If your standup meeting is "stand in front of the middle manager", you're doing it wrong(tm). As with all things "agile", many places love the labels, don't understand the ideas. In my (limited) experience, standup meeting involving leaders only work if the leader is clearly part of the team (and e.g. the pressure to get things done comes from outside).
Of course, that doesn't help you if you're stuck in an organization doing it badly.
