A gap has opened between three things.
1 · What people look for
Across 52 countries, Gallup asked people what they most want from the leaders in their lives. Two things stood far above the rest — hope and trust — with compassion and stability beneath them. Hope and trust alone were almost nine in ten of every answer.
What’s striking is what didn’t come first — not vision, not competence, not charisma. Above everything, people want hope: the belief that things can get better, and that there is a way forward. These aren’t soft extras. To the people being led, they are the job.
2 · What leaders feel able to give
Fewer than half of managers strongly agree they have the skills to be exceptional in the role. More than eight in ten arrived with no formal management training at all — and more than half would do almost anything to avoid the hardest part of the job: the difficult conversation.
They are also carrying the weight themselves. Seven in ten report rising stress, and four in ten have thought about leaving leadership altogether for their own wellbeing.
It isn’t that they’ve stopped caring, or lost ownership of the work. Often it’s that they have lost the expectation — even the hope — that anything will move.
You are expected to be the source of energy in the room, and nobody is asking where yours comes from.
3 · What people end up experiencing
Only one in five people are engaged at work — the lowest since 2020. Most of the rest are present but no longer really investing, and about one in six have quietly turned against it.
Underneath the numbers is a heavy daily experience: four in ten carry a lot of stress, around one in five feel loneliness, sadness or anger on an ordinary day, and only a third are genuinely thriving.
And the manager isn’t exempt. The old engagement premium has broken — managers are now barely more engaged than the people they lead. The person expected to lift the room is running as low as everyone in it.
The distance between these three is the Leadership Gap.
Sometimes that hope is still there, just stuck. Sometimes it feels as though it has gone. Resolution is how movement begins again — and how hope is recovered when it has run out.
Yet it can be resolved.
79%
of managers are engaged inside best-practice organisations
The difference isn’t luck. Where the conditions for hope and trust are deliberately built, the picture changes entirely.
Manager engagement, worldwide
Where the many sit — and what a few reach
0%Engagement →100%
22% — where most organisations sit
79% — a small minority of best-practice organisations
The shaded distance is the opportunity — engagement is set by conditions, not fate. Source: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026.
Left unmet, the Gap wears people down — their sense of who they are, what they can do, and how they keep growing. Formation works the other way.
Our most deliberate response to this gap — the practice we are investing in specifically for it — is Mediative Coaching.
Sources: Gallup — Global Leadership Report: What Followers Want and State of the Global Workplace 2026; Gallup, The Manager Squeeze; DDI Global Leadership Forecast 2025; Chartered Management Institute (2015 & 2023). Full references, with links, on the research page.
