Supervisors Reveal Higher Occurrences of Negativity Than Subordinates - Exploring Why This Is Significant
Modern workplace managers often carry immense pressure while remaining misunderstood. They're expected to be culture carriers, performance drivers, and emotional support systems all while being under constant stress.
Recent research by Gallup reveals that managers are becoming less engaged at work and report higher negative daily experiences. This isn't simply a mental health issue; it's a performance crisis. A huge 70% of team engagement comes down to the manager, and when they're depleted, it cascades throughout the organization, impacting culture, performance, and innovation.
Managers face numerous challenges, including a lack of time and resources to grow, emotional demands, and the pressure to perform. Despite their best efforts, many managers feel they haven't mastered essential skills such as team engagement, performance management, developing people, and shaping careers.
With AI becoming more prevalent, there's hope that it may help lighten the manager's load. By managing schedules, budgets, updates, and reports, AI could give managers the valuable time they desperately need to coach, reflect, and develop their teams. However, AI can't replace the human touch in empathy, coaching, and culture-building areas where humans still excel.
The Oracle study discovered that people trust robots more than their managers for maintaining schedules, solving problems, and delivering unbiased data. But when it comes to empathy, coaching, and shaping culture, humans still lead. As AI takes on more operational tasks, the differentiating factors for human managers will shift. It won't be about data tracking but about holding better conversations, trust-building, reading the room, and having tough dialogues.
The challenge lies not in automating the stress but in investing in a new kind of support. Tailored and individualized development, embedded learning, emotional check-ins, upskilling in key areas, and redefining what success looks like are necessary to engage and empower managers.
By refueling managers through personalized support, embedded learning, and emotional check-ins, we can prevent burnout and foster a workforce capable of delivering exceptional performance. Good managers are invaluable assets; investing in them will ensure their continued success and benefit the entire organization.
- The widespread burnout among managers is not just a mental health concern; it's a performance crisis, as revealed by Gallup's recent research.
- Managers are expected to be culture carriers, performance drivers, and emotional support systems, which often leads to immense pressure and emotional demands.
- Despite their best intentions, many managers struggle with essential skills such as team engagement, performance management, developing people, and shaping careers.
- AI might help lighten the manager's load by managing schedules, budgets, updates, and reports, providing the time needed for coaching, reflection, and team development.
- However, AI can't replace the human touch in empathy, coaching, and culture-building, areas where humans still excel.
- To prevent burnout and foster a workforce delivering exceptional performance, it's crucial to invest in tailored and individualized development, embedded learning, emotional check-ins, upskilling in key areas, and redefining what success looks like for managers.
