Manager Engagement Decline Impacts Global Workplace Performance

Here's an uncomfortable question for leadership teams: if manager engagement is down 9 points since 2022 — the worst of any employee group — what does that say about how we've set managers up to fail? We ask them to hold strategy and execution together with no extra bandwidth, then act surprised when teams lose momentum. So I'll ask directly: What's the single biggest barrier to manager engagement at your organization — span of control, lack of authority, or lack of support from above? Drop your answer below. I'll compile the patterns I see and share back.

This is why intentionally and consistently developing your managers is critical to the success of any organization. When we neglect the ongoing development of managers, the entire organization pays the price. If you’re going to give them the title, give them the toolkit!

This tracks with what I see in the room every time I work with a leadership team. Managers are being asked to absorb pressure from above and below, with fewer resources to do it. What often gets missed is that engagement and well-being are not soft outcomes here, they are the mechanism. A manager who is depleted cannot create clarity for their team, no matter how skilled they are. This is exactly why psychological flexibility work matters at the manager level, not just as a well-being add-on, but as a performance lever. Leaders who can notice pressure without being run by it make better calls, stay present with their teams, and hold the line on what matters even when things get messy. Worth reading in full.

Let’s talk about the conditions for leadership! Gallup's 2026 numbers are not good news. Manager engagement has fallen 9 percentage points globally since 2022 - the steepest decline of any employee group. First of all of course, that matters for the leaders themselves. Losing energy, meaning and engagement in what we spend a large part of our lives in, that's not a small thing. And then, it does not stop there. Because when leaders lose energy, clarity and capacity, it does not stay with the individual leader. It can show up in decisions, relationships, priorities, execution - and in the work lives of people around them. We often respond to struggling leaders by focusing on the individual: resilience, coping, time management, coaching. Those things can be useful, of course. But they are not enough. Because so often, the real issue is with conflicting demands, unrealistic spans of control, continuing change, passive or downright dysfunctional leadership teams, lack of support from one’s own manager - and organisational cultures that simply expect leaders to keep absorbing pressure. So what we should focus on is this question: Do we give leaders the conditions that allow them to be the leaders we expect them to be? In our book Who Looks After the Boss? – A Guide to Leadership Well-being, Louise Dinesen and I argue that leadership well-being needs to be treated as a strategic organisational issue — not a private problem for the individual leader to solve. Gallup’s numbers make that conversation even more urgent!

I still remember the moment when I realized no longer wanted my boss' job - she was working 12 hour days, sitting in endless meetings, getting no public recognition and the toll on her physically and emotionally was very apparent. "No one should have to endure that," I thought and immediately decided to alter the trajectory of my career. 25 years later it was the single greatest thing to happen to my professional life and i am so thankful I acknowledged it and acted upon my feelings at the time. Today, I still see WAY too many managers suffering through a life like my boss's. Tragically, they've accepted that as part of being a leader. Instead of thriving and maximizing their impact on the organization, they're simply getting by, surviving until retirement (yuck!). if you're in a c-suite at your organization and you haven't already, you must begin reversing this false environment and leadership mentality. Credit unions are losing good and great leaders every day because of this outdated belief that management should be measured by quantity instead of quality. That a manager's worth is measured by how many meetings they attend and reports they complete instead of what they produce and how innovative they've become. #saveourmanagers #newwaystobeapeopleleader #qualityoftimenotquantityoftime

The part that doesn't get said enough: when a manager is stretched too thin, it isn't only that manager who struggles. Everyone they're responsible for loses clarity too. I was in front of a room of executives at IARF Illinois Association for Rehabilitation Facilities last week making a version of this exact argument. Most organizations answer it by sending managers to more training. Then they watch the training not stick. Or worse, they offer no support at all. It doesn't stick because a workshop can't follow a manager into the 1:1 they run on Tuesday, or the team meeting on Thursday, or the hard conversation nobody prepped them for. That gap is what we're building for at employeeInsite. Not more content for managers to sit through. Support that shows up inside the work they already do. Thanks to IARF for having me.

This is a disturbing result — and something leaders need to act upon! Pay attention to culture - it matters! #ADAPT

Worth the 30 sec read. This point around the importance of engaging mid level managers is too often missed by organisations until its too late

As a manager, what are you doing to reduce feelings of overwhelm and burnout? When you become less engaged with your team, serious consequences occur.

This information from Gallup has been one of my biggest complaints for the past 15+ years about the focus of HR - no one is championing support for managers. HR gurus such as Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP and Dave Ulrich suggest that HR should look out for all stakeholders, when they fail at looking out for their primary stakeholder - managers. The goal of HR should be to HELP MANAGERS to find, attract, and acquire great employees, and to develop, engage, and retain them. The two biggest areas where HR can have the greatest strategic business impact on the organization is in talent acquisition (TA) and learning & development (L&D), especially in leadership development and capacity enhancement, as managers’ ability to engage employees relies on their leadership capability to create emotional connections. When 80% of employee engagement is dependent on their direct manager, and the majority of managers are not engaged, how can we expect the majority of employees to be engaged? The answer is that we can’t. For the past 25 years we have seen no improvement in employee engagement nor employee retention numbers. Time to hire has increased and Type 2 errors seems to have increased. Now manager engagement numbers are declining. When will HR finally realize that creating HR positions titled “Business Partner” doesn’t necessarily make HR a business partner? When will HR stop talking about being more strategic and actually start doing things that will have a strategic impact? When are we going to start focusing on the things that can really help an organization to move out of mediocrity to become exceptional, and stop doing the same things that we have done for the past 25 years? Doing the same things, even a bit differently, and expecting different results is still insanity. It is time to do different things, and that will take a dramatic mind shift.