Shadowing Practice: Why Middle Management is the Hardest Job | Simon Sinek - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Middle management is the hardest job in any organization.
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Because when you're junior, your only job is really to do your job.
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That's it.
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And you get trained how to do your job.
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I mean, you all have to be licensed and go to school
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and learn how to do the job of being an accountant.
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And if you're really good at it, you eventually get promoted.
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And you eventually get promoted to a position where you're now responsible for the people who do the job
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you used to do but the problem is they don't give us any training how to do that.
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And senior people are thinking about entirely different things.
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They're thinking about the firm, thinking about strategy.
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And the problem is
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that you have this middle group that's in this sort of weird mix where they have to be strategic
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but not majority strategic.
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And they have to be tactical but they're not majority tactical.
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And they have to translate what's going up here to down there and down here to up here.
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And most things break in the middle because I'll meet firms where the leadership's amazing, and they're visionary, and they care about people,
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and they want to do the right thing, and then I go down to the front line, and they're like, yeah, this place is the worst.
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And so I'm like, what happened between here and there?
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And it's the middle.
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Most things break in the middle.
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And so I think there are two factors.
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One is we don't train people how to lead, right?
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So as I said before, when we're junior, we have to know what to do we just do our jobs,
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we have to be good at it, and as we become leaders in this middle management, we're now transitioning to this job,
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we're now responsible for the people who do the job we used to do, but nobody is teaching us listening, nobody is teaching us communication skills,
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nobody is teaching us effective confrontation, nobody is teaching us how to give and receive feedback, nobody is actually teaching us leadership.
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So this is why we get managers and not leaders,
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and you would never ask somebody to do anything in accounting without showing them how to do it, ever.
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bad idea, right?
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So why on earth do we think
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that we can just promote someone to a leadership position
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and expect that they know what to do without showing them how to do it?
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So that's problem number one, is the total vacuum in some cases,
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or just really minimal amounts of leadership training.
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And it needs to be robust.
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The other problem that I come across very often is I get some really wonderful self -taught leaders in middle management.
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They're reading books.
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They're going to conferences themselves.
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They're watching TED Talks.
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I mean, they're students of leadership.
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They have mentors.
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I mean, they're really making a go of it.
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And they complain that the senior management, all they care about is the quarterly earnings.
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And so the problem we have there is they're trying so hard to do the right thing, but management really doesn't care.
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So that's the opposite, right?
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And in those cases, I generally recommend that the right thing to do, I mean, quitting is always an option,
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but that's not necessarily the best option or the first option.
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But I always recommend to be the leader you wish you had, which is, I get the question, it is one of the,
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if not the most common question I get, which is, what do I do when I'm trying to do the right thing
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and my boss or my boss's boss or my boss's boss's boss just don't get it, you know?
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All they care about is money before people.
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And the answer is you can't control what you can't control,
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so worry about the people around you worry about the people to the sides of you, a level below you, even a level above you,
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and you be the leader you wish you had.
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And what you start to find in those pockets is these magical little diamonds in the rough appear.
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We worked with a large technology company, and we worked with a group where that's exactly what we did.
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We developed this whole leadership thing just for this little group in the middle.
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And yes, they started to do better, and their numbers went better, and the group expanded, and blah,
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blah, blah, all the things you'd expect to happen.
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But one thing we didn't expect is that the phone started ringing off the hook from other people in the firm asking,
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can I get a job in your group?
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Because when the people who worked in this group would go out for lunch with their friends who worked in other groups,
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you know, how's work today?
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Amazing.
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Different stories, right?
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Different stories.
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And all of a sudden, word spread across this 80 ,000 -person company.
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And this was only a group of 150 people.
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Word spread across this 80 ,000 -person company
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that everybody was trying to get into this group just because they wanted to work in it, because you had good leadership.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Why Middle Management is the Hardest Job”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: middle, leadership, teaching, nobody, leader. This video has 71 sentences and 872 words to shadow. The speech runs for 4:21. The speaker talks fast, about 201 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 92% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| strategic adjective | /stɹəˈti.dʒɪk/ | Of or pertaining to strategy. |
| tactical adjective | /ˈtæktɪk(ə)l/ | Of or relating to tactics. |
| necessarily adverb | /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/ | Inevitably; of necessity. |
| pocket noun | /ˈpɑ.kɪt/ | A bag stitched to an item of clothing, used for carrying small items. |
| transition noun | /tɹænˈzɪʃ.ən/ | The process of change from one form, state, style or place to another. |
| diamond noun | /ˈdaɪ.ə.mənd/ | A glimmering glass-like mineral that is an allotrope of carbon in which each atom is surrounded by four others in the form of a tetrahedron. |
| skill noun | /skɪl/ | A capacity to do something well; a technique, an ability, usually acquired or learned, as opposed to abilities that are regarded as innate. |
| sudden adjective | /ˈsʌd.ən/ | Occurring quickly with little or no warning or expectation; instantly. |
| hook noun | /hʊk/ | A rod bent into a curved shape, typically with one end free and the other end secured to a rope or other attachment. |
| expand verb | /ɪkˈspænd/ | To change (something) from a smaller form or size to a larger one; to spread out or lay open. |
| feedback noun | /ˈfiːdˌbæk/ | Critical assessment of a process or activity or of their results. |
| earnings noun | Wages, money earned, income. | |
| complain verb | /kəmˈpleɪn/ | To express feelings of pain, dissatisfaction, or resentment. |
| magical adjective | /ˈmæd͡ʒ.ɪ.kəl/ | Of, relating to, or by means of magic. |
| minimal adjective | /ˈmɪn.ə.məl/ | The smallest possible amount, quantity, or degree. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| come across verb | To change sides; to cross over to work for the opposition. |
| go up verb | To move upwards. |
| ring off verb | To disconnect at the end of a phone call. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to do |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who do · had, which is · get, which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 27 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, don't, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: transition /tɹænˈzɪʃ.ən/, confrontation /ˌkɑn.fɹənˈteɪ.ʃən/, visionary /ˈvɪʒəˌnɛɹi/
- Long words — get the stress right: necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, confrontation /ˌkɑn.fɹənˈteɪ.ʃən/, visionary /ˈvɪʒəˌnɛɹi/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like strategic, tactical, necessarily.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.