That is what the world is losing every single year because people are not engaged at work. 9% of global GDP. Gone 📉
Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026 is a sobering read. Global engagement fell to 20% — down from 23% in 2022. The first time it has dropped two years in a row
But that is not the headline that kept me awake. This is:
Manager engagement collapsed by 9 points since 2022, and 5 points in a single year (from 27% to 22%). Managers are now barely more engaged than the people they are meant to inspire ⚠️
Why does this matter right now?
Because of what is sitting on top of it: #AI
The world has poured roughly $40B into enterprise AI. An Massachusetts Institute of Technology study cited by Gallup found that 95% of organisations have seen zero measurable impact on profits. 89% of executives report no effect on labour productivity. Only 12% of employees in AI-implemented organisations strongly agree that AI has transformed how their work gets done
$40B in. Productivity out? Silence 🤷
So where is the bottleneck? 🤔
Gallup is remarkably clear: it is not the technology. It is the managers.
Employees whose managers actively support AI adoption are 8.7x more likely to say AI has transformed their work. Yet fewer than 1 in 3 US employees (and just 21% in Germany) say their manager provides that support
Here is the uncomfortable truth: we are asking burned-out, disengaged middle managers to lead the most significant workplace transformation in a generation. Then we blame the tools when nothing compound
Leaders themselves are not fine either. Gallup's data shows leaders experience +7 points more stress, +12 more anger, +11 more sadness and +10 more loneliness than individual contributors on any given day. The top is heavy
Yet the best-practice organisations in Gallup's dataset run at 79% manager engagement. Nearly 4x the global average. This decline is NOT inevitable. It is a choice disguised as a trend 🎯
For every CEO reading this, the order of operations is upside down. You cannot AI your way out of a management crisis. Fix management FIRST — clarity, accountability, coaching — then the technology compounds on top.
As Jon Clifton put it: winning the AI revolution depends not on the technology you deploy, but on how you lead the people using it
My question for you: Is your AI strategy running ahead of your management capability — or behind it?
📣 But don't take my word for it. Take it from one of my recent CEO clients:
💬 "The executive coaching has really helped me to think through and understand context, leadership, and people, materially better. The coaching has helped me to further mature in my relationship management, decision making and people leadership. Our work has been tremendously useful and I’m confident that it will continue to remain useful both for me and for my executive leadership team”
#Gallup#FutureOfWork#Leadership#MasteringExecutiveTransitions
About Navid Nazemian
Ranked as the world’s #1 Executive Coach by CEO Today for the third year running, I partner with senior leaders to navigate complexity, accelerate performance, and lead through critical transitions. Over the past two decades, I’ve supported hundreds of executives in overcoming unproductive thinking and solving their most complex leadership challenges—helping their organizations build world-class cultures and create lasting value.
If you’d like to reflect on a leadership challenge, an upcoming transition, or how I might support you, you’re very welcome to reply directly to this email.
You can also:
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What's Next? More insights on leadership, transitions, and executive effectiveness are coming your way next week. I’d genuinely value your perspective—feel free to share your reflections by replying to this email. I read every response.
Navid
