Leadership · May 2026

Who coaches the people at the top?

The Gallup 2026 report reveals something that should concern every organisation, and every leader.

One number stood out.

20%.

That's the share of employees who are engaged at work. The lowest since 2020. Down for the second consecutive year.

But this is the finding that really landed for me. Leaders report higher life satisfaction than those they lead. And yet, compared to individual contributors, they are significantly more likely to report stress, anger, sadness, and loneliness on any given day.

Higher up. Better story. Harder days.

That gap between how we think our life is going and how we actually experience it day to day, that's the territory I've worked in for 30 years. Most of the leaders I've coached weren't struggling with performance. They were struggling with what high performance costs them.

The leadership paradox

Gallup calls this the gap between the reflective self and the experiencing self. For leaders, that gap is wider than for anyone else in the organisation. The largest single-year drop in manager engagement was five points, between 2024 and 2025.

The question I keep coming back to

We invest heavily in developing leaders. What we give them far less of is space, space to be honest about what the role is actually costing them.

Who coaches the people at the top? In my experience, not enough people do.

Still learning. Still moving forward.