.
Image: Hannah/Adobe Stock]
When Stephen, the SVP of sales at a SaaS company, sat down with his top-performing manager, he expected a routine check-in. Instead, Todd admitted that he felt disengaged and unsupported. With 13 direct reports and responsibility for major clients, Stephen saw firsthand how disengagement at the manager level could cascade into risks for client retention, team morale, and overall performance.
This isn’t an isolated case. Motivation is slipping at a historic pace. Gallup reports global engagement dropped to 21% in 2024, just the second decline in over a decade, draining $438 billion in lost productivity. This time, managers themselves are at the center of the decline. They drive 70% of team engagement, yet they are being squeezed harder than ever—expected to deliver more with less while navigating AI training, role replacement, reorganisations, leaner teams, multigenerational friction, and relentless productivity pressure. The result is burnout, resignations, or “hanging-on” managers, those who can’t quit in a tough job market but are already mentally checked out.
At the same time, expectations are rising. Deloitte’s 2025 Global Human Capital Trends found that 36% of managers lack confidence in their people management skills, even as employees increasingly expect personalised support tailored to their needs. Others experience “quiet cracking,” where they stay in a role but emotionally withdraw, leading to a disengagement that spreads quickly across organisations. Traditional motivational levers are no longer enough.
We have seen it firsthand. Kathryn, as an executive coach and keynote speaker, and Jenny, as an executive adviser and learning & development expert, bring frontline insights from coaching senior leaders and building systems that scale. The five strategies that follow demonstrate how leaders can reignite manager motivation, enabling companies to stay focused and compete at the pace of change.
Motivation collapses when people feel set up to fail. Managers are often overloaded with unclear priorities, competing demands, and insufficient resources. To reignite engagement, leaders must remove barriers and clarify what “winning” looks like.
Gallup research highlights three levers with outsized impact:
When leaders invest in these conditions, they address managers’ most immediate concerns. The implicit message is that managers are valued enough to be adequately equipped for impact, not just held accountable for outcomes.
Tools like the Organisational Mattering Scale and Organisational Mattering Map (introduced by Positive Psychology experts) make these linkages visible.
When leaders spotlight these connections, managers see their impact more clearly, strengthening engagement and fostering a culture where employees feel both effective and valued.
Motivation isn’t one-size-fits-all. Employees want personalised support, and so do managers. Leaders can spark motivation by connecting daily work not only to the company’s mission but also to a manager’s individual values.
That’s exactly what Stephen did with Todd. He codified the conditions that would restore Todd’s confidence: a larger travel budget to strengthen client relationships, continued presence at key industry trade shows, resources for pilot projects, flexibility after heavy travel weeks, and a dedicated training budget for his team to upskill in AI and leadership. He also reframed Todd’s role around his core value of client impact—sharing customer feedback that credited Todd’s leadership with strengthening their business. That simple shift helped Todd reconnect to why the work mattered and reignited his energy.
Conditions for winning go beyond resources and clarity; managers also need growth opportunities, advancement pathways, and visible signals that the company values their long-term potential.
Across the companies we advise, leaders who codify a consistent set of Essential Engagement Conditions—clarity, recognition, development, autonomy, fairness, and well-being—see stronger performance at scale. Meaning fuels persistence. When impact feels tangible, managers push forward not because they have to, but because they want to.
Nothing drains motivation faster than feeling invisible. If meaning connects managers to why their work matters, recognition ensures their contributions don’t go unnoticed. It’s not only about celebrating big wins, but also about making progress visible. Research on the “progress principle” shows that small wins fuel motivation and creativity, while the absence of visible progress accelerates disengagement.
The risk of “quiet cracking” increases when managers feel their efforts go unseen. That’s why recognition should extend beyond outcomes to include effort, growth, and problem-solving under pressure. And it shouldn’t come only from senior leaders. Peer forums, cross-functional huddles, and manager roundtables where colleagues acknowledge each other’s wins reduce isolation and normalise the challenges of leadership.
For Stephen, that meant recognising Todd not just for results, but for the steady progress—piloting new approaches, building his team’s skills, and strengthening client relationships. By valuing effort and learning as much as outcomes, Stephen reinforced that what mattered was progress, not perfection.
Recognition is one of the lowest-cost, highest-return levers leaders have. Use it generously, consistently, and strategically.
Few things demotivate faster than being micromanaged. Autonomy is central to motivation yet return-to-office mandates and monitoring tools like AI dashboards tempt leaders to over-control, sending a signal of distrust that corrodes engagement.
Managers thrive when they’re trusted to exercise judgment. At a fintech firm we advised, the COO shifted from detailed weekly reports to a principle-based system: clear outcomes with freedom to decide the “how.” Productivity rose, and morale followed.
This approach taps two motivational drivers. Self-efficacy, the belief in one’s own ability to succeed, grows when managers are trusted to make decisions and learn from experience. Value-expectancy theory shows people are most motivated when they believe their effort leads to valued outcomes. Setting clear goals while allowing flexibility reinforces both confidence and commitment.
Trust itself is a motivator. When leaders empower autonomy, they signal confidence in managers’ abilities, and managers rise to meet that expectation.
Motivation and well-being are inseparable. Gallup finds that managers report the highest rates of burnout, and when they burn out, their direct reports are 62% more likely to do the same. Stress and exhaustion don’t just drain energy; they accelerate “quiet cracking” and leave organisations vulnerable to turnover and lost capacity.
Leaders must go beyond surface-level wellness perks. The World Economic Forum highlights resilience and mental health as core leadership capabilities, not add-ons. Real support means modelling boundaries, encouraging recovery, and equipping managers with tools to sustain energy. One global bank we coach instituted “no-meeting Fridays” for its management layer, creating protected space for reflection, deep work, or recovery. The move signalled that well-being wasn’t optional; it was part of performance.
Resilient managers don’t just sustain themselves; they set the tone for resilient teams. When leaders prioritise well-being, they preserve individual and organisational capacity.
Stephen’s quick action with Todd underscored this point: when managers feel supported, they stay motivated and so do their teams. Because managers are the single biggest driver of employee engagement, their energy is a force multiplier and the foundation of performance.
Motivated managers are the difference between organisations that struggle and those that thrive. Invest in them, and you invest in your company’s future.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jenny Fernandez, MBA, is an executive coach and leadership development expert who partners with senior leaders and their teams to become more adaptive, effective, and resilient. She is a faculty member at Columbia University and NYU, and is a contributor to Fast Company and Harvard Business Review. A TEDx speaker and corporate leadership facilitator, Jenny brings over two decades of global business experience to her work.
Kathryn Landis is an executive coach and keynote speaker who helps senior leaders and their teams thrive in high-stakes moments—stepping into new roles, navigating change, and accelerating team performance. She is an executive educator at New York University, and her insights have been featured in Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, and Forbes.
FAST COMPANY