Managing the Emotional Workplace.

 

In 2025, global employee wellbeing improved for the first time in three years.

Leaders have higher life evaluations but worse days than those they lead. In psychology, wellbeing can be measured by examining the reflective self or the experiencing self. How people think about their lives does not always match how they experience them day to day. When comparing leaders, managers, project managers and individual contributors, higher levels of leadership report higher levels of engagement and wellbeing. At the same time, compared with individual contributors, leaders are substantially more likely to report experiencing a lot of stress (+7 points), anger (+12), sadness (+11) and loneliness (+10) the previous day.

Leadership also offers little upside in terms of positive emotions: Leaders are less likely than individual contributors to say they smiled or laughed a lot the previous day and less likely than managers to report experiencing enjoyment. Although leadership can give individuals a greater sense of voice, agency and status, it can also mean greater social distance and the responsibility for making painful choices that affect many people's lives.

Engagement reduces the emotional burden of leading others and significantly boosts thriving. 

Gallup finds that when managers (including leaders) are engaged, they report experiencing all negative emotions at lower rates than individual contributors. They are also 14 points more likely to be thriving in their overall life than the average leader. When it comes to the AI revolution, recent Gallup research in the U.S. points to two factors that leaders can focus on to improve AI adoption and support the engagement and wellbeing of their workforces: taking steps to thoughtfully integrate AI into current systems and processes, and helping their managers to actively support their team’s use of AI.