Why Your Best Manager Wants to Quit And What Is Really Going On

By Sharon van Sprang | NewLeadersMovement

She wanted to quit.

Not because the job was bad. Not because she stopped caring.

Actually, because she cared too much. For too long. Without getting anything back.

I came across this pattern when I was interviewing managers, directors and leaders for my book. And it stopped me every single time.

Because it was always the best ones.

The Number Nobody Is Talking About

According to Gallup's 2026 State of the Global Workplace report, only 22% of managers felt engaged at work in 2025.

That is a 5% drop from the year before, the largest single-year decline Gallup has ever recorded since they began tracking this in 2009.

Your managers,  the people responsible for driving your team's engagement, performance and culture  are the most disengaged they have ever been.

And when a manager disengages?

The whole team follows.

So the question is not just why this is happening. The question is: what is actually driving it?

What I Learned From Interviewing Leaders

When I was writing my book: beyond the ceiling, how to break the glass ceiling without breaking yourself, I spoke to managers, directors and leaders across industries. And a pattern emerged that I was not expecting.

The ones who had invested in their own inner development who understood themselves, who had done the work  were not immune to hard seasons. But they had learned how to fill their own cup. They found meaning from the inside out.

But the ones who gave everything to their work? Who were emotionally all in  in the impact, in the people, in the results at some point, the job stopped giving back what they were putting in.

And that is when something quietly shifted.

The Dopamine Problem Nobody Names

Here is the neuroscience behind what happens next  and why it matters more than most organisations realise.

Research confirms that without meaningful recognition, growth, or emotional return, dopamine levels decrease  leading to reduced enthusiasm, creativity and motivation at work.

Dopamine is not just the pleasure chemical. It is the drive chemical. The one that pulls you forward. The one that makes effort feel worth it.

When your work gives you dopamine through impact, through growth, through feeling seen and valued you stay engaged. You push through the hard days. You give more than is asked.

But when that supply dries up?

Your brain starts looking for it somewhere else.

And in a world of instant gratification where you can order food, entertainment, connection, and comfort at the tap of a screen the brain does not have to look far.

It starts painting pictures.

What if I found another job? What if I started fresh? What if things were different somewhere else?

Just thinking about it gives you a shot of dopamine.

That imagined future becomes the drug.

And suddenly  without anyone noticing your best manager is mentally already somewhere else.

What Disengagement Actually Looks Like

You manager will do the bare minimum, just what is expected of them.  Showing up but not really being there. Energy that used to be magnetic becoming flat.

And her team? Her team feels every bit of it.

If she does not care anymore, why should I? are the conversations that her team is starting to have. 

Researchers now call this "quiet cracking"  a constant feeling of workplace unhappiness that guides workers toward poor performance and makes them want to quit. It is not dramatic. It is gradual. And by the time most organisations notice it, it has already spread.

This is how one disengaged manager becomes an entire disengaged team.

But Before You Assume She Is Ready to Leave — Read This

Here is the question I always ask before anyone makes a big decision.

Is this feeling telling you that you are genuinely ready for something new?

Or is it telling you that something inside you is empty  and needs to be addressed before you go anywhere?

Because if the exhaustion comes from giving too much for too long  from feeling like you have to be everything for everybody then leaving will not fix it.

The manager will take that pattern with them

To the next job. The next team. The next role where she throws herself in completely — until the well runs dry again.

The real question is not where do I go next?

The real question is: why do I need the job to give me what I am not giving myself?

Where the Real Work Begins

The leaders I have seen make the most lasting shift are the ones who stopped looking outward for the dopamine hit  and started building something more sustainable on the inside.

That does not mean caring less. It means leading from a fuller place.

It means understanding the patterns that made overgiving feel necessary in the first place. The belief that your value is tied to your output. That rest is weakness. That asking for support means failing the people who depend on you.

Those are not personality traits. They are wired-in survival strategies.

And they can be rewired.

When a leader does that work  when they shift from surviving their leadership to genuinely owning it  something changes in the whole system around them.

They stop needing external validation to feel enough. They start leading from clarity instead of from depletion. And their team their team comes alive.

Because a leader who is full leads completely differently from a leader who is running on empty.

What This Means for Organisations

We spend enormous amounts of time and money measuring disengagement. Running surveys. Building strategies. Creating initiatives.

But the real problem is almost always underneath all of that.

We are human. And most leadership programmes skip that part entirely.

They focus on skills. On frameworks. On what leaders should do differently.

But the challenge is not what they do. It is what is running them underneath.

And until that is addressed at the source  the cycle continues.

The best manager gives everything. Gets depleted. Starts disengaging. The team follows. You lose the talent you invested in most.

And then you start again with someone new.

A Different Approach

If you are ready to fix the challenge at the source  to invest in your leaders as human beings, not just as performance units  that is exactly what this work is about.

Not another training. Not another framework.

Real, deep work that rewires the patterns underneath  so your leaders can sustain themselves, and build teams that are genuinely engaged.

In the era of AI, where you need your people to be more creative, more adaptive, and more fully present than ever that is not a nice-to-have.

That is everything.

I am Sharon van Sprang founder of NewLeadersMovement. I work with managers, founders and CEOs who are ready to stop surviving and start leading at their highest potential  and build teams that do the same. Using neuroscience, positive psychology and intuition, I rewire the patterns underneath  so the shift actually lasts.

Ready to explore what this looks like for you or your organisation? 📅 Book a discovery call: https://calendly.com/sharonvansprang/discoverycall