Leadership Statistics 2026: Managers, CEOs, Women & AI
Managers are having the hardest stretch of anyone at work. Only 22% of managers worldwide were engaged in 2025, down from 27% a year earlier, the steepest part of a nine-point slide since 2022. Their teams are getting bigger, too: the average US manager had 12.1 direct reports in 2025, nearly 50% more than in 2013. And the line everyone repeats, “people leave managers, not companies,” is only half right: pay and advancement topped the list when Americans explained why they quit. Here are the leadership statistics worth knowing in 2026, each sourced inline with the year noted.
Manager engagement fell five points in one year
22% of managers were engaged at work in 2025, down from 27% in 2024 (Gallup State of the Global Workplace, 2026). Manager engagement has fallen nine points since 2022, and Gallup calls the 2024 to 2025 drop the largest year-over-year decline in that stretch.
Lower engagement among managers accounts for most of the recent decline in global employee engagement, which fell to 20% in 2025 (Gallup, 2026). Gallup puts the cost of low engagement at about $10 trillion in lost productivity, or 9% of global GDP. The full engagement picture is in employee engagement statistics.
Managers used to enjoy an “engagement premium.” Gallup now says they are “increasingly only as engaged as those they lead” (Gallup, 2026).
South Asia saw the biggest fall, with manager engagement down eight points in 2025, while the share of workers who are managers in the region also declined, which Gallup reads as employers cutting management roles (Gallup, 2026).
79% of managers are engaged in Gallup’s best-practice organizations, nearly four times the global average (Gallup, 2026).
Leaders report better lives and worse days
Leaders are the most engaged group at work, at 26%, and the most likely to be thriving, at 43% (Gallup, 2026).
They are also the most likely to have had a bad day. 46% of leaders reported a lot of stress the previous day, 33% anger, 34% sadness and 31% loneliness (Gallup, 2026).
Compared with individual contributors, leaders were 12 points more likely to report anger, 11 points more likely to report sadness, 10 points more likely to report loneliness and 7 points more likely to report stress (Gallup, 2026). Leaders were also less likely than individual contributors to say they smiled or laughed a lot. Daily stress at work more broadly is covered in burnout statistics.
”People leave managers, not companies” is half right
One in two US adults have left a job to get away from their manager at some point in their career, from a Gallup study of 7,272 adults (Gallup, 2015). That is the evidence behind the slogan, and it measures a whole career, not a single job change.
One in three UK workers have left a job because of bad management, among 2,018 workers surveyed for the Chartered Management Institute (Fortune, 2023).
But the top reasons Americans quit in 2021 were low pay (63%) and no opportunities for advancement (63%), ahead of feeling disrespected at work (57%), in a survey of 6,627 adults including 965 who quit (Pew Research Center, 2022). Child care (48% among parents), schedule flexibility (45%) and benefits (43%) came next.
A manager is one of the most common reasons people leave, not the main one. Where the manager does matter most is engagement: Gallup attributes at least 70% of the variance in engagement scores to the manager (Gallup, 2015).
Most managers were never chosen for the job
About one in 10 people have high talent to manage, and another two in 10 have basic talent that coaching can build on (Gallup, 2014, updated 2026).
Companies fail to choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 82% of the time (Gallup, 2014). Only 18% of current managers show high talent for managing others. Managers commonly told Gallup they got the role because of their success in a previous non-managerial job or their tenure.
82% of UK managers are “accidental managers” who were promoted without formal management training, and a quarter of them hold senior leadership roles, from a survey of 4,500 UK workers and managers by the Chartered Management Institute (Fortune, 2023).
Workers with an ineffective manager are far less satisfied (27% vs 74%), valued (15% vs 72%) and motivated (34% vs 77%) than those with an effective one (CMI, 2023). Half of them plan to quit within a year, against less than a quarter of those with an effective manager.
Teams are getting bigger as middle management thins
The average US manager had 12.1 direct reports in 2025, up from 10.9 in 2024, a nearly 50% increase since Gallup first measured in 2013 (Gallup, 2026).
The median team has held steady at five to six people. The average is being pulled up by very large teams: teams of 25 or more grew by two percentage points, which Gallup links to companies “downsizing or consolidating middle management roles” (Gallup, 2026).
37% of managers oversee fewer than five people and 66% fewer than 10, while 22% have 10 to 24 direct reports and 13% manage 25 or more (Gallup, 2026). The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimate Gallup cites is roughly one manager for every 11.5 employees.
Gartner predicted that through 2026, 20% of organizations will use AI to flatten their structure, eliminating more than half of current middle management positions (Gartner, 2024). It is a forecast made in October 2024, not a measurement.
CEO turnover cooled, and more of the new CEOs are women
2,032 US CEOs left their posts in 2025, down 9% from 2,221 in 2024 (Challenger, Gray & Christmas, 2026).
Public-company CEO exits hit a record 446 in 2025, up from 373 in 2024, even as the overall total fell (Challenger, 2026). Departing CEOs in December 2025 averaged 51.5 years old, the youngest monthly average since Challenger began tracking in 2002.
1,226 CEO exits were announced in the first eight months of 2026, down 18% from 1,504 a year earlier and the lowest year-to-date total since 2022 (Challenger, Gray & Christmas, 2026).
Women made up 27.6% of new CEOs through August 2026, up from 25.1% in the same period of 2025 and close to the record 28.7% set in 2023 (Challenger, 2026). The full-year 2025 rate, 25.4%, had been the lowest since 2020.
Women still hit a broken rung at the first promotion
For every 100 men promoted to manager, only 93 women were promoted, the 11th straight year of what the report calls the “broken rung” (Lean In and McKinsey Women in the Workplace, 2025). The figure was 82 for Asian women and Latinas and 60 for Black women.
For the first time, women are notably less likely than men to want a promotion: 80% against 86% (Lean In and McKinsey, 2025). The report finds women and men equally committed to their careers, and finds that women get less sponsorship and manager advocacy.
AI is exposing gaps in leadership alignment
Only 26% of AI users say their leadership is clearly and consistently aligned on AI, in a survey of 20,000 workers using AI across 10 countries (Microsoft Work Trend Index, 2026).
Organizational factors such as culture, manager support and talent practices account for 67% of the AI impact workers report, more than twice the 32% explained by individual mindset and behavior (Microsoft, 2026).
Leaders feel safer experimenting than their staff do. 81% of leaders feel safe suggesting new ways of working with AI against 67% of employees, and 78% say their managers make room for AI experimentation against 59% of employees (Microsoft, 2026).
Giving managers back the hours a bigger team takes
One of the four questions Gallup asks when setting a manager’s span of control is how much of their time goes to individual contributor work. Twelve direct reports means twelve sets of 1:1s, check-ins and follow-ups to keep moving. Carly takes the scheduling and inbox side of that load: it finds times for 1:1s and team meetings across everyone’s calendars, drafts replies from your inbox, and runs the recurring nudges and follow-ups as workflows so they happen without a reminder. Carly connects to thousands of apps, so it works inside the email, calendar and HR tools a team already uses. Where the rest of a manager’s week goes is in meeting statistics.
FAQ
What percentage of managers are engaged at work? 22% globally in 2025, down from 27% in 2024 and nine points below 2022 (Gallup State of the Global Workplace, 2026). In Gallup’s best-practice organizations, 79% of managers are engaged.
Do people really leave managers, not companies? Partly. One in two US adults have left a job to get away from a manager at some point in their career (Gallup, 2015). But the top reasons Americans gave for quitting in 2021 were low pay and no advancement, at 63% each, ahead of feeling disrespected at 57% (Pew Research Center, 2022).
How many direct reports does the average manager have? 12.1 on average in 2025, up from 10.9 in 2024 and nearly 50% more than in 2013. The median is steadier, at five to six people (Gallup, 2026).
What percentage of new CEOs are women? 27.6% of new US CEOs appointed through August 2026 were women, up from 25.1% in the same period of 2025. The record is 28.7%, set in 2023 (Challenger, Gray & Christmas, 2026).
Related: Employee Engagement Statistics · HR Statistics · Burnout Statistics · Recruiting Statistics · Meeting Statistics · Work-Life Balance Statistics
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