When I grow up, I want to be a middle manager

The business press loves a heroic CEO story. They tell us how Elon Musk built the Tesla electric car and landed a SpaceX rocket on an ocean platform, all seemingly with his own hands. Yet, while the Musks of the world deserve a lot of credit, behind every Herculean achievement is a dedicated army of anonymous workers directed by an equally unrecognized group of first-level managers.

I’m reminded of a friend’s father, who passed away in 2014 after a hard battle with cancer. At the time of his passing, his daughter (my friend) didn’t know much about her father’s work relationships. So she was surprised when, in his final week, he received a flurry of emails and visits from former colleagues. Each spoke of the positive impacts he’d had on their work, their careers and even their lives, and of how much he had meant to them.

Her father was not a CEO. In fact, he spent his career as a mid-level sales manager. Glamorous? No. But that’s the power of a great manager — often unrecognized, but never forgotten by the people they help.

Of those who reached out to my friend’s father, one had gone back to college at his urging, gradually working toward a degree in business while juggling her full-time job as the receptionist in his office. She went on to become one of his top-performing salespeople. Another, a colleague in marketing, remembered how my friend’s dad had stood up for him when no one else would, urging others to keep him on board during a downturn (they did, and they were glad later). And yet another resurrected his career working for my friend’s dad, who was willing to see past the man’s track record of having been fired from three previous roles, hiring him, believing in him, and helping to build his career.

Any HR pro can tell you, managers like my friend’s dad are critical for company performance — “people quit managers, not companies.” And many studies back this up, including a CEB study that found teams with effective managers have 25 percent higher performance and 40 percent lower employee turnover. Given that as much of 80 percent of the workforce is managed by first-level managers, it’s not a stretch to say that they hold the keys to a company’s talent pool.

While the importance of first-level managers is clear, the sheer impact they can have on employees’ happiness both personally and professionally is often understated. Most people know what it’s like to have a soul-crushing, morale-killing, please-don’t-make-me-go-to-work kind of manager. If we’re lucky, we also will have the opportunity to work with a great manager: the one who cares about you, believes in you and helps you do your best work. Those are the people who make a difference for employees and ultimately for the companies they serve.

(This article originally appeared on LinkedIn)

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