What the World’s Workforce Is Telling Us, and Why Dealers Should Listen
Something is breaking under the surface of nearly every business right now - and the data just confirmed it.
Gallup’s recent 140+ page State of the Global Workplace 2025 report shows worldwide employee engagement fell from 23% to 21%, the sharpest drop since the pandemic. That two-point slide might sound small, but Gallup estimates it cost the global economy $438 billion in lost productivity.
But the real story isn’t just the frontline.
It’s the managers.
The 27 Percent Problem
Manager engagement dropped from 30% to 27%; the lowest in years. Younger managers and female leaders saw the biggest declines. Gallup lists the culprits: post-COVID turnover, restructures, digital overload, and the rise of AI tools that changed expectations faster than people could adapt. Managers have become the shock absorbers between executive ambition and employee reality.
And the shocks are getting harder.
When Managers Slip, Everyone Slips
Gallup says 70% of team engagement comes directly from the manager.
That means when your managers are disengaged, the damage multiplies down the org chart.
In dealership terms:
If your desk manager is drained, your floor loses rhythm. If your service manager stops believing leadership has their back, customers feel it at the counter. If your BDC lead tunes out, appointments dry up.
You can’t out-CRM a burned-out manager.
The Emotional Toll of Leading
HBR’s July 2025 piece, “Leading Is Emotionally Draining,” put it plainly:
“You have to lay off a team member, deliver hard feedback, end the day absorbing the resignation of a top performer. No crisis. Just another Tuesday.” - Harvard Business Review, July 2025
That’s the modern leadership reality: constant pressure, constant people problems, no emotional recovery. It’s not laziness; it’s emotional depletion.
Leaders are running on fumes from a thousand small cuts: every decision, every escalation, every “we need to talk.”
In dealerships, that pressure compounds. You’re managing deals, OEM updates, service bottlenecks, customer escalations, and tech integrations; often before lunch.
The Manager Availability Crisis
There’s a new kind of burnout happening: time bankruptcy.
Most General Managers and department heads aren’t disengaged because they don’t care — they’re just booked solid from open to close. Vendor calls, factory meetings, budget reviews, one-on-ones, HR escalations, survey prep - rinse, repeat.
They’re operating like inboxes, not leaders.
And that’s dangerous, because when time disappears, so does leadership presence.
Reflection disappears.
Coaching disappears.
Listening disappears.
And communication? It becomes reactive instead of proactive - or even worse, corrective.
Reactive to corrective is a death loop right there.
Gallup’s data backs this up: managers now report the lowest “thriving” rates in the workforce — and the most common cause of burnout is lack of control over time.
If a GM can’t even answer a text, it’s not a sign of apathy. It’s a system that’s eaten its own capacity.
The Human Math of Engagement
Here’s why this matters.
When engagement rises:
Productivity jumps
Absenteeism drops
Customer relationships strengthen
Profitability follows
When engagement falls, all of that reverses - quietly, then suddenly. Every manager who burns out takes performance, loyalty, and culture down a notch with them.
The Fix Isn’t a New App - It’s Training and Recovery
Gallup and HBR align on the same solution: rebuild leadership capacity from the inside out.
Gallup’s three-part roadmap:
Train every manager. Only 44% have ever had management training. Training alone cuts “active disengagement” in half .
Teach coaching, not command. Great coaching lifts manager performance 20–28% and boosts team engagement 18%.
Invest in wellbeing. Manager “thriving” jumps from 28% to 50% when leaders get both training and ongoing development.
HBR’s three-step recovery model:
Reflect – Pause long enough to notice what drained you and why.
Reframe – Find the growth or meaning in the moment.
Restore – Detach, rest, learn something new, or protect your time.
It’s science-backed, not soft. You can measure it in productivity, retention, and morale.
From Concept to Showroom Floor
|
Gallup + HBR Insight |
Dealership Translation |
|---|---|
|
Manager burnout kills engagement |
Hold a 10-minute end-of-day debrief with tower or service managers: “What drained you? What energized you?” |
|
Training halves disengagement |
Build a micro-curriculum: weekly 20-minute management coaching on recognition, feedback, and team energy. |
|
Reflect · Reframe · Restore |
Protect a 30-minute “recovery block” every Friday -no meetings, no calls. Let managers think, learn, or breathe. |
| Engagement = performance | Pulse it. Ask weekly: “How connected do you feel to your team this week?” Track it like a KPI. |
The Culture Shift: Coaching > Command
Dealerships don’t need more process. They need more presence.
When managers coach instead of command, they humanize the job. They stop draining and start refueling. That’s what flips disengagement into drive - and drive into growth.
DG Actual Takeaway
Leadership fatigue isn’t a moral failure; it’s a structural one. We’ve built systems that consume all the hours and leave none for meaning. If you want sustainable performance, start by rebuilding the middle: the people who lead your people.
Because when managers thrive, teams thrive. And when teams thrive, customers feel it.
That’s Confidence Per Dollar.
Sources
Gallup (2025). State of the Global Workplace 2025.
Denham Smith, Dina (2025). Leading Is Emotionally Draining — Here’s How to Recover. Harvard Business Review.