Experts and researchers predict that many middle management positions will soon be replaced, rewritten by AI.
According to Gartner, a leading global research and advisory firm for business and technology, 20 percent of organizations are using AI to eliminate more than half of current middle-management roles by the end of 2026.
For anyone working in or aspiring to middle management, AI taking over is a pretty daunting prediction.
While AI might be used to flatten org charts, there’s still an important question:
What’s left when AI takes over the operational work that has traditionally been the responsibility of middle managers?
The answer:
The human relational aspects of management that cannot be replaced by AI.
Organizations that are successfully using AI are not removing middle management altogether—they are redesigning it.
Sure, operational coordination tasks are being automated. But human-centred leadership is still required.
The Reason Middle Management Is Vulnerable
When we think about the role of middle management in recent decades, it’s primarily been to:
- Translate executive strategy into execution.
- Collect information and provide updates.
- Report upward.
- Communicate between teams or departments.
- Coordinate schedules, workflows and approvals.
- Monitor productivity.
- Run status meetings.
- Manage performance reviews.
Many of these tasks are exactly what AI does well. There are AI systems that can quickly:
- Draft meeting agendas and minutes.
- Generate reports or summaries.
- Track the progress of projects.
- Draft performance feedback.
- Analyze productivity patterns and identify bottlenecks.
- Automate recurring administrative coordination functions.
This is why Gartner has predicted that organizations will reduce layers of management with AI. And it is happening.
Fortune recently dubbed this the “mega-manager era” because AI-driven restructuring is shrinking middle-management ranks and increasing the number of direct reports per senior manager or leader.
Given that the information-gathering and communication functions of middle managers are being done by software, middle managers must prepare for a different future—one that ensures they use AI to their advantage and offer value that AI does not.
Leverage the Things AI Takes Off Your Plate
Resisting AI is a natural inclination when it can eliminate aspects of your role in the workplace. It can be helpful to instead regard AI as not just a productivity tool, but also as a virtual operational assistant. Learning to use AI to your advantage is vital for future-ready leaders.
Middle managers can use AI to automate many tasks. This includes:
- Administrative coordination: Scheduling (including follow-up meetings), documentation, summaries, tracking project progress and status reporting.
- Analyzing information and synthesizing data: Many middle managers spent vast amounts of their time collecting information across teams or departments and consolidating data into reports for senior leadership. Now, AI aggregates and summarizes large volumes of data quickly.
- Detecting patterns to improve efficiency: AI systems are capable of quickly identifying operational inefficiencies, workflow delays, gaps in resources, cost-saving opportunities and performance anomalies.
- Drafting communication: In seconds, AI can help to draft performance reviews, client emails, strategic memos, internal updates or announcements and SOPs.
- Decision-making support: AI can help with prioritizing tasks, providing model scenarios, forecasting workloads or industry trends and evaluating operational trade-offs.
Now, just because AI is adept at these functions doesn’t mean the need for human managers will disappear. It will, however, expose managers whose primary value has been coordinating and administration.
What AI Can’t Do Well—And Won’t for a Long Time
Where business articles are hyping AI to replace middle managers, they're assuming that middle managers exist only to process information.
They don’t.
The hardest parts of middle management are the very human realities of being able to deal with emotions, politics and context.
These are aspects of humanity that AI struggles with. Others include:
- Building trust (vital to having strong teams).
- Leading with empathy.
- Navigating ambiguity.
- Reading emotional nuance and recognizing tension on teams.
- Resolving interpersonal conflicts.
- Creating psychological safety.
- Motivating team members.
- Influencing across competing teams or departments.
- Developing talent over time.
- Identifying burnout.
- Exercising ethical judgment.
While AI can optimize workflows and complete certain administrative tasks with lightning speed, it cannot replace human interaction and legitimate human connection.
That is an important distinction that matters more than some organizations may realize.
Gartner’s prediction about middle managers and AI highlighted that flattening organizations will result in:
- Overwhelmed senior managers (who suddenly have more direct reports).
- Broken mentoring pathways.
- Reduced opportunities for employee development.
There is also concern that AI-managed workplaces will struggle with fairness, trust and disengaged employees.
Management systems require human judgment. While using AI to replace middle managers offers efficiency gains in the short term, the cost is cultural erosion in the long term.
The New Middle Manager Job Description
In the next decade, highly valued middle managers will focus less on process administration and more on:
Coaching: Using leadership coaching skills to help team members grow, adapt to change and improve in workplaces that use AI for productivity.
Context: Explaining why decisions matter and creating a purpose-driven workplace that rallies around the mission. This is much broader than assigning tasks.
Emotional intelligence: Managing uncertainty, morale, resistance, team conflict and trust.
Building bridges: Connecting teams or departments and reducing points of tension—particularly where ego, fear, shame, pride and jealousy all become involved.
Critical thinking: Making decisions that may benefit from AI-generated insights (but not defer to them).
Talent development: Creating learning and development opportunities, motivating others in ways that resonate for them, not simply in ways that are considered the generic best practice. Pro tip: Review our adaptive leadership strategies for the digital age.
As organizations use AI to automate administrative functions, the middle managers who remain will be valued for their human leadership abilities related to emotional intelligence, resilience, communication, judgment and trust-building.
What Middle Managers Should Do Right Now
It’s human nature to respond defensively, like many middle managers are reacting to AI. Most are trying to protect the tasks they do from the threat of encroaching AI solutions instead of going on the offensive.
Here’s what middle managers and the HR or L&D leaders who support them need to do:
1. Audit current tasks. List every recurring task you are responsible for each week. Categorize them by function:
- Operational
- Analytical
- Relational
- Strategic
Anything that falls into the operational category is where you need to leverage AI. When AI can be used to automate or augment an operational task reliably, it inevitably will.
Forward-thinking managers will put energy into expanding their skills and capabilities in the other categories.
2. Invest in communication skills. Middle managers who are not made redundant by AI will be exceptional communicators with high emotional intelligence. They are able to provide clear feedback, navigate conflict adeptly and use coaching conversations to motivate and empower team members.
3. Know how to use AI. Understand how to use AI ethically with human oversight. While it can improve workflow automation, there are data quality limitations and there are risks to relying on AI without human critical thinking to evaluate the quality of the research or output. Gartner estimates that AI proficiency will be part of hiring processes by 2027.
4. Add coaching to leadership skills. When AI handles administrative tasks, your value is going to come from how well you develop talent on your team. Being able to build a coaching culture will be an asset and highly sought-after commodity.
Audit Your Performance Against Future Review Metrics
There are many organizations that evaluate managers based on the same metrics that have been used for decades.
They reward:
- Process compliance.
- Reporting discipline.
- Administrative oversight.
- Meeting management.
- Identifying situations that should be escalated to senior leadership.
These are the functions many organizations are now using AI to complete.
By 2029, middle managers will likely be measured on metrics related to:
- How agile and resilient their team members are.
- Retention of top talent.
- Trust and engagement of employees.
- Effective coaching.
- Cross-functional influence.
- Making quality decisions.
- AI productivity gains.
Pro tip: Audit your performance review template against the future, not the past. If your organization is rewarding middle managers for administrative functions more than for their human-centred leadership, they’re preparing managers for roles that will be made obsolete by AI.
The Bottom Line About Middle Managers & AI
Middle management isn’t going to be completely replaced by AI—operational tasks will be.
The various administrative tasks that humans have performed for years can be handled by AI.
However, the future belongs to middle managers who can combine AI fluency with human leadership abilities that empower team members and drive success.
Coach's Questions
What percentage of your time is currently spent on operational tasks versus relational leadership? Which uniquely human leadership strengths do you need to develop with intention to remain valuable and effective? If you evaluate your performance based on future leadership metrics, what would you need to start doing differently now?
