Workplace Disengagement: Leadership Failure or System Signal?

Gallup’s 2025 Global Workplace report shows just 21% of employees are engaged. And manager disengagement is the major driver (74% of outcomes hinge on this).

Disengaged leaders create disengaged teams and disengaged teams don’t build better futures.

They spend all their energy running the system gauntlet of today.

We talk a lot about “good vs bad” leadership, but in my work, I see:

• High-performing subject matter experts promoted into leadership without scaffolding

• Exhausted leaders stuck in brittle, performative systems

• Teams expected to deliver transformation with no time or air cover

This isn’t just about aces in places, it’s signalling that our systems no longer make sense to the people inside them. It’s hard to be good at your job under these conditions.

Today’s workforce is the most generationally and ideologically diverse it’s ever been.

Leaders are managing post-identity complexity, AI disruption, economic squeeze, trust erosion. They’re navigating the skills-gap in Gen Z workers alongside older cohorts who are resisting change and fearful of losing power. 

It’s a lot.

Most orgs want change but don’t truly recognise or reward the real work required for transformation. They value performance at scale without understanding how this hinges on system design.

Fear + fatigue widen the gap between knowing and doing until it’s easier for leaders to just tap out.

That’s where transformation goes to die.

That’s why I built The Praxis Collective — to close the execution gap. To help leadership teams interrogate assumptions, redesign systems, and create cultures people actually want to be part of.

“Praxis” is ancient Greek meaning the courageous application of knowledge.

And to me, that’s:

• Insight applied in context

• Wisdom that doesn’t bypass reality

• Strategy that begins with curiosity, not prescription

  
  

Because if we rush to remove the pain point without rethinking the system that created it, we don’t build better futures. We just 💄+ 🐷.

If your team is grappling with disengagement, culture drift, or transformation fatigue - this is the work I do. Let’s talk.

K.

Leadership is about making others' success easier