When I speak with leaders across sectors and regions, one thing is strikingly consistent. Engagement and culture are almost always listed among the top three strategic priorities. This is no longer about awareness, nor about intention. Leaders understand the importance of these topics and genuinely want to get them right.
And yet, despite that awareness and the many initiatives launched over the past years, the overall picture has barely improved. Global engagement figures remain stubbornly low, with roughly 77% of employees still not engaged. That reality suggests that the challenge organisations are facing today is not a lack of effort, but a lack of tangible impact.
What I see across organisations is a clear gap between strategic ambition and operational reality. Leaders know engagement matters, but many struggle to translate that conviction into concrete actions that meaningfully improve the daily experience of employees. Investments are made in programmes, surveys, leadership trainings and communication campaigns, yet the effect on the work floor often remains limited.
This disconnect between intention and execution has become one of the most pressing issues in organisations today. Leaders are doing many things right at a strategic level, but they are not always reaching the point where engagement is actually lived.
Leadership in an Age of Permanent Visibility
Compared to a few years ago, the context in which leaders operate has fundamentally changed. Leadership today happens under constant exposure. Decisions are noticed, but so are silences, hesitations and inconsistencies. The internal environment has become just as demanding as the external one.
Executive pressure is intensifying. Mandates are getting shorter, expectations higher and tolerance for delay smaller. Boards expect rapid results, while leaders are simultaneously asked to guide their organisations through continuous transformation and to take care of their people in the process. Balancing agility with empathy has become an everyday challenge rather than an abstract ideal.
AI sits right at the centre of this pressure. The question many leaders are facing is no longer whether transformation is necessary, but whether they can lead it fast enough to keep their organisations competitive and viable.
We are moving beyond the era of digital leadership, which focused primarily on speed, connectivity and innovation. What is emerging now is a new form of leadership shaped by AI. When looking at leaders who are most prepared for this shift, a clear pattern appears. They tend to be agile, strategically grounded and highly collaborative, and they rely on data to inform their decisions rather than intuition alone.
Equally important are their personal traits. They show openness to change, a willingness to take considered risks, and the humility to admit what they do not yet know. AI leadership requires ethical judgment, resilience in the face of ambiguity, empathy towards people navigating uncertainty, and a genuine curiosity about what lies ahead. Technology may accelerate leadership, but it will not compensate for its absence or its weaknesses.
From Reacting to Understanding
Many leaders describe their current reality as one of constant reaction. They respond to engagement scores, attrition figures and resistance to change as these indicators fluctuate. While such data points are useful, they are often treated as problems in themselves rather than as signals pointing to deeper issues.
Engagement scores and turnover numbers do not represent root causes. They are outcomes. What leaders need to address more deliberately is the lived experience within their organisations.
What does it feel like to work here on an ordinary day, not during a town hall or a campaign, but in the daily rhythm of meetings, decisions and interactions? What does it feel like to be a middle manager trying to translate strategy into reality while carrying responsibility without always feeling supported or psychologically safe?
As long as leaders focus primarily on dashboards and metrics, they risk remaining in a firefighting mode. Measurement can highlight that something is wrong, but it does not explain why it is happening, nor how to change it sustainably. Real progress starts when organisations move from measuring engagement to truly understanding it, by paying attention to how work is experienced every day.
Engagement does not live in surveys or reports. It lives in repeated moments, behaviours and choices that shape how people experience leadership, fairness and trust over time.
What Else?
Much of this thinking is explored in more depth in my book Employee Engagement, What Else? It draws on years of work with organisations across regions and cultures, and looks beyond frameworks and slogans. The book challenges leaders to up their game by adopting a marketing mindset and using technology as their ally.