her work focuses on developing and enhancing leaders in organizations' performance and results. Welcome, Monica. We're very happy to have you. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here with you guys today. Thank you.
0:27
So my first question is, what's, uh, the biggest shift women experience when they are making that move from the middle of, you know, middle management to, to leadership? Yeah. It's a big shift, right?
0:40
I mean, middle management, we're kind of managing up and down, and there's a lot of transition to go to a senior level position.
0:47
So there's a lot of things to think about when you're moving from that middle management to senior level positions.
0:53
And so I think some of the biggest shifts is really focusing now more on strategy and vision, really moving towards that bigger picture view of how to now focus and lead the team in a way and a direction that feels right for you as the leader.
1:08
And that means you have to do a lot more focus on delegating and moving stuff off your plate, right? And so that means really developing the team even more than maybe you were doing as a mid-level manager.
1:19
Now there might be organizational structural changes that you might need to make, where there's leaders of leaders underneath you instead of everybody reporting directly to you.
1:27
So there might be some organizational structural things to think about, of how to organize your teams better. There's definitely that shift of making sure that you're pushing everything more and more down.
1:37
I see a lot of leaders who are still getting pulled into the day-to-day, and that's a lot of what we work on, is either time management or figuring out things to, to develop their people or push down to their people so that they have more time to think and strategize and vision.
1:52
And that also means influencing and leading in a different way.
1:56
And I think the last thing then is really focusing on those peer relationships, because you're now gonna spend more time influencing and leading at the senior level places, not only leading your people, but now influencing up.
2:08
It reminds me of an article that we referenced a lot at my last company, as 'cause we were grow, we grew very quickly, so our roles changed very rapidly. Yeah.
2:17
And the article I think is called, or definitely says, Learn to Share Your Legos. Mm-hmm. Um, and that's really about delegation. Yeah.
2:25
But especially coming from the startup where, where I was, where you go from a generalist to a specialist to a leader, and it's actually- Yeah...
2:33
something that's harder than most people would think, uh, giving up some of the work that you're, you're used to doing. Yeah.
2:39
It's really hard, 'cause you're really good at it, and that's often why you get, you know, promoted to the next levels.
2:44
And so having to let that piece go and now get the work done through your people is a big transition. So in terms of some practical advice for women who are wanting to make this move in the next six to 12 months- Yeah...
2:57
what would you recommend they start doing? What are some topics to, or conversations to have with your manager to sort of facilitate this move or, or get the wheels rolling?
3:08
Well, first let them know you're interested, right? Mm-hmm. I have a lot of women not even vocalizing that they want the next level and what they're looking for.
3:15
So definitely open up and let your manager know, let people around you know. Secondly, ask for opportunities. Ask for opportunities even in the, the lead-up to shadow your m- manager.
3:26
Go to meetings or bigger strategy meetings with them. I'm coaching a gentleman right now that they're thinking about that could p- possibly be the next CFO of a bank.
3:35
And so we talk a lot about how does he get into the boardrooms?
3:39
How does he get into the higher level position so that even he can see what are they talking about, what questions are they asking, so that he can prepare, even if it's a longer l- timeframe than what you've described here.
3:50
Um, and he's like, "I, I'm just surprised with the questions that they're asking." Right? And so it's letting him be a fly on the wall before he needs to be there.
3:57
And then the third one might be just volunteering, to get into working groups or cross-organizational opportunities to start working around the system that might be different from what you're working in in your current role.
4:09
So it gives you more visibility, more networks, more opportunities to see what's going on in the organization. I love that. I think there's a lot to be said about exposure, even if it's n- not direct responsibility.
4:21
Mm-hmm.
4:21
Understanding, like you're saying, what is important in the conversations in those rooms you haven't been in yet, and then also across the organization where you, you know, may have been focused or siloed in a very specific function, when as you move up, your perspective expands and you have to sort of have a working knowledge of the bigger picture in terms of not just strategy, but also operation.
4:46
So we're talking about this knowing that there are barriers women face that are different from men. We see it in the headlines even recently.
4:55
We're educated, we're working, but we're still facing the same barriers that women have faced for decades in terms of actually getting that promotion, taking that step up.
5:04
I'm curious because you, you have so much exposure and conversations with women in this position. Yeah.
5:09
Can you talk to us a little about the barriers you see that they face and what that looks like and, and how that affects them? Yeah. I wanted to reference a book here, because I saw her speak actually, this author.
5:20
Her name is Sally Helgesen, and she has written a book of, called How Women Rise, and she says that there's 12 common barriers to ha- to, that, in place for women's advancement, and let me just, you know, tell you a few of them.
5:33
Um, you can reference the book for a little bit more, but one is reluctance to claim your achievements, right? We're not as vocal perhaps as our male cou- counterparts on what we've done, what we've achieved.
5:43
The second one is expecting others to spontaneously notice and reward those contributions without us talking about them.
5:49
And as a result, we overvalue just our expertise, not actually the vocalizing of it, and that's the third one that she talks about.
5:54
So a lot of it is we focus so much on the work, we're not out there telling people and promoting ourselves and being out in the mix.
6:01
Some other things that Sally says is that we're building relationships, but we're not ne- necessarily leveraging them, and so this goes back to the networks and how do we leverage those relationships.
6:12
And the next one she also says is we're failing to enlist those allies. So I think those are a lot of the things. We're not being as vocal.
6:19
We're not leaning into not just the networks that we've built, because we're so good at relationships, but asking for the help from the networks. What do we specifically need from them?
6:28
So those are some of the ones I'd focus on. The, the next groups are kind of like our own internal. As women, we try to be perfectionists. We try to... We're people pleasers. We kinda minimize what we do.
6:39
So I think the biggest lessons, I think, on the internal side for women is really just showing and vocalizing who we are and claiming, claiming what we're looking for and what we've done.
6:51
I totally fall into those first two, where I am like, "Shouldn't you just notice [chuckles] the work that I'm doing?"
6:59
And I wonder what you say to people who are uncomfortable, not just doing the work, doing it well, but also telling people about it.
7:09
It taps a little bit into the, uh, internal politics, which is also a realm that I personally was never really comfortable with. Yeah. But it, it becomes a necessary skill to develop. Yeah.
7:24
I used to joke, and I think I still joke with a lot of my managers, because they think politics and like, and networking are dirty words, right? They're like negative connotations.
7:32
And yet it's kind of the thing that allows us to move up in the organization.
7:37
I think two major things are politics, and I always say politics is really knowing what the game is and learning how to play it, because each organization's, their politics are gonna be slightly nuanced, and yet it's so, such an integral part.
7:48
Like politics is really just how is the organization functioning and how are the people maneuvering together, and we just have to be curious.
7:55
We have to be curious on how that organization's working so that we can play it better. Play it, and not in a negative way, but advance in ways that are gonna help support that system to grow and develop.
8:06
So I think if we can remember that we have so much to offer and so much to contribute, how do we let people know that we have those, those skills and, and things to let them know that we can contribute even more?
8:16
It's, um, you know, it's a practice.
8:17
It could just be practicing first with your peers and your colleagues and letting them know, and then maybe pr- promoting in your performance reviews, starting to let your manager know the things that you're doing so that you get more comfortable doing it, because some of it is just going to be through the muscle memory of doing it that we're gonna start getting better.
8:34
And the other thing you mentioned was relationships, and this, this certainly was real in my experience, where I think I neglected to a certain extent developing relationships in a way that I would have, um, be able to create a quorum for myself.
8:50
Because it was, it just is in second nature. It was in second nature. I was very- Yeah... very comfortable building relationships, very highly functional working relationships.
8:59
But when it came to my role being involved at the higher levels, I didn't have the buy-in even though I had the relationships. So I'm curious how you coach people around
9:13
crossing the, the leverage barrier and how, what specifically do you say to do that? Yeah. It's really getting to know them and getting to understand their, where they're coming from.
9:22
So I often say it might not be in the larger groups that you're, you're doing the networking. It might be through the one-on-ones.
9:29
We might be networking in groups, but we need to build those one-on-ones so we start really understanding. They understand us, but we start understanding them.
9:36
We start understanding what's important to them so that we can also offer things that are gonna add value to them, and that's gonna help them want to help you as well. Does that make sense? It's like it's a giver's gain.
9:47
As much as we can give to others is we're gonna be able to ask for and, and receive on the back end of that.
9:53
Ties to, you know, this idea of influence, is that the more that we can, you know, influence others through building those one-on-one relationships, the more that we can then have leverage to then ask them for something as well.
10:04
So it's a giver's gain. I think the more that we can lean in and give when we don't need anything yet, the more later we're gonna be able to receive because we've been able to give so much in the past.
10:16
And so when we are middle managers, when we are junior level people, how do we be proactive? How do we support our leaders?
10:22
How do we know what's important to them so that we are, you know, becoming invaluable to what they're trying to do and how they want to maneuver?
10:29
And how do we, I wanna emphasize this especially for mid- middle managers, build those peer relationships?
10:34
'Cause eventually those peers and you are gonna be the senior leaders, and you guys are the ones gonna, uh, that are going to be influencing the whole system if you get to leadership levels.
10:43
And so that peer level at the middle is so critical in building those relationships not only, but leveraging, helping them get their voices heard in meetings, asking them to have you get your voices heard or whatever support you need.
10:56
The peers can be invaluable in helping to get that leverage as well. I think that's great advice, and it's a little less intimidating as a place to start too. Yeah.
11:04
The people who are your equals or on the same level are easier to develop relationships with, test out that idea of leverage, really helping each other, like, and then you can use that skill in other places.
11:19
Because like you said, it is pr- It, it does take practice. I mean, it certainly- It-... did for me. It does take practice. And- They're not intuitive skills always, right? So these are things to think about.
11:29
And as you're going, I would say find mentors and find sponsors, and I think this is a really critical point for, for everybody, mid managers, men and women.
11:39
But for women, right, we're not always finding those at senior levels. There aren't necessarily always the women there to do that. So how do we even find... Doesn't have to be other women to be our mentors.
11:48
We can find male mentors and sponsors. The idea is as we get somebody that is championing for us, that leverage, we can also ask them to get us leverage with other people in the system or the organization.
11:59
There's a question that is in the back of my mind that, uh, that may have come across your desk, [chuckles] so to speak- Oh... which is, I'm doing these things, and I'm not- Yeah... cracking through.
12:10
What advice or, like, h- how do you sort of evaluate that circumstance for someone where it's, it's not working? It's hard. Um, I mean, I... Sometimes there are structural things going on in systems, right?
12:23
And so I've had a...
12:24
I remember she was a woman of color, and she was doing a lot of these things, and the system itself was not a place that was the You know, opening up work, doors were opening up for her for quite a long time.
12:36
And, and we talked a lot about this, right? There are, there are, can be biases, there can be structural things.
12:41
There, you know, so often systems are led by men where people naturally, um, think and assume the male way of operating is the norm for senior leaders.
12:52
And so I wanna validate that all of these things are there and can be there. This woman was patient, and she started then findering, finding the right mentors and sponsors.
13:01
And, and as you're moving up, it's harder and harder to find opportunities that are the right fit because there's just less of them.
13:08
So some of it's patience, some of it's then continuing to build those relationships, and some of it is expanding our skill set. It's around business acumen.
13:18
Uh, this is a third, another concept I'd like to introduce is like, to your point, like we have to learn the operations.
13:23
We have to learn how the, how it's operating at higher and higher levels, so we start getting, again, that perspective of where are there opportunities?
13:30
Where can I find a place to continue to move up if it's not happening in this particular place? And so that might be a different role within the organization.
13:40
That might be starting to expand your network even externally to figure out if there's other systems that allow for you to use your skill sets in the best way.
13:47
I know you speak to a lot of people who have crossed the threshold, who are actually in leadership. Can you talk to us about a couple of the common trends that you hear that arise for early stage leaders?
14:00
You know, it's a whole 'nother level right there.
14:02
I've seen-- I've had folks in the federal space who are at senior executive levels, who are now, you know, the senior, the top civilian level people in the, in the systems. For them, it's much more they're navigating
14:15
the politics, right? How do they continue to get budget and, and protect their people and get visibility for their, their teams?
14:24
How do they, um, make sure they're finding spaces to influence the whole system and the organization? So it's similar level of skills.
14:31
It's just, it's higher stakes almost because now they're in the room, and they're at the table, and they have to use their voice, and they have to claim those things that I was saying get in the way for women.
14:42
Now they have to be those things. They have to be able to say, "My team's doing all of this amazing work, and we still need budget and resources for our people."
14:50
Or they need to be able to have the back channel one-on-one conversations to influence people so that when they come in the room, those people that are on their side that are gonna say yes to things that they might be saying that they want to accomplish.
15:03
They're still gonna have to manage up.
15:04
There still might be the administrator or the CEO of the organization that they still have to understand what their needs are and be able to work with them, even if they don't always 100% agree with everything, right?
15:16
So in some ways, it gets... It's different. It's hard in a different, in a different way.
15:20
But what opens up too is you're now mentoring and role modeling what senior leadership looks like for the next generation, and that's real opportunities for people and women to, to show that they're capable and what's possible.
15:33
And there's some amazing leaders I've been able to work with that are doing great things. I wanna go back to a point you made because I think it's a really important, important one because it is a big change.
15:44
You said that, um, we were talking about this view of the more holistic organization wherever you are, is something that comes into focus as you progress and move up. And it- Yeah...
15:57
and that in and of itself is, I think, a significant point to lean into because no one ever really talks about it, but it becomes expected that your knowledge, you know, expands in certain ways.
16:12
I wonder if you can talk a little bit more about, about how that works and how people can approach gaining that perspective, becoming accustomed to speaking from that perspective. A couple ways.
16:25
One would be, you know, reading, learning, right?
16:28
There's so many podcasts like we're doing, or TED Talks or, you know, books, things to listen to, podcasts, ways to learn, right, about different parts of an organization or different things.
16:40
There's examples of leaders who just, they're, you know, running in the morning on their treadmill, but they're listening to all sorts of podcasts, that they're learning about different industries, different businesses, different ways of operating.
16:51
So that's, that's one way, is learning, reading, that kind of stuff. A second way is just even in your system, starting to meet people from different parts of the organization. Mm-hmm.
17:00
So if you're in, you know, I was in change management. There was business process people. There was the IT people, and then there's all-- or all organizations are gonna have finance and HR.
17:10
How do you start building relationships or starting, start just to go tap somebody for a coffee, and can you tell me more about HR and what you're doing every day, or more about finance and what's your role?
17:21
The idea is eventually you wanna have a go-to person in each parts, parts of those organizations, so that you don't need to know all of the stuff in their s- their part of the organization.
17:29
You need to know it enough to be dangerous, and that means you know enough to know who to tap so that you can get the information that you need or bring them into a meeting to help explain something or learn what you need to learn to keep advancing.
17:42
And so I think having that go-to person is really valuable, um, to do that. And so that's a way to start, again, lifting your gaze, 'cause we can get so... In the government space, we often hear about silos.
17:55
People are looking just in their, their s- part of the system, but how do we look up and out? Because y- you wanna understand that your organization is a sy- is a system.
18:04
It's not just running because you're a part of the, the system is there, but they need to operate holistically for all the parts need to be working for the whole system to working effectively.
18:15
I think having a point of contact in every department is a really great advice for, for folks who are looking to make moves up. Yeah.
18:23
So we're talking about moving up, and you're doing your job, and you're also doing a little bit more work to get on the right trajectory.
18:32
And this, I, you know, we speak to a lot of women who are like, "I just got burnt out. I'm just, you know, I...
18:39
In addition to what I do at work, I have a full-time job at home as a caregiver for children or for parents." And so can you talk to us a little bit about the risks of burnout for middle managers? Yeah. It's real.
18:53
I'm-- I have a young child, I'm doing caregiving, I have a business, so I know, I talk to a lot of leaders who are trying to do-- who are doing the same thing.
19:03
And so I think a lot of it is starting to think about how do we build in some self-care? How do we build in some places where we are getting help and support?
19:11
How do we find opportunities to take the leave that we are given? Some people are not even taking their full leave. I worked for one company that brought us in, and we were teaching about healthy,
19:23
healthy leaders in order to have a healthy organization, and it was a healthcare company. And we were teaching about, "Hey, take your vacations. Don't answer all the calls when you're on vacation."
19:32
And the one leader just stopped, and she's like, "They're teaching us all this stuff, but this is not how we're operating in our system, right? We're a healthcare organization, and we are doing all of these things."
19:41
And so it's really important for the leaders to walk the walk of what they want for themselves so that their people can also see that that's possible for them.
19:52
And so take the vacation, you know, get the support in the organization where your team knows how to do some of the things without you. You need to have that succession planning in place.
20:03
You need to have that cross-training in place. You need to develop your people enough so that if you're out or can't take something, that your people are at the place where they can take on some of those roles.
20:15
Self-care, you know, just building in times on your calendar. I work with a lot of leaders where it's just even building calendaring, right?
20:22
We're just building in blocks of a half hour or hour, either a day or a week or whatever we can find, you know, to start, to start building up that time where they can just think, right?
20:33
Especially as mid-managers moving into senior leadership, sometimes you just need the time to think. Mm-hmm. Because you're eventually gonna be starting to create strategies and visions, and
20:42
it's like you need that space to, to be thoughtful about it. And so I think those are some of the places to start. It can be even just small breathing practices or mindfulness practices.
20:54
I also do a lot around mindfulness and resilience to how do we build in even just a few minutes of time. So I think start small, but then really be conscious.
21:04
Leaders have to really be conscious to build that in for themselves, because the overdrive is real, and especially in mid-management into leadership is real, and there has to be a place to take care of yourselves, because you're now modeling this now for people below you as well.
21:17
The same adage about putting the mask on first on the plane for parents, I think is-- works also for leaders. Absolutely. There's the, you know,
21:29
performance coaching is a real thing because you do take on more responsibility. You do become more tasked. You do have to say no more often and really prioritize.
21:40
And I-- So I, I always appreciate the emphasis on these things because for so long we're, at least I think like in middle management, you're head down, you're working, you're proving yourself.
21:52
But when you do become a leader, like you said, you are expected to provide some vision, and that does require time to think.
21:58
And that combination is something that, that you kind of have to build out for your individual self. It's kind of like everyone needs something a little different, but just acknowledging that it is important.
22:11
Like any other kind of high performer, you know, I think about athletes and, and things like that, business high performers are, are no different in, in that there needs to be, uh, taking care of all systems, not just, just the execution system.
22:25
Yeah.
22:25
There's a lot of research we use in some of my leadership classes with corporate athlete, and so they're really-- The research behind that article, and it's a HBR article, is that they, they looked at tennis players, and they were seeing what ten-- the best tennis players were doing compared to the ones that even though they had the skill and capa- capacity, they weren't always winning.
22:43
And what they had was a, like a... They had a ritual that allowed them to rest a little bit.
22:48
So if you see the best tennis players, it might just be, you know, taking a beat or, you know, hitting the balls a few times before they serve, but allowed their heart rate to come down.
22:58
And so even for corporate athletes, we call them, the ones that are going hard like you're describing, we need a, a, a reset rit- ritual almost to har- start bringing that calming energy back down to our system.
23:08
And I think I could come up with a thousand reasons why I wouldn't have time to do any of those things. Yeah. And it's just so important to hear that other people who are high performers need to do it. Yes.
23:19
So that you don't get stuck in that burnout cycle. So whether it's a workout, whether it's a br- quick breathing, whether it's first thing in the morning before any of the kids are up.
23:28
You know, I do mine first thing in the morning. It's the clock where I'm breathing, meditating, working out before my daughter's up. And it's hard.
23:34
It's hard to set those rituals in, but now it's like those are times I cannot miss. I just cannot miss. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I just t- I know I'll feel better the next day. That's always my motivation. That's right.
23:45
[laughs] I'm like, "I don't wanna do it now, but I'm gonna feel great tomorrow." [laughs] And that's why I say it can be little things, right?
23:52
We don't have to start so big, but as we build those rituals, they'll start snowballing. Yes. One hundred percent. Well, Monica, thank you so much for your time and your insights. This was awesome. Wonderful.
24:03
Where can people find you? Yes. They can find me on my website, www.monikatakrar, T-H-A-K-R-A-R.com. Um, you can find me on LinkedIn, and those are the two best places. Excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you.
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