While global employee well-being saw its first improvement in three years during 2025, laboratory leaders face a unique psychological paradox. According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2026 Report, approximately 34 percent of employees worldwide are now thriving, yet the day-to-day emotional experience of leadership remains significantly more strained than that of individual contributors. For the lab manager, understanding this disconnect is a critical predictor of organizational resilience and long-term performance.
Gallup’s life evaluation measure identifies two distinct ways people perceive their lives: the reflective self and the experiencing self. While leaders, managers, and project managers often report higher levels of overall engagement and life evaluation than those they lead, their daily experiences are frequently defined by higher levels of negative emotions.
Navigating the emotional burden of the lab manager
The report highlights that leadership often comes with greater social distance and the responsibility for making difficult choices that affect many people's lives. This reality is reflected in the data, which show that leaders are substantially more likely than individual contributors to report experiencing significant daily emotional strain.
Gallup calculates these figures by comparing the percentage of respondents in each group who reported experiencing an emotion a lot during the previous day. The resulting points represent the absolute difference in percentage points between these groups. When compared to individual contributors, leaders are more likely to report experiencing:
- A lot of stress (+seven points)
- Anger (+12 points)
- Sadness (+11 points)
- Loneliness (+10 points)
In the US and Canada specifically, 50 percent of employees report experiencing a lot of stress during the previous day. This emotional weight offers little upside in terms of positive daily feelings; leaders are actually less likely than individual contributors to say they laughed or smiled a lot and less likely than managers to report experiencing enjoyment.
Improving laboratory organizational resilience through engagement
These findings suggest that a job title or a higher salary does not automatically lead to a better daily experience. However, the report identifies a clear pathway to mitigating these negative outcomes. Engagement significantly reduces the emotional burden of leading others. Gallup finds that when managers and leaders are engaged, they report experiencing all negative emotions at lower rates than individual contributors.
Furthermore, engaged leaders are 14 points more likely to be thriving in their overall lives than the average leader. This suggests that engagement acts as a buffer against the inherent pressures of laboratory oversight. Well-being increases most significantly when employees see their work as intrinsically rewarding and good for others.
Cultivating a supportive laboratory emotional environment
For a lab manager, the priority must be creating an environment where employees feel they have choices and where the mission of the work—such as advancing human health or ensuring environmental safety—is clearly communicated. When employees enjoy their work and believe it improves others' lives, they report greater well-being and higher workplace engagement.
To bridge the gap between individual thriving and organizational outcomes, leaders should focus on two factors:
- Thoughtfully integrating new technologies to reduce administrative friction
- Providing active support and training for teams to ensure they feel empowered rather than burdened by technical disruptions
By addressing these emotional drivers, lab managers can move beyond a status-based view of leadership and focus on building a resilient, high-performing team that can navigate the challenges of the artificial intelligence era.
This article was created with the assistance of Generative AI and has undergone editorial review before publishing.
