I recently stumbled across Gallup's State of the Global Workplace report. One statistic jumped out to me: Global manager engagement has been consistently dropping from 31 percent in 2022, 30 percent in 2023, 27 percent in 2024, to 22 percent in 2025.

In plain English, this means in 2025, only 22 percent of managers surveyed were genuinely enthusiastic and invested in their work. The other 73 percent were coasting or entirely checked out. Individual contributor (IC) engagement has been roughly flat—20 percent in 2022, 18 percent in 2023 and 2024, and 19 percent in 2025.

Think about this for a minute. Less than 25 percent of managers and ICs jump out of bed each day fired up about their job. It’s also interesting to note that the engagement gap between managers and ICs has narrowed from a 10-percentage point difference in 2022 to just a three-percentage point difference in 2025.

On the bright side, among U.S. organizations, the 2025 manager engagement number is 36 percent, and in best practice organizations the number jumps to 79 percent. While these numbers are encouraging, it doesn’t mean there’s not a problem. Managers (including project managers) are responsible for translating an exec’s why and what into how. If managers aren’t engaged, then driving the how becomes more risky.

Taking the position that a professional, whether a manager or IC, needs to do whatever is in their power to improve their engagement, I’d like to give you five things to consider to improve engagement for both you and your team:

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

Shane was a hot-shot project manager with a large consulting firm. His management typically brought him into problem projects. His disciplined approach and honest assessments of where things were at helped to right the ship on a number of projects while minimizing adverse cost/schedule/scope impact.

He was very confident in his abilities, and started boasting more and more about his track record. He made a great impression with both his clients and management.
Until one project came along.

Shane was brought in to help with chronic schedule shifts. This project was the first one his consulting firm was doing with the client, and the firm desperately wanted to demonstrate their value-add to better position them for future projects. Shane met with Marge, the fair but no-nonsense project sponsor.

To say Shane was unprepared was an understatement. He kept referring to Marge as Mary. He hadn't read the project brief, so he fumbled when she asked a basic scope question. He referenced a deliverable that had already been cut from the project two weeks earlier.

The meeting lasted 11 minutes, with Marge making an excuse to end it early. After Shane left, Marge called Shane’s manager and told her Shane wasn’t a good fit. Shane was never allowed back at the client, and his reputation took a hit with his management due to the negative impression he made.

Read more at ProjectManagement.com.

One of my column readers recently sent in this question: One of our senior project managers left abruptly in the middle of a 3 year million $ contract. What experience and education would you consider in promoting a replacement? 

Ooh, good meaty problem.  Not so simple a solution.