Management: High stress, low reward

Somewhere, right now, a talented individual is being handed a promotion. Their salary will go up, their title will change and then - very shortly afterwards - their calendar will fill with meetings they didn't ask for and they’ll be asked to make decisions they aren't yet prepared to make. After about a week, they will get a quiet, creeping realisation that they liked their old job more.

We've built organisations where the only visible path upward leads through management. And then we can’t believe that management is making people miserable.

Gallup's 2026 State of the Global Workplace report found that manager engagement has decreased by almost 10% since 2022. Managers, who once enjoyed what Gallup called an 'engagement premium' are now no more engaged than the people they lead. They've lost the perk without losing the responsibility. 

Yet engagement is only part of the story.

Leaders and managers now report experiencing significantly more daily stress, anger, sadness and loneliness than individual contributors. Not a little more, substantially more. The people we ask to carry the most are, quietly, struggling the most.

DDI's Global Leadership Forecast found that 40% of leaders globally have considered leaving their roles to protect their wellbeing. Meanwhile, trust in managers has dropped 37% since 2022, now sitting at just 29%. 

And the next generation? They're watching and not really liking what they see. 

A 2025 Robert Walters survey found that half of Gen Z respondents didn't want to be middle managers at all. Nearly 70% dismissed the role as 'high stress, low reward.' They've seen it, and honestly, they don't fancy it.

None of this is inevitable. It's the product of design choices or rather, the absence of them.

We promote people because they're excellent at something, then demand they become excellent at something else entirely, and offer almost no support for the transition. 

We give them larger teams, bigger targets, more accountability and less time to think. The antidote isn't complicated: we need to actually train people how to manage. Not a half-day induction and a copy of the HR handbook, but proper, sustained investment in the craft of leading people - the kind that changes how someone turns up for their team on a Monday morning.  

That work, done well, transforms both the manager and the people around them.

Gallup's own research shows that within best-practice organisations, 79% of managers are engaged - nearly quadruple the global average. The gap isn't about talent. It's about culture, investment and the decision to treat management as something worth learning.

The role of manager is arguably the most important in any organisation. It's where culture is either built or broken. Where people either flourish or quietly decide to leave. If you want better managers, you need to start by making management worth being.