I'm in the greater minority who would jump at the chance. (More on those numbers later)
Ten years ago I achieved 'senior management nirvana': I headed off to the UK with the significant other of the time for three weeks total disconnect, thanks to timezone and personal priorities conspiring in equal measure.
The organisation was a $70M group. My team covered HR, Payroll, WHS, Environment, Quality to ISO standard, and Internal Comms across two entities. Telecommunications and engineering 'in the field' meant occasional genuinely high-risk territory and regularly disproportionate 'noise' from master contractors and sub-contractors alike.
The lead-up to my departure was an executed 'burndown': critical tasks cleared, sign-offs done, coverage arranged. Then I got on the plane (in the pre-MS Teams era) and hope for the best.
When I got back three weeks later…business as usual. Nothing on fire. Stakeholders satisfied. The team had carried it without me, I had achieved "dispensibility".
It remains one of the most intrinsically rewarding moments of my career. I have a lasting fondness for each person in that team.
(Inspired with your own "escape the Winter" leave coming up? Pragma exists for the thinking you need to do, before collaborating with your team)
The quiet pride of a team that "doesn't need you" for three weeks, but is glad to have you back...is what good management feels like from the inside. And according to Gallup's 2026 State of the Global Workplace report, an increasing number of managers have stopped feeling it.
The corner office is losing it's appeal
The 2026 Gallup "State of the Global Workplace" report is out and as you can imagine, it's the kind of thing I spend my evenings reading.
Today's curiosity tidbit: Global manager engagement sat at 22% in 2025. Down nine points from 2022, including a five-point drop in a single year.
There used to be an 'engagement premium' to being a manager. The responsibility, the autonomy, the connection to outcomes and yes extrinsic rewards...managers were measurably more engaged than the people they led. That premium has gone.
Gallup frames this as 'the shrinking perk of being a manager.' Which is the polite version of: the role has become harder, the reward structures haven't kept pace, and a meaningful number of capable people are quietly asking themselves whether it's worth it.
I am fortunate for my 'emerging to mid' career experience to know that it's very much worth it! But what if you've never had the chance?
How do we explain to the next 'emerging leaders' cohort, what lies ahead of them? Ironically, we need that next generation of middle to senior managers more than ever.
Why it matters more now
Here's the counterintuitive finding buried in the same report: at the precise moment managers are disengaging, they've become the single most critical variable in whether AI adoption actually works.
Employees whose managers actively champion AI use are nearly nine times more likely to say AI has genuinely transformed how work gets done in their organisation.
Conversely, less than a third of employees in AI-implementing organisations say their manager provides that active support.
OpenAI's own 2025 enterprise report concluded that the primary constraints for organisations are no longer model performance or tooling, but organisational readiness and implementation. That's a more tactical explanation of my own surprise moment that I've written about.
The manager is the implementation.
If you're leading complex change at the Senior or Executive level...how you design your organisation will make or break them.
Why the struggle is mostly a design problem.
Declining manager engagement tracks with organisational design decisions: flattening structures, growing spans of control, fewer resources, more complexity. A role that's been asked to absorb the cumulative weight of every workforce shift since 2020 (think: remote work, return-to-office, AI disruption, "cost of living" undermining compensation packages, two consecutive years of declining employee engagement)…without commensurate support.
As I've written about in the context of distributed change leadership, the management playbook most organisations are still running assumed stable hierarchies, predictable spans, clear authority, and bounded problems. Nearly all managers in 2026 are operating in none of those conditions.
But against this tsunami of complexity, is decline inevitable?
Apparently not: In best-practice organisations, 79% of managers are engaged — nearly four times the global average. That gap is a design and investment choice, not "part of the deal" for the role.
So. Is it worth it?
Yes.
But not the way it's currently set up for most people.
The intrinsic reward of that UK trip was proof of something I'd spent a hectic 12 month building: a team capable, trusted, and motivated enough to carry the work without me, with enough trust to rely on each other.
It's unmistakable when you feel it for yourself, but I of course did not get there alone! I had a supportive CEO and my colleagues at the Exec level backed us in too.
The question I'd ask any manager right now is simpler than the Gallup data makes it sound: are you building a team you'd be proud to leave for three weeks?
If yes: it's worth the struggle. Make sure (in your own authentic way) your team knows, how highly you think of them.
If not: that's a much bigger conversation and one worth having with whoever put you in the role.
But even just trying to make things better, against whatever hard constraints you might face, put you way ahead of the global norm.
Acknowledging: Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026 full report at gallup.com. AI productivity data from MIT and NBER referenced in the report's CEO letter.