Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report confirmed what many of us have been watching unfold in real time. Global employee engagement has fallen to 20%, its lowest point since the pandemic. The estimated cost is $10 trillion in lost productivity. And the sharpest decline didn’t happen among frontline employees. It happened among managers.
Manager engagement has dropped nine points since 2022, from 31% to 22%. The group that organizations count on to drive performance, build culture, and develop people is now barely more engaged than the people they lead.
Most conversations about this data focus on what to do about the managers. How to train them. How to upskill them. How to give them better tools.
I want to start with a different question. What commitments did the leaders of the organization make to these managers, and did they keep them?
How We Broke the Managers
The last few years have asked more of managers than any period in recent history. They navigated remote work transitions. They managed through layoffs and restructuring. They absorbed responsibility as teams got leaner. They became the buffer between executive strategy and employee reality, absorbing pressure from both directions.
And while the demands increased, the support often didn’t. Less than half of managers worldwide say they’ve received management training. Many were promoted for individual performance and then expected to lead people with no preparation and no ongoing development.
That’s a broken commitment. Organizations took people who were good at their jobs, put them in charge of other people, and then left them to figure it out. When they struggled, we called it a skill gap. But it wasn’t a skill gap. It was a trust gap. The organization asked them to give everything and offered very little in return.
You can’t break your commitment to someone and then wonder why they’re disengaged. That’s not a mystery. That’s cause and effect.
And there are unspoken commitments like, I value you, I’ll find your potential and lead you to it, and I’ll always have your back. Are those unspoken commitments being kept with your mid-level leaders?
The Downstream Impact
When managers disengage, the effects don’t stay at the management level. They cascade through the entire organization.
A disengaged manager delays difficult conversations. They provide inconsistent direction. They spend less time coaching and more time just trying to get through the day. The people who report to them feel the shift. They get less clarity, less recognition, less development, and less of the human connection that makes work meaningful.
Gallup’s own data shows that 70% of team engagement variance comes from the manager. When the manager checks out, the team follows. Not because the team doesn’t care, but because the person who was supposed to be committed to them clearly isn’t anymore.
And here’s the part that should concern every executive: the best managers leave first. The ones with options. The ones other organizations want. The ones who built their careers on being committed to their people and who eventually realize the organization isn’t committed to them.
The Path Forward
You don’t fix manager engagement with another training program. You fix it by restoring the commitment. The commitment from the leaders at the very top to everyone in the organization.
Start by asking your managers what they actually need. Not in a survey. In a conversation. Sit with them. Listen to what’s overwhelming them. Find out where the support broke down. That conversation alone is an act of commitment that most managers haven’t experienced in years.
Then protect their capacity. If your managers are buried in administrative tasks, meetings, and reporting requirements, they don’t have time to lead. Strip away the things that don’t require a human relationship and give them back the space to actually be present with their people.
Invest in their growth the way you expect them to invest in others. If you want managers who develop people, you have to develop the managers. Not once. Continuously. With the same consistency you expect them to show their teams. Because you care about them, and that example teaches them how to care about the people they lead.
Finally, be honest about the commitments you’ve broken. If you loaded your managers with impossible expectations and inadequate support, own that. Out loud. That kind of honesty from leadership doesn’t weaken the relationship. It begins to rebuild it.
The manager engagement crisis is not a training problem. It’s a commitment problem. And the only way to solve a commitment problem is to start keeping the commitments you’ve been avoiding.
