How Middle Management Becomes a Culture Bottleneck — and What We Can Do About It

Most executives genuinely want a better culture.

They write the values. Fund the wellness programs. Push for better policies.

But what crew experience day to day isn’t the handbook —

It’s their HoD, 1st AD, or coordinator.

And if that person is stressed, reactive, or untrained in people management...

Then none of those top-down values make it to the set.

This isn’t a leadership failure.

It’s a transmission breakdown.

Broken Transmission Theory

Culture isn't taught once — it's transferred constantly.

But when values are passed down through untrained layers of management,

they often get distorted, dropped, or drowned in logistics.

And we see it in the data:

Crew on the same production can report wildly different experiences by department.

One team feels supported, heard, and safe — another feels ignored and burned out.

That’s a microclimate — a team-level culture inside a larger one.

Middle management is where your culture succeeds — or stops.

But here’s the truth:

Most mid-level production leaders were never trained to manage people.

They were promoted for being great at what they do.

Not for being great with people under pressure.

They don’t know how to coach. How to debrief conflict.

How to identify when someone’s starting to burn out — or feel unsafe.

They weren’t given the tools.

And so we get inconsistency.

Not because these managers don’t care, but because they were never shown how.

This is not about blame.

This is about design.

If culture isn’t showing up where it matters — on set, on the floor, in the trailer —

It’s because the intention was built, but the infrastructure to deliver it was skipped.

And that’s fixable.