Of all the variables that determine whether a team performs well or poorly, none is more influential than the manager. Gallup's research consistently finds that the single greatest driver of team engagement — and the team performance outcomes that follow from it — is the quality and engagement of the person leading the team. This page explores what the data show about how managers shape productivity, why manager engagement is in crisis and what organizations can do about it.
Why Do Managers Have Such an Outsized Effect on Team Productivity?
KEY INSIGHT: Gallup's research finds that 70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager, which means manager quality is the primary driver of whether a team performs well or poorly.
Managers shape the day-to-day conditions that determine workplace engagement levels. Because engagement is directly linked to workplace productivity, employee retention, profitability, quality and organizational performance, the manager's influence extends to virtually every business outcome an organization tracks.
Managers Set the Conditions for Performance
Gallup's research identifies the workplace conditions most strongly linked to engagement and performance. Most of them sit directly within a manager's span of control: whether employees know what is expected of them, whether they have opportunities to do what they do best, whether they receive recognition, and whether someone at work cares about their employee development.
When managers create these conditions consistently, teams are more productive. When they don't, engagement gaps emerge and performance follows.
Managers Are the Variable That Explains Performance Differences
Gallup finds that performance variability across teams within the same organization is explained less by compensation, strategy or company culture than by who manages each team. When a company raises engagement consistently across every business unit, Gallup finds that key outcomes improve: employee performance, employee productivity, profitability, retention, quality and customer outcomes. The manager is the mechanism through which improvements in workforce productivity happen.
The Manager Engagement Crisis
KEY INSIGHT: Manager engagement has fallen nine percentage points since 2022 — the steepest decline of any worker category — and now sits at 22% globally.
According to Gallup's 2026 State of the Global Workplace report, the largest single-year drop occurred between 2024 and 2025, when manager engagement fell five points. Individual contributor engagement, by comparison, has held relatively steady.
Managers are the primary driver of the employee experience. A disengaged manager reduces engagement in every person they lead.
The End of the Engagement Premium
Managers historically have reported higher engagement than the employees they led, what Gallup describes as an "engagement premium." That premium has essentially vanished.
Managers are now only about as engaged as the individual contributors on their teams, meaning organizations can no longer assume that the people responsible for driving team engagement are themselves invested in their work.
Who Is Most Affected
The decline has not been uniform. Gallup's data show the steepest drops among managers under 35 and female managers. In 2025, South Asia saw an eight-point decline in manager engagement — the largest of any region — with organizational flattening and AI-driven role reductions identified as contributing factors.
In best-practice organizations, 79% of managers are engaged — nearly four times the global average — demonstrating that the crisis is not inevitable.
What High-Impact Managers Do Differently
A Gallup study across 2.5 million manager-led teams in 195 countries identified five behaviors that consistently define highly effective managers and drive leadership effectiveness:
- They motivate every employee with a compelling mission and vision.
- They drive outcomes with assertiveness and overcome adversity and resistance.
- They create a culture of clear accountability.
- They build relationships based on trust, open dialogue and full transparency.
- They make decisions based on productivity, not politics.
Gallup has identified specific data behind each of these behaviors and the engagement and performance outcomes that follow when managers practice them consistently, each of which is explored below.
They Connect Employees to Mission and Vision
Only 31% of U.S. employees strongly agree that they feel connected to their organization's mission or purpose, down from 38% in 2021. The manager is the primary channel through which organizational purpose reaches the employee, making the manager's ability to translate strategy into meaning a direct driver of employee motivation, engagement and performance.
Improving the connection between employees' jobs and their organization's mission can lead to a 32% reduction in turnover and a 15% improvement in productivity. Purpose flows or fails at the manager level.
They Drive Outcomes and Hold the Line
Accountability is among the most critical and most underdeveloped management behaviors. Gallup's research finds that less than half of leaders excel at holding employees accountable, a gap that managers notice and one that directly threatens team engagement and performance.
When expectations are clear, coaching is frequent and accountability is consistent, Gallup finds that performance can be measured and teams are positioned for success. Employees experience accountability positively when it is applied fairly and consistently, seeing performance expectations as a signal that their work matters rather than as a management burden.
They Build Trust Through Transparency
Gallup's research finds a threefold increase in engagement among employees who feel they can trust their organization's leaders. Employees who trust their leaders are 61% more likely to stay with their company.
Trust is built through consistent, open manager communication. Gallup finds that 29% of employees cite a lack of clear, honest or consistent communication from leaders as a primary driver of disengagement.
High-impact managers close that gap at the team level through regular dialogue and follow-through.
They Focus on Strengths, Not Weaknesses
According to Gallup's studies on manager approach and employee engagement, a manager's focus directly dictates team dynamics:
Managers who consistently focus on strengths can achieve a 60-to-1 ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees. A 2022 Gallup replication study of 9,129 employees found that engaged employees spent five times as much of their workday using their strengths as they did working on tasks they don't do well. It also found that the relationship between strengths and engagement had grown stronger since the original research.
Gallup finds that only 37% of employees strongly agree that their supervisor focuses on their strengths, yet among that group, 61% are engaged, twice the U.S. average.
They Make Decisions Based on Performance
High-impact managers prioritize what produces results over what is organizationally convenient. Gallup's 2024 research found that out of the top five manager behaviors most important to employee engagement, four are known weaknesses among managers and one is a blind spot. Inconsistency in how performance is recognized and rewarded is among the most damaging patterns Gallup identifies.
Employees are significantly more likely to be engaged when they believe performance standards are applied fairly and consistently, when top performers are recognized and when everyone is held to the same expectations.
Gallup finds that employees who strongly agree that they receive valuable feedback about their performance are five times as likely to be engaged. When managers make decisions based on relationships or internal dynamics rather than performance, that condition erodes.
Manager Talent Is Rare, and Most Organizations Are Getting Selection Wrong
KEY INSIGHT: Companies miss out on high managerial talent in 82% of their hiring decisions, most often because they promote based on tenure or past role performance, neither of which predicts manager effectiveness.
Gallup finds that about one in 10 people possess the innate high talent required to be a great manager. Another two in 10 have enough functioning talent to perform well with the right coaching and development.
Being a high-performing engineer, salesperson or individual contributor does not indicate an ability to excel at people management.
Talent Cannot Be Replaced by Training or Engagement
Management talent is innate. Knowledge, experience and management skills can develop talent into strengths, but they cannot substitute for talent that isn't there to begin with. Gallup finds that about one in 10 people possess the innate high talent required to be a great manager and that no amount of training or experience will lead to exceptional performance without it.
The Business Case for Talent-Based Selection
Organizations that select managers based on talent realize measurable gains across every performance outcome Gallup tracks:
- 48% higher profitability
- 22% higher productivity
- 30% higher employee engagement scores
- 17% higher customer engagement scores
- 19% lower turnover
Companies that systematically select the right managers can achieve 27% higher revenue per employee than average.
The Talent Is Already There
Gallup notes that sufficient management talent exists in many organizations but that most organizations aren't finding it because they're looking in the wrong places.
Promoting top frontline performers into management roles frequently backfires. Performance in an individual contributor role does not predict performance as a manager, and organizations that rely on it as the primary selection criterion consistently miss out on the talent they need.
The problem lies in the criteria organizations use to identify it. Science-based structured interviews and assessments offer a systematic method for finding candidates with the right innate qualities, and Gallup's research shows they produce measurably better outcomes than promotion based on past individual performance.
The Manager's Role in AI Adoption
The manager is the primary variable in determining whether AI investment translates into productivity gains. Gallup identifies manager-led adoption as one of the two strongest drivers of frequent AI use, making the manager's role in AI adoption critical.
As of February 2026, half of U.S. employees use AI in their role at least a few times a year, but only 13% use it daily, and just 12% of employees in AI-implementing organizations strongly agree that AI has transformed how work gets done.
Manager Support Is the Strongest Driver of Frequent AI Use
Gallup's Q1 2026 U.S. workforce survey identified manager-led AI adoption as one of the top two drivers of frequent AI use within organizations, alongside AI integration with existing systems. The data are stark:
- Employees who strongly agree that their manager actively supports AI use: 79% use AI frequently
- Employees who do not strongly agree: 46% use AI frequently
Employees whose managers actively support AI use are also 7.4 times as likely to strongly agree that AI gives them more opportunities to do what they do best every day and 8.7 times as likely to strongly agree that AI has transformed how work gets done in their organization.
Most Managers Are Not Playing That Role
Only one in five employees (21%) strongly agree that their manager supports their team's use of AI. Bottlenecks in AI adoption frequently stem from unclear use cases and resistance at the manager and frontline levels, not from lack of tools or executive investment.
Managers who actively support AI adoption help their teams identify where tools fit into existing workflows and where they solve real problems. Those who don't support its adoption create a gap between organizational investment in AI and the productivity gains that investment is meant to produce.
What Effective Manager Support Looks Like
Gallup identifies four practices associated with higher AI adoption and stronger employee evaluations of its benefits:
- Communicate a clear strategy for AI integration: Employees are significantly more likely to engage with AI when they understand their organization's approach and see it as intentional rather than ad hoc.
- Champion AI use at the team level: Managers who model AI use, connect it to the work employees actually do and explain its value move organizational strategy from abstract to practical.
- Address concerns directly: The top barrier to AI adoption that employees cite is an unclear use case or value proposition; managers who engage with those concerns rather than dismissing them accelerate adoption.
- Integrate AI into existing workflows: Employees are far more likely to use AI regularly when it fits naturally into how they already work rather than requiring parallel processes.
Only 25% of U.S. employees strongly agree that their organization has communicated a clear plan for integrating AI. Managers are the primary mechanism for closing that gap at the team level.
What HR and C-Suite Leaders Can Do Right Now
Gallup finds that HR and C-suite leaders can take four actions to improve manager performance and team productivity:
- Select managers based on talent, not tenure or past performance in another role.
- Invest in coaching-focused manager development and leadership development.
- Hold managers accountable for team engagement scores.
- Ensure managers are themselves engaged.
Each is explored below.
Select Managers Based on Talent, Not Tenure
The single highest-leverage change most organizations can make is to change the criteria they use to select managers. Gallup finds that companies miss out on high managerial talent 82% of the time, primarily because they promote based on tenure or individual performance in a previous role. Neither predicts management effectiveness.
Science-based talent assessments and structured interviews offer a systematic method for identifying candidates with the innate talent to manage. Gallup's research shows that roughly one in 10 people have the talent to lead, and in most organizations, those people are not currently in a manager role.
Invest in Coaching-Focused Manager Development
Gallup finds that only 44% of managers globally have received any manager training, although basic management training cuts active manager disengagement in half. Coaching-focused development — focused on strengths, meaningful conversations, and ongoing feedback rather than administrative skills — produces stronger results:
- Managers who receive coaching-focused training improve their own engagement by up to 22%.
- Their teams improve engagement by up to 18%.
- Teams see 21% to 28% lower turnover.
- Managers show a 20% to 28% higher likelihood of performance improvement.
Gallup's primary recommendation for organizations that want to improve management quality is to develop managers to become coaches, shifting the focus from managing tasks to developing people.
Hold Managers Accountable for Team Engagement
Team engagement should be part of every manager's performance management process. Gallup recommends that organizations measure engagement at the team level — not just as an organizational average — and hold managers accountable for their team's results.
This means setting a minimum standard for engagement, using team-level engagement data as a diagnostic tool in manager conversations, and taking action when patterns of low engagement persist. Consequences — including changing managers — should exist for sustained underperformance on engagement. Organizations that treat engagement as a performance metric rather than a survey exercise see measurably different outcomes.
Ensure Managers Are Themselves Engaged
Disengaged managers cannot build engaged teams. Given that manager engagement has fallen nine points since 2022, organizations cannot assume that people in management roles are invested in their work.
Gallup identifies three actions leaders can take to improve manager engagement specifically: Communicate clearly and consistently so managers understand what is expected of them and why their role matters; invest in ongoing development rather than one-time training; and ensure managers have the support, tools and authority they need to do their jobs without being overwhelmed. Organizations that apply these practices consistently see substantially higher manager engagement. In best-practice organizations, 79% of managers are engaged, nearly four times the global average.
Frequently Asked Questions About Managers and Productivity
What percentage of managers are engaged at work?
As of Gallup's 2026 State of the Global Workplace report, 22% of managers globally are engaged at work, down from 31% in 2022. This nine-point decline is the steepest of any worker category. In best-practice organizations, however, 79% of managers are engaged, demonstrating that high manager engagement is achievable with the right selection, development and support practices in place.
How much do managers impact employee productivity?
Managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement scores, and engagement is directly linked to productivity. Gallup finds that highly engaged teams achieve 14% higher productivity in production environments and 18% higher productivity in sales organizations compared with less engaged teams. Because manager quality determines team engagement, manager quality is the primary driver of team productivity.
How does manager engagement affect employee engagement?
Gallup calls this the cascade effect. Employees supervised by highly engaged managers are 59% more likely to be engaged than those supervised by actively disengaged managers. The reverse is also true: When managers are disengaged, engagement declines in the people they lead. This is why Gallup identifies the nine-point decline in global manager engagement since 2022 as the primary cause of the broader decline in global employee engagement.
What makes a manager effective at driving team performance?
Gallup has identified five traits of great managers: inspiring teams to get exceptional work done, setting goals and arranging resources so teams can excel, influencing others to act and pushing through adversity and resistance, building committed teams with strong bonds, and taking an analytical approach to strategy and decision-making. Great managers also have weekly coaching conversations with their employees to provide real-time feedback and ensure employees know whether they’re on the right track.
How can HR improve manager quality at scale?
Gallup's research points to four actions: Select managers based on talent using science-based assessments rather than tenure or prior role performance; invest in coaching-focused development rather than administrative skills training; hold managers accountable for team-level engagement scores as a performance metric; and ensure managers are themselves engaged by communicating clear expectations, providing ongoing development, and giving them the support they need to do their jobs effectively.
What is the cascade effect in employee engagement?
The cascade effect is Gallup's term for the way engagement flows downward through an organization's leadership hierarchy. When executive teams are highly engaged, the managers who report to them are 39% more likely to be engaged. When managers are highly engaged, the employees they lead are 59% more likely to be engaged. The reverse is equally true: Disengagement at the top travels downward through every layer of management until it reaches the front line. The cascade effect is why Gallup identifies the nine-point decline in manager engagement since 2022 as the primary driver of the broader decline in global employee engagement.
How does manager support affect AI productivity?
Manager support is one of the two strongest drivers of frequent AI use, alongside workflow integration. Among employees whose managers actively support AI use, 79% use it frequently, compared with 46% among those whose managers don't support AI use. They are also 8.7 times as likely to say AI has transformed how work gets done in their organization and 7.4 times as likely to say AI gives them more opportunities to do their best work. Despite this, only 21% of employees strongly agree that their manager actively supports their team's use of AI, making manager AI fluency one of the most underleveraged productivity tools available to organizations right now.
Start Building a High-Impact Management Culture
Manager quality is the single greatest lever organizations have for improving team engagement and productivity. Gallup works with leaders to identify management talent, develop coaching capabilities, and build the practices that drive measurable improvements in performance, retention and business outcomes.
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