The Produce Marketing Association Foundation’s 2014 High Performance Management Conference titled “Optimizing the Impact of Mid-Level Leaders,” is one of several initiatives that the organization has developed to help the produce industry by engaging in issues that assist and educate produce professionals to stay successful in the highly technical, competitive and fast moving industry.

Attention to the importance of training middle managers has increased tremendously in recent years, and from corporations and organizations that are proficient on the topic because they have conducted in-depth research.

The PMA Foundation has recognized this growing challenge and is hitting the proverbial nail on the head by helping produce professionals address it in their own businesses through the HPMC.

Peter Walsh, senior director of Global Marketing at Harvard Business Publishing, offers these tips to help middle managers become the best leaders possible without burning out: Start developing leaders earlier in their careers; and recognize that the biggest hurdle you will face is time, not money.

Walsh notes that the fastest way to make your stressed-out managers even more anxious is to insist they drop everything, leave all their time-sensitive projects in limbo and take a few weeks to focus exclusively on developing their skills and capabilities.

The PMA Foundation is sensitive to mid-level managers needing to be on their jobs and so has created a robust curriculum for its three-day conference.

Walsh’s advice includes using technology to reach middle managers when and where they have time to learn.

He also suggests that mangers need help in learning a leadership mindset. Leadership success depends on more than skills.

And lastly, Walsh suggests that leadership training be broadened even beyond classroom education.

In 2011, three Harvard Business School professors published “The Handbook for Teaching Leadership: Knowing, Doing, and Being.” The book made a persuasive case for why leadership development depends just as much on practicing leadership (doing) and changing one’s mindset (being) as it does on the traditional practice of acquiring new ideas (knowing). This argument was so convincing that Harvard Business School redesigned its own MBA program to deliver the Knowing-Doing-Being package.

Hogan Assessment Systems Inc. is an organization that uses the powerful science of personality assessment to help companies hire the right people, develop talented employees, build great leaders and affect the bottom line. In a bulletin titled Four Ways Companies are Failing their Middle Managers and Why It’s Killing Innovation, Hogan explains that promoting the wrong people is a common error.

In business, a bad apple can spoil the whole bunch, and even one incompetent manager can significantly decrease the performance of the entire group. So when it comes to selecting middle managers, finding the right individuals is critical.

The second error Hogan notes is not training middle managers — at least not effectively. Most companies focus development efforts at the extremes of their management hierarchy-extensive onboarding and training for new managers and high-potential recruits and in-depth executive coaching for C-suite executives.

The third issue is companies stressing middle managers out. Over the past several decades, companies have become more nimble and transparent, stripping away layers of bureaucracy to reveal lean, flat organizational structures. This shift resulted in increased work and accountability across the board, but the lion’s share fell to middle managers.

The fourth way is by letting middle managers disengage. Organizations aren’t completely to blame for flagging engagement among middle managers. Although it’s a popular topic in business, media, and psychology, there is a fundamental disagreement over what constitutes employee engagement. Engaged employees display high levels of energy and pride, a sense of empowerment, and find work meaningful.

Mid-level leaders are vital in driving a high performing culture throughout an organization’s ranks. A healthy organizational climate begins with leadership best practices. When properly executed by mid-level leaders, discretionary energy and high-level results should ensue.

The PMA Foundation High Performance Management Conference: Optimizing the Impact of Mid-Level Leaders, will help companies achieve these goals by greatly improving mid-level management skills.