Amy has no idea how she got here. One minute she’s a high-performing team member, and the next she’s sprinting between meetings like a contestant on a chaotic workplace game show—except there are no prizes, only paperwork.
She’s double-booked, over-caffeinated, and under-strategized. When she finally makes it to a meeting, she’s repeating what she heard someone else say—because let’s be honest, there’s been zero time to think. Her inbox is overflowing, her desk looks like a paper-based Jenga tower, and all she really wants is one uninterrupted hour to get real work done. Just one. Is that so much to ask?
Oh, and did we mention she was recently promoted? So now, on top of everything else, she’s being told to cut the budget while also boosting morale. Classic.
Sound familiar?
You’re not alone—and neither is Amy.
According to Gallup’s latest State of the Workplace report, employee engagement is plummeting, and it’s costing the global economy over $438 billion. That’s billion—with a B. And guess who’s bearing the brunt of it? Managers. Engagement among managers has dropped to a bleak 27%, the lowest it’s been in years.
And we know this much is true: when your managers are barely hanging on, your teams are too. As the saying goes, people don’t leave jobs—they leave managers.
The post-pandemic workplace has turned up the pressure. Managers are expected to do more with less—less time, less budget, less clarity. Add in whiplash-inducing return-to-office policies and general economic uncertainty, and the job starts to look less like leadership and more like survival.
To make matters worse, many managers were promoted not because they were ready to lead, but because they were rockstars at their old jobs. Great individual contributors don’t magically become great people leaders. As Forbes and HBR recently put it, the role of manager is overdue for a serious makeover.
So what should organizations do?
Start by acknowledging the obvious: burned-out managers lead to broken teams. Broken teams lead to poor performance, high turnover, and a bonfire of your retention goals.
But burnout is just the symptom. The real issue? The manager role itself has become unmanageable.
We believe it’s time to simplify and reimagine the job.
What if a manager’s responsibilities were organized into three clear buckets?
- Build strong relationships
- Coach and develop their team
- Promote and advocate for their people
And what if we helped managers actually get good at those things? Not with another 3-hour PowerPoint marathon, but with real support: coaching, scenario-based practice, and a community of peer learning.
Oh—and here’s a radical idea—what if we also stopped asking them to do everything else while we’re at it?
In our work with thousands of managers, we’ve found a simple truth: when managers know what’s expected of them and are given space to grow, they deliver. Confidence rises. Performance improves. And yes, morale gets a boost.
So let’s stop pretending that managers are superheroes or scapegoats. They’re humans. And if we want them to lead well, we have to start by making the job make sense.
We’re building a movement to change how we work, and we believe managers are the key lever.
If your managers are winging it—we can help them land the plane. Schedule a chat with us to find out how.
