Structural Authority
Responsibility without authority. I’ve been in several positions in the past under this constraint. It’s always felt very isolating, and I have been unable to engage in any rational upstream conversation about it.
Turns out I’m not alone.
The “solution” is to “lead by influence,”
In the article A Staff-shaped hole, the author notes a number of dysfunctions common to staff engineering position. One of the most interesting is the “Lead With Influence” notion.
“Leading by influence” is really, really hard when one’s influence is actively undermined, stripped away by restructuring or role changes.
A cynical view might be that most of middle exists without much positional (or structural) authority at all, other than being responsible for writing performance reviews. The primary purpose of middle management is to somehow ensure that leadership decisions are executed without having this authority. That is, the “people” part of the job is to some extent selling upstream to downstream, regardless of one’s own personal opinion, beliefs, whatever.