Employee engagement is collapsing, and the crisis starts at the top. According to Kahoot’s latest engagement report, just 47% of leaders describe themselves as “fully engaged,” even though 79% believe their teams still see them as energized. The study exposes a widening leadership gap: more than a quarter have considered quitting in the past year, and nearly half (46%) would give up their title just to feel engaged.
Gallup’s latest State of the Global Workplace report confirms the ripple effect, showing global manager engagement dropped to 27% with leaders influencing up to 70% of team engagement. When leaders run on empty, entire teams follow.
“If leaders are ready to trade away their title for a chance to feel engaged, it signals something profound,” says Eilert Hanoa, CEO of Kahoot. “Leaders are telling us loud and clear that recognition, training, and connection matter more than status. Engagement cannot be a side project. If engagement fails at the top, it fails everywhere. The companies that respond will not only retain their leaders but unlock the energy of entire teams.”
Over one-third (34%) of leaders report feeling burned out daily or several times a week, and 22% say they have felt emotionally disconnected from their teams often or always over the past six months, a clear red flag for relational strain at the top. The biggest drivers of manager disengagement are emotional exhaustion from trying to motivate disengaged employees, nonstop change and economic uncertainty, and feeling invisible or undervalued by executive leadership. Similarly, the leading culprits behind leader burnout include juggling engagement with too many other priorities (48%), dealing with employee apathy (48%), and trying to get Gen Z to engage consistently (38%).
Over half (57%) of leaders have never received extensive training on how to re-engage teams, and only 17% say their company always provides effective tools to keep teams motivated. Almost one in four admit they are not confident leading hybrid or remote teams, leaving many to improvise at a time when alignment matters most. Another 38% say they’ve received only some training but not enough, reinforcing that most leaders feel underprepared for one of their most critical responsibilities. Just 30% of leaders gave themselves an A for engaging with their teams, while 70% know they’re falling short. In fact, 40% say they would give up their role entirely if it meant their team could be fully engaged—a striking measure of how broken leadership enablement has become.
When asked what would most improve engagement, 69% of leaders pointed to recognition and incentives, followed by more team members (57%) and friendly competition/gamification (44%). Recognition was ranked as the number one missing element in their engagement toolkit for 21%. On a personal level, leaders say they would be more engaged if they had energy, creativity, or fun in their day-to-day work (58%), more opportunities to grow their skills (52%), better technology to connect with their teams (48%), and open feedback from senior executives (42%). Generational divides are deepening as well, with 61% naming Gen Z as the hardest group to engage compared with 20% for millennials.
Despite heavy investment in engagement programs, most companies cannot measure their impact. Over a quarter (29%) of leaders admit they lack confidence in tracking ROI, and fewer than a quarter measure engagement clearly and consistently. The top metric leaders wish they could track is productivity driven by real engagement, not just hours logged (29%). Other point to outcomes like the energy lift of fully engaged teams and early signals when top talent is ready to leave, though fewer cite these as top priorities.
Beyond tools and training, leaders are calling for something more fundamental: to be heard. In open-ended responses, many said the one thing they would fix with a magic wand is better communication and recognition from senior leadership. Yet only 14% of leaders say training and meetings always spark motivation, showing that the very systems meant to drive engagement are often falling flat.
