Once upon a time, I was a middle-level manager within the largest division of a publically held company, and I was terrible at it.

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The children of the baby-boomers are currently entering their 40s, which creates a secondary bulge at the middle-manager level of Japanese business.

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Both men and women took a hit in likeability when they moved from first-level supervisor to middle manager, but this drop was more precipitous for men.

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These problems are most apparent at the program manager level, where middle-level executives may lack the experience to select among competing solutions to a problem.

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