For those who haven’t seen it, the Gallup’s 2026 State of the Workplace results are out.

As their headlines state: global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, the lowest level since 2020, costing the world economy an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity.

This decline was highly driven by managers, who have taken the largest hit to engagement - falling over 9 points since 2022, to 22%. With shrinking workforces, their scope is increasing, while they’re managing the adoption of ongoing massive change (e.g., their management is one of the biggest predictors of AI adoption).