“Thank God You’re Here”
On manager disengagement and what they need to do the job we gave them.
Last week I had coffee with one of my favorite former colleagues after a (too) long hiatus. Our reminiscing brought me back to my early days as a manager, and a slew of complicated feelings came up. They make total sense to me now, especially in the context of the unprecedented manager disengagement we're in. It also makes sense why it took so long to reconnect. I'm going to embrace the "vulnerability is strength" idea and go there.
Shortly after finishing grad school, I was hired for a job I wasn't fully ready for. The hiring manager needed to fill a new role fast, and with someone who had a specific area of expertise. The task was to launch a multi-state program with executive-level stakeholders and high national visibility. My resume had the right keywords and even though I had never managed people or projects at that scale before, it was a dream job. I could tell she was relieved the moment I accepted. The to-do list was waiting for me at my desk on day one, right next to my welcome sign.
What followed was one of the hardest and most formative periods of my professional life. Within the first year, my executive director and direct manager both left, and over the next eight years, I had eight different supervisors.
A few things kept me grounded and helped me keep showing up when things got hard. The mission of my program was clear and closely aligned with the goals of the broader organization. I knew how we fit in and why it mattered. We had fully invested partners who shared our values. One manager in particular really saw me: she named my strengths specifically, pointed me toward work that played to them, and gave me confidence when I started second-guessing myself. Many of my supervisors were reliably present, letting me lead our one-on-ones so I could bring what felt most urgent and use the time to meet my needs. I had enormous autonomy and real authority to build something meaningful, with someone paying attention to both how I was doing and what I was delivering.
Then several things changed in quick succession. A new partner whose goals and values weren't well aligned took on a major role within our work. Shortly thereafter, my organization restructured: my manager moved into a new role, and my scope expanded significantly when I took on two new teams. My new manager had as little idea how to support me as I had for the teams I was now responsible for.
The confidence I'd built began to erode. The stress and imposter syndrome that had always been present stopped feeling manageable. I started leading the way I was being led—hands off, stretched thin, trusting that capable people would figure it out. And when I couldn't find my footing the way I had before, I blamed myself, felt ashamed, dreaded going to work every day, and began to disengage.
I'm sure people noticed, but no one called it out. I needed help and didn't know how to ask for it.
I remember thinking, “Does anyone see me drowning?”
My experience is common. The research shows it's becoming more so.
Manager engagement has dropped 9 percentage points since 2022, landing at just 22% globally according to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026. The sharpest drop happened between 2024 and 2025 alone. For the first time on record, managers are no more engaged than the people they lead. The historical "engagement premium" that managers once held has vanished.
The causes are structural: organizations have flattened, spans of control have grown, and mid-level support roles are disappearing. Managers are now significantly more likely than individual contributors to report high levels of stress, anger, sadness, and loneliness. McKinsey found that while 56% of executives have clarity on their organization's most important priorities, only 27% of middle managers share that clarity. They are being asked to execute a strategy they can't fully see, with brand new tools, teams that are growing, in roles that were never redesigned to match what is being asked of them.
This research comes overwhelmingly from global enterprises with full HR departments, dedicated L&D teams, and resources most smaller organizations and nonprofits will never have. If they are failing their managers this badly, the structural deficit in a 60-person organization with one HR generalist is likely more acute.
This is a design problem. And like most design problems, it compounds until the cost becomes impossible to ignore.
What works: The "empowered squad"
The CPRBS Annual Workplace Wellbeing Report 2026 found that when teams are designed with both high autonomy and high support, what the report calls "empowered squads," 68% of workers flourish. In neglected environments where neither is present, that number drops to 10%.
High autonomy and high support. Together.
What my early career taught me is that autonomy alone is not enough. The years I thrived were the years I had both. The years I struggled—and by extension, my teams struggled—were the years I had one without the other.
The good news is that building an empowered squad doesn't require a large time commitment or a dedicated L&D budget. It does require designing the conditions intentionally. Here are a few places to start:
Show up consistently. Protect one-on-ones. When you have to cancel, reschedule the same day. Reliability demonstrates investment in your people.
Name what you see. Specific, genuine recognition of a person's unique strengths builds confidence that is crucial when things get hard. Gallup research found that combining regular feedback with structured recognition produces 61% employee engagement. Feedback alone gets you 38%.
Hand them the agenda. Let your direct reports lead their own one-on-ones. When you listen carefully to what they bring, and respond to what they're saying (as well as what they're not quite saying), they get the support they need and you build the trust that makes them willing to tell you the truth when something is wrong.
Connect their work to the mission. Make it a regular practice to help your managers see how their work connects to what the organization is building and why it matters. When people understand the larger meaning of their work, they can lead with more confidence and weather uncertainty with more resilience.
These are the fundamentals. If you can do nothing else right now, start here. The deeper work (e.g., examining how roles are designed, how strategy gets communicated across levels, how support gets built into the structure rather than left to individual effort) is what moves organizations from managing the symptoms to addressing root causes. That work is harder, and it's why I started consulting: to help organizations build the conditions where their people can do the best work of their lives.
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If you promoted someone into a hard job and then kept moving, you are in excellent company. Most organizations do this. I've done it. The needs are immediate, everyone is doing their best, and no one set out to leave anyone unsupported. But that's what leads to disengagement, turnover, teams that are struggling to function, and managers who are drowning.
The most important thing you can do as a leader right now is make sure your people know you're navigating this moment together. See how they're succeeding. See how they're struggling. And call it out when you see someone start to disappear, because they are almost certainly waiting for someone to notice.