It is day three of the typical monthly report cycle at a head office in Singapore. The finance manager, promoted from senior accountant 18 months ago, has every report in on time. Nothing is late, and nothing is wrong. But the two analysts who used to bring her process ideas have stopped. Variances get explained and never questioned. The planning review used to run over, but now finishes 20 minutes early because nobody pushes back.
No one on the leadership team would call her disengaged. She has not complained, missed a deadline or asked for a transfer. That is the problem.
Read more: The Great Hunkering Down: What the Data Actually Shows and Why Leaders Should Care Now
Key takeaways
- Disengaged managers seldom refuse work. They comply, withdraw their discretionary effort and stay put, which makes them easy to miss.
- Gallup reports that manager engagement fell from 31 per cent in 2022 to 22 per cent in 2025, and managers account for 70 per cent of the variance in team engagement.
- The main causes are due to overload, wider spans, promotion without preparation, and nobody asking managers how they are coping.
- Early signs include missing feedback, stalled decisions, overloaded top performers, cancelled one-to-ones and silence upwards.
- Diagnose capability against motivation first, then assess, train and listen.
Why manager disengagement matters now
Disengaged managers are now the biggest single drag on engagement at work worldwide. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 report found that manager engagement fell from 31 per cent in 2022 to 22 per cent in 2025 [1]. The steepest one-year fall, from 27 to 22 per cent, came between 2024 and 2025.
Gallup says lower engagement among managers accounts for most of the recent fall in global employee engagement, which slipped to 20 per cent. Ironically, Gallup used to label a past trend, called the “engagement premium”, as managers consistently achieving higher engagement levels than their subordinates. Today, they are increasingly only as engaged as the people they lead, with non-managers at 19 per cent.
Read more: Why Are We Procrastinating At Work?
This matters because of another long-standing Gallup finding: managers alone account for 70 per cent of the variance in team engagement [2]. They play the “connector” role, bridging the senior leadership’s vision with employees, who actually “paint the real picture” every day. When the person in the middle switches off, the team usually follows.
What does the situation look like in South-East Asian businesses?
Gallup’s 2026 country data put employee engagement at 9 per cent in Vietnam [3], 14 per cent in Singapore [4], 25 per cent in Malaysia [5], and 34 per cent in Thailand [6], against a regional average of 25 per cent [3]. In Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong, the Achievers Workforce Institute’s 2026 Engagement and Retention Report (APAC edition) found that only 15 per cent of employees feel connected to their manager, and just 10 per cent have regular one-to-ones [7].
Read more: Why Do Your Employees Quit? 5 Typical Causes of High Turnover Rate
How about costs?
In the same report, Gallup estimates that low engagement cost the world economy about US$10 trillion in lost productivity last year, or 9 per cent of global GDP [1]. Much of that loss sits at the management layer, where strategy either becomes action or stalls.
Disengagement does not mean “I’m not doing this”
A disengaged manager rarely refuses work. On the contrary, they still get things done and according to expectations. What changes is the discretionary effort, judgement and care, all things that make a manager worth their salary, quietly drain away.
They are, in other words, “quietly quitting“, or psychologically detached, putting in time but not energy or passion into their work. What is alarming is that most disengaged managers are the quiet kind.
In a manager, quiet disengagement tends to look like this:
- They deliver their own outputs but stop developing anyone else.
- They pass leadership messages down word for word, without explaining or challenging them.
- They attend every meeting and offer nothing unprompted.
- They fix the problems that land on their desk and stop looking for the ones that haven’t yet.
- They stay in the role, but that does not always guarantee commitment.
Board-certified organisational psychologist, professional speaker, consultant, and author Jennifer Wisdom argues that what looks like a motivation problem is often a competence problem [8]. A manager who feels unprepared is unlikely to admit to a skills gap. They are more likely to say they are exhausted, that nothing ever changes, or that they will deal with it later.
According to Wisdom, identifying the correct cause can help pinpoint the solutions. A disengaged manager who lacks competency cannot be lifted by a few words of praise; they need training, structure, and support.
Read more: Help! My Boss Just Doesn’t Understand Me!
Why do managers disengage?
Managers mostly disengage because the role has grown faster than the support behind it. Spans are wider, pressure comes from both above and below, training is thin, and fewer people ask how they are coping.
1. The middle-manager squeeze
Middle managers translate strategy into daily work. That makes them the first to absorb every change program, restructure and new system. Yet, 75 per cent reportedly believe their managers are overwhelmed by increased job responsibilities.
Kathy Lavinder, Founder and Executive Director of SI placement, described mid-level management as “thankless jobs, taking incoming flak from above and below” [9], whose jobs are constantly being threatened by AI through flattening company structures, thus gradually eliminating middle-management positions [10]
2. Promoted for the wrong reasons, then left alone
Many managers are promoted because they were excellent individual contributors, a.k.a., promoted for their performance. However, moving from executor to manager requires an entirely new skill set because they are completely different jobs. Did you know 82 per cent of people entering management are “accidental managers” because they lack formal leadership training?
Worse, many are pushed into the role against their will and may eventually become the reason one in three employees quits [11].
Not many are “natural leaders” from birth. The skills, as a result, can be further developed through proper training and coaching. Therefore, it is understandable that most feel overwhelmed, stressed, or burned out at work.
3. The reluctant Gen Z factor
The next generation of managers, Gen Z, is arriving with mixed feelings about the role. However, they do not want to be middle managers because the role is too stressful and offers far too little reward. 72 per cent would rather progress through individual growth and skills, meaning building their own brand and bringing their “whole self” to projects rather than spending time managing others [12].
Nevertheless, too much focus on the “individual” and their personal growth can significantly harm the business down the line since few people want to be the “bridge” now.
Read more: Gen Z’s Expectations for Leadership Are Reshaping Modern Workplaces
4. Nobody asks the manager how they are doing
Managers are expected to run one-to-one evaluation sessions while also coaching, acknowledging, engaging, and retaining talent. Yet these managers have no similar support framework, and no one asks if they are doing okay.
In the same Achievers Workforce Institute’s 2026 Engagement and Retention Report, just a shy 22 per cent of businesses included manager development in their investment. Additionally, only 13 per cent of HR leaders prioritise leadership and manager effectiveness in 2026.
What are the signs of a disengaged manager?
The clearest signs of a disengaged manager are changes in behaviour. For instance, feedback comes less and less often and eventually dries up, decisions stall, the same few people get every important task, the manager slips back into doing the work themselves, and they stop raising problems upwards.
The table below draws on Wisdom’s observation that these signals are often mislabelled.
| Sign | What you see | Often mislabelled as | Possible root cause |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feedback goes quiet | Performance issues drift for months | Laziness or avoidance | Doesn’t know how to hold a difficult conversation without damaging trust |
| Decisions pile up | Approvals sit, issues escalate | Control or indecision | Unclear authority, accountability or acceptable risk |
| The same two people get everything | Top performers overloaded, others idle | Favouritism | Can’t delegate or develop weaker team members |
| Back on the tools | Manager does analyst-level work at night | Dedication | Falling back on what worked before promotion |
| Messages pass through unfiltered | “Management decided” with no context | Loyalty to leadership | Disconnected from strategy, or no longer believes in it |
| One-to-ones cancelled first | Calendar full, team time missing | Busyness | Overload, or doubts about their coaching ability |
| Silence upwards | No challenge in planning or forecast reviews | Agreement | Belief that raising issues changes nothing |
Watch the team, too, because its behaviour often shifts before the manager’s does. Team-level warning signs to track alongside the above-mentioned ones:
- More resignations or transfer requests from one team than its peers
- Exit comments that mention “my manager”, workload or lack of support
- Falling participation in surveys, meetings or optional projects
Can you re-engage a disengaged manager?
The short answer is: it’s possible to re-ignite the spark in disengaged managers. The challenge is identifying the causes, whether it is capability, workload, role clarity, or motivation issues. A pep talk will not close a skills gap, and training will not fix an impossible span of control.
For TRG International, our view is that most manager disengagement is predictable and can be prevented if organisations look at the right evidence at the right moments: before promotion, in the first year, and whenever the role changes.
We recommend that HR and business leaders consider the following practical steps:
- Separate “can’t” from “won’t”. Use structured assessment and feedback to tell capability gaps apart from motivational ones.
- Assess readiness before promotion, not after. Look at management potential in addition to technical performance.
- Clarify decision rights. Ask managers whether they know which decisions they own and whether they can handle performance problems directly and fairly.
- Train for the hard moments. There will be times when managers have to play the “bad guy” and make tough decisions. Therefore, businesses should not focus only on improving leaders’ efficacy or knowledge; they should also strengthen feedback, delegation, prioritisation, and conflict management.
- Ask them directly. A stay interview with the manager, led by their own leader, often surfaces problems a survey misses.
TRG offers Great People Inside (GPI) psychometric assessments for assessing candidates, employees, managers and teams across the employee life cycle. More specifically:
- Before promotion evaluation using GR8 Managers to identify management potential as well as their strengths and weaknesses through behavioural traits such as Engagement, Initiative, Assertiveness, Vision, Strategy, Leadership and Managing Generations, along with cognitive reasoning measures.
- “First year” evaluation using GR8 360° to gather feedback on more than 50 managerial skills and competencies, including Active Listening, Task Delegation, Talent Development, Team Motivation and Conflict Management. It shows a new manager where the gaps are and gives HR a clear basis for development plans.
- When pressure builds, businesses can use GR8 Wellbeing to assess dimensions such as Stress and Resilience, Energy and Vitality, and Connection to Others.
However, assessments do not replace genuine conversations, and they do not predict the possibility that a person will resign. Insights from the assessment serve as a basis for leaders to ask better questions and target development spending where the evidence points.
Want to know which of your managers are ready, stretched or at risk? See how Great People Inside assessments can help your organisation identify management potential and development gaps by downloading our brochure today!
FAQs
What is a disengaged manager? Gallup describes “not engaged” employees as putting in time but not energy or passion. A disengaged manager still does the job but has withdrawn their discretionary effort, energy and care. Typical signs include minimal feedback, stalled decisions, and little team development.
Why do new managers disengage so quickly? Many are promoted for technical performance and receive little preparation.
Are there any available solutions to help identify disengagement risk? Assessments such as those developed by Great People Inside can show capability gaps, development needs and wellbeing indicators. However, they only support conversations and do not predict resignations on their own.
References:
1. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx
2. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/285674/improve-employee-engagement-workplace.aspx
3. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/707642/state-global-workplace-vietnam-country-level-data.aspx
4. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/707378/state-global-workplace-thailand-country-level-data.aspx
5. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/706178/state-global-workplace-malaysia-country-level-data.aspx
6. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/707378/state-global-workplace-thailand-country-level-data.aspx
7. https://www.achievers.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2026-Engagement-and-Retention-Report-APAC-edition.pdf
8. https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbescoachescouncil/2026/07/20/disengaged-managers-train-them/
9. https://www.asisonline.org/security-management-magazine/latest-news/today-in-security/2026/april/Manager-Disengagement-at-Work/
10. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-10-22-gartner-unveils-top-predictions-for-it-organizations-and-users-in-2025-and-beyond
11. https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1844443/accidental-managers-without-proper-leadership-training-contributing-almost-one-three-workers-walking-out-research-finds
12. https://www.robertwalters.co.uk/insights/news/blog/conscious-unbossing.html
