Middle Management Is Breaking: Let’s Rethink Their Role Before It’s Too Late

The New Gallup Stat That Should Make Every Leader Pause

The headlines from Gallup's 2025 State of the Global Workplace report are stark:
      🧯 Global employee engagement remains low.
      🔥 Burnout is on the rise.

But the stat that hit me hardest?
Only 30% of managers are engaged at work.

Let that sink in.

The people we rely on to set the tone, uphold culture, and carry out organizational strategy... are exhausted. Disillusioned. Quietly burning out. Not because they don’t care, but because they’re expected to lead without the tools, support, or systems to do it effectively.

Middle Managers: Your Culture Carriers Are Cracking Under the Pressure

According to Gallup, manager engagement is now lower than both frontline workers and senior leaders. Here’s what that looks like inside the organizations I support across California and beyond:

• Managers are doing two jobs for the price of one
• Asked to be both strategist and therapist
• Held responsible for culture but excluded from shaping it
• Pressured to “lead like a coach” without any coaching development

This isn’t just poor delegation.
It’s a systemic failure to redefine what it means to manage well.

And it’s breaking them.

The Disconnect I See in Organizations Every Day

In nearly every public agency, mission-driven org, or educational institution we support, I see the same tension:

✔️ Executives want traction on strategic priorities
✔️ Employees want clarity, purpose, and growth
❗ And managers are left translating goals they didn’t help set into results they can’t own

This is where culture starts to crack.

When middle managers are expected to lead transformation without support, we see stalled initiatives, quiet quitting, and disengagement up and down the org chart.

Why Middle Managers Are Struggling to Keep Up

Let’s be honest, many managers were promoted for doing excellent work as individual contributors, but leading humans is an entirely different skill set.

Add to that:

• Being asked to “lead like a coach” without formal coaching development
• Balancing expectations from both senior leaders and direct reports
• Playing therapist, translator, strategist, and executor… often in the same day

It’s no wonder so many feel like they’re failing. Not because they’re not capable, but because the system they’re operating in is broken.

This Isn’t Just Burnout – It’s Identity

One of the most overlooked aspects of leadership development is unlearning—not just what we do, but what we believe makes someone a “good manager.” We talk a lot about adding new skills, but what about the outdated beliefs managers are still holding on to?

We’ve been conditioned to equate leadership with:

• Having all the answers — “A good leader should know everything.”
• Controlling the outcomes — “If something goes wrong, it’s on me.”
• Protecting the team from discomfort — “I need to shield my team from anything hard.”

These aren’t just behaviors. They’re identity attachments, and when we try to evolve leadership without addressing identity, we create resistance. This is not because managers don’t want to change, but because it feels like they’re being asked to become someone else… without support.

In fast-moving, people-centered organizations, these outdated beliefs block growth. They rob managers of the opportunity to redefine their identity around what’s actually needed: trust-building, boundary-setting, facilitation, accountability, and shared ownership.

[If you want to dive deeper into how identity shapes leadership behaviors, I explore this in my article: The Missing Piece in Habit Formation.]

What Happens When Managers Are Left Behind

Disengaged managers create disengaged teams. That’s not an opinion, it’s a fact backed by decades of research. When managers are overwhelmed, unclear, or unsupported, it ripples across the entire organization: Goals get misaligned, Feedback disappears, Trust erodes, High performers leave

The impact isn’t just cultural, it’s financial. Gallup estimates that low engagement costs the global economy $8.9 trillion annually. And a massive portion of that is rooted in poor or inconsistent management.

Systems, Not Symptoms: What Needs to Shift

At Conscious Leadership Partners, our work focuses on changing systems, not just treating symptoms – because here’s what I know:

✨ A burned-out manager isn’t always a capacity issue. 

It’s often a role clarity issue.

✨ A disengaged team isn’t always about workload. 

It’s often about trust, autonomy, or feedback breakdowns.

✨ A manager struggling to “hold people accountable…” 

Often hasn’t been given the tools to share ownership rather than carry it all.

We’ve worked with public agencies, educational institutions, and mission-driven organizations where the real transformation came from redefining the role of the manager, not just training them harder.

That means:

• Teaching managers to transfer ownership instead of holding it all
• Realigning one-on-ones so direct reports lead the conversation
• Embedding feedback and decision-making structures that work across generations and teams

“I came into this work depleted. I left with renewed purpose, trust in my team, and the tools to lead differently.”

— Michael, Government Agency [2024]

Small shifts. Huge results.

This Is Why We Built The Great Realignment™

We created The Great Realignment™ to help organizations actually support the people they expect to lead. It’s not a workshop, it’s a system-wide reset that moves teams from:

• Reactive leadership → Responsive culture
• Disengagement → Shared ownership
• Stalled initiatives → Aligned momentum

When we give middle managers the tools — and the permission — to lead differently, we don’t just improve morale. We create the kind of clarity, accountability, and trust that makes sustainable performance possible.

If You’re in HR or on the Executive Team…

You don’t need another report to tell you what you’re already feeling on the ground.

You’ve seen the signs:
Middle managers stretched thin.
Burnout disguised as “business as usual.”
Promising leaders quietly disengaging—or walking out the door.

So the real question is:
Will you wait for next year’s Gallup report to validate the cost?
Or will you take action now to support the leaders holding your culture together?

If you’re ready to stop treating burnout like a personal shortcoming—and start addressing the systems that create it—let’s talk.

This isn’t about checking the “training” box.
It’s about rewiring how leadership actually functions in your organization.

And if you’re looking for the highest-leverage place to begin?
Start with your managers.

Not just because Gallup says so—
But because in every organization we support, it’s where we’ve seen the greatest return:
Stronger engagement.
Clearer accountability.
Real, lasting culture change.

Managers are your culture carriers. Let’s stop setting them up to fail.

📅 Want to explore what this could look like in your organization?

Let’s make it real.

👉 Schedule a Complimentary Strategy Call
👉 Book Carolina to Speak

Conscious Leadership Partners

We are your culture catalysts, future-proofing organizational culture by reimagining talent development to enhance collaboration, innovation, and growth with the Unlearning Advantage.

🔂 Follow Carolina Caro for more on building trust and sustainable growth.

♻ Repost this to inspire supervisors to unlearn and lead with intention.

Ready to break free from reactive chaos?
Schedule a strategy session to support the leaders who need it most.