Conversation starter: Happy managers, happy teams

Key findings

Managers and leaders play different roles when it comes to creating the employee experience. While effective management and leadership can take place at any level of the organization, cultivating engagement from leaders is a different motion for an organization than cultivating it for managers. This being the case, it is possible for the workplace experience of managers and leaders to differ: managers may have the tools, support and structure needed to effectively do their jobs while the leadership team is mired in dysfunction, or vice versa. This research connects the workplace experiences of leaders, managers, and rank-and-file employees.

When leaders & managers feel similarly, so do ICs

We constructed a database of 2.02 million Glassdoor reviews from 1,571 distinct companies collected between January 2022 and July 2025. Included companies had at least 30 reviews from individual contributors, 30 reviews from managers, and 10 reviews from leaders (defined as directors and above). We compared average overall ratings from leaders and managers, and examined four different groups of companies. Our primary interest is the experience of rank-and-file employees in each of these categories.

The first finding that jumps out from the data is just how closely related manager and leader ratings tend to be. Better ratings from leaders are associated with better ratings from managers. The first two types of companies are from the opposite ends of this correlation blob:

Satisfied leaders & satisfied managers: When both leaders and managers tend to leave positive reviews, so do ICs. This is the best-case scenario: a company where most employees find their work satisfying. The typical average overall Glassdoor rating from ICs is 3.91. Across all Glassdoor workplace factors (career opportunities, work-life balance, opinions of senior management, culture & values, and DE&I) these companies tend to have the highest ratings.

Dissatisfied leaders & dissatisfied managers:  On the flipside, this set of companies is the worst-case scenario: leaders & managers tend to agree that their company is a poor place to work, and ICs agree. This set of companies has the lowest ratings across all workplace factors.

This broad agreement across ICs, managers, and leaders reflects the reality that many elements that make a company a good or bad place to work, like industry conditions and company performance, apply to managers and leaders equally. However, this agreement is not always the case.

Happy managers, happy teams

In a substantial proportion of the companies we examined - about 1 in 8 - managers and leaders disagree meaningfully about their experience in the workplace. In 6.6% of companies, leaders were satisfied but managers were not, and in 5.3% the reverse was true.

Satisfied leaders & dissatisfied managers: At these companies, the typical average rating from ICs was 3.43, somewhat higher than the worst-case but well below the best-case, and very close to the typical manager rating of 3.41. The fact that leaders tend to enjoy their worklife has little bearing or relationship to the ratings from these ICs.

Dissatisfied leaders & satisfied managers: At these companies, managers enjoy their jobs more than leaders and ICs share in this enjoyment. The typical average rating from ICs was 3.82. 

Managers are culture carriers

All subfactor ratings from individual contributors follow the same ordering: lowest when both leaders and managers are dissatisfied, and highest when both are satisfied. In the case of disagreement, IC ratings are closer to manager ratings. The spread of those differences varies between subfactors in an instructive way.

Three subfactors stand out in particular: work/life balance, culture & values, and diversity, equity, & inclusion. In these cases, whether managers are satisfied or dissatisfied has a huge bearing on IC ratings, but a change in leadership ratings has very little impact. The typical work/life balance rating from ICs is 3.28 in the cases of dissatisfied leaders & dissatisfied managers, and only increases to 3.33 with satisfied leaders & dissatisfied managers. If leaders are dissatisfied but managers are satisfied, however, work/life balance ratings jump to 3.76, nearly the level they achieve (3.80) if both leaders and managers are satisfied.

It makes sense that managers and individual contributors are so closely aligned on these measurements reflecting the culture of a workplace. Managers work alongside their teams, so they both set the tone for their immediate teams and share in the daily culture of those teams. 

More misalignment in restaurants & education

Rates of leadership/management misalignment vary substantially by sector. Restaurants & Food Service have the highest rates of satisfied leaders but dissatisfied managers (21% of companies) – and there were zero cases of the inverse, with satisfied managers but dissatisfied leaders. In this sector, both were satisfied in only 15% of cases, while both were dissatisfied in 33%. The remaining 30% fell between categories (sums to 99% due to rounding). Other sectors also showed relatively high rates of satisfied leaders leaving managers behind: Transportation & Logistics (13%), Real Estate (13%), Healthcare (11%), and Hotels & Travel Accommodation (10%).

Education was much more likely to be misaligned in the opposite direction: 13% of companies had satisfied managers but dissatisfied leaders. Education is notable because it had the lowest rate of dissatisfied managers (11%), and one of the lowest rates of dissatisfied leaders (23%). Many education-based companies fell between categories. Financial Services also had relatively high rates (10%) in the category of satisfied managers but dissatisfied leaders.

Conclusion

Leaders and managers typically agree about loving or hating their jobs, and ICs are usually on the same page. When managers and leaders disagree, IC ratings are much more closely aligned with managers - particularly with subfactors related to a company’s culture. The lesson for leaders is clear: you cannot create a winning workplace culture without bringing your managers along. Yet managers are feeling the tension as they both directly shape and share the experiences of the rank-and-file.

Methodology

A total of 2,023,630 Glassdoor reviews from January 2022 to July 2025 were averaged by company and job level. Job levels are inferred from job titles. Companies were included if they had at least 30 reviews from ICs, 30 reviews from managers, and 10 reviews from leaders, defined as director-level and above. Companies are categorized as having satisfied/dissatisfied leaders or managers if their average overall rating from the job level were more than 1/3 standard deviations above/below the median company-level overall rating.