Why managers are Disengaged and what to do about it
In 2025, manager engagement fell from 27% to 22%, the largest year-over-year drop ever recorded for this group, and part of a longer slide that started at 30% only two years earlier (ah, 2023 - the good ole days).
The small engagement premium managers used to enjoy over their teams has vanished. Managers are now roughly as engaged as the people they lead, which matters because managers drive about 70% of the variance in team engagement. When the manager layer wobbles, everything resting on it wobbles too.
When my job was to share engagement feedback with leaders - I always felt like there was a disconnect mounting. Managers were being put under more and more pressure to ‘fix’ any issues with engagement and performance that might arise - while getting little or no support.
Teams got flatter, then leaner, then hybrid. AI landed in their inbox with a vague instruction to figure out what it meant - quick! Performance expectations held or climbed, uncertainty grew, headcount did not. Meanwhile Gallup finds that only 44% of managers globally have received any formal management training. We promoted brilliant individual contributors, removed the thing they were brilliant at, added the emotional labour of twelve other people, and then wondered why they looked tired.
Manager wellbeing is falling fastest among older managers, down five points, and female managers, down seven. What’s the so what of it all? When managers disengage, they don’t necessarily leave. They start doing the job more narrowly, and with less enthusiasm. The stretch assignment does not get taken on. The quiet mentoring or leadership of ERGs, or team development drop off. A less engaged manager, creates a less engaging workplace.
What can be done about it?
Well - I’ve said it a million times, and I’ll keep saying it: train your managers. Not a LinkedIn Learning link buried in a manager guide. Proper, practical training in the craft of managing humans, with coaching skills at the centre.
Gallup finds that trained managers are half as likely to be actively disengaged. They lift their own engagement by up to 22%, and their teams by up to 18%. Add someone in their corner who actively supports their development, and manager wellbeing climbs from 28% to 50% - it’s such an easy win to give managers that lift.
The collapse in the middle of your org chart is not a failing on the behalf of any individual. It is just what happens when you keep raising the ceiling without reinforcing the floor.
If you’d like to chat about manager enablement - get in touch!