Global Manager Engagement Fell to 22% — and Founders Are Next

Global manager engagement dropped from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025, according to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026 report — and an Entrepreneur contributor argues founders are heading down the same path by refusing to put down the loads they picked up at startup.

The piece, published by Entrepreneur (contributor opinions are the author's own), lays out a framework called The Five Carries — Up, Down, Across, Forward and Within. The pitch is simple: the habits that carry a founder through the startup phase quietly become the obstacles to sustainable growth.

Early on, carrying everything feels necessary. The founder becomes the salesperson, marketer, accountant and customer service department, the author writes, because there is nobody else to do it. As the business grows, responsibilities multiply — and a thriving company can coexist with an exhausted founder who is disconnected from family and unable to imagine the business running without them.

The core claim: the problem isn't necessarily carrying too much. It's never reconsidering what you're carrying, why, and whether it's still yours to carry.

What does the data say about founder burnout?

The author anchors the argument in three figures:

• Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026 report: manager engagement fell from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025, with managers navigating competing expectations without sufficient capacity.
• A study discussed in Harvard Business Review on entrepreneurial passion, work characteristics and beliefs about success found that loving your business doesn't make relentless work sustainable.
• The American Psychological Association's 2024 Work in America survey: 43% of workers typically feel tense or stressed during the workday, rising to 61% among those with lower psychological safety.

The APA findings aren't specific to entrepreneurs, the author notes, but they show why working relationships deserve deliberate attention. The lesson isn't to avoid responsibility — it's to manage it intentionally.

How does each of the Five Carries work?

Carry Up. Founders answer to investors, lenders, boards, customers and their own ambitions. The example: a founder promising aggressive expansion to investors while privately knowing the team can't deliver. Carrying up effectively means communicating reality, negotiating priorities and setting responsible expectations. The author's test question: "Whose expectations am I carrying, and have I agreed to more than I can responsibly deliver?" Sometimes leadership means disappointing someone today to protect the business tomorrow.

Carry Down. Employees depend on owners for direction, resources and opportunity — but carrying down doesn't mean absorbing everyone's problems. A founder who resolves every employee challenge feels indispensable while blocking the team's independence. The author's reframe: instead of "How can I solve this for my team?" ask "How can I help my team become capable of solving this without me?" The goal is support that develops people rather than producing dependency.

Carry Across. Partners, spouses, colleagues, suppliers and peers often carry the consequences of entrepreneurial decisions, yet these relationships get whatever attention remains after urgent demands. Carrying across means collaborating rather than controlling and communicating rather than assuming. The diagnostic: which important relationship is receiving the leftovers of your time and energy?

Carry Forward. Picture two founders running similarly profitable companies. One stays involved in every significant decision; the other builds systems, develops successors and creates a leadership team that operates independently. Both succeed today, but only one is deliberately reducing the company's dependence on its founder. Carry Forward shifts the question from "What does my business need from me today?" to what must be built today so the business and its people can thrive tomorrow — covering succession, resilience, financial security and leadership development.

Carry Within. The most overlooked carry, per the author. Sleep becomes negotiable, exercise gets postponed, family time becomes conditional, recovery feels like something to earn after the next milestone. The warning is blunt: your business cannot continually draw from capacity you never replenish. If the business succeeds only while your health, relationships and sense of purpose deteriorate, it's worth questioning what success actually means.

What should founders actually do?

The Five Carries aren't five new responsibilities for an already crowded calendar — they're five lenses for evaluating the ones you already hold. The exercise: write down your biggest obligations, assign each to a carry, then answer three questions. What am I carrying? What am I going to carry? What am I finally ready to stop carrying?

Some obligations will need more attention, others delegation, and a few should never have been yours at all. The author's closing standard for success: not how much you carried, but what you built, who you helped, and whether you still have the human capacity to enjoy it.