I want you to think about someone on your team right now. High performer. Shows up, delivers, doesn’t complain. Maybe leads other people. On paper, doing fine. But something’s a little off and you can’t quite put your finger on it. The energy isn’t what it was. The ideas aren’t coming. They’re present, but not fully there.
You’re probably not imagining it.
Gallup’s 2026 workplace data landed with a quiet thud recently: global employee engagement dropped to 20%. One in five. And this isn’t frontline disengagement they’re measuring – manager engagement fell nine points over three years. The people closest to your people are fading too, often first, often invisibly.
Meanwhile, Google searches for “Sunday Scaries” jumped 84% last year. Which tells you something – not just that people dread Monday, but that the dread is arriving earlier, staying longer, and becoming normal enough that people are actively searching for a name for what they’re feeling. Over 80% of working Americans report it. In business and finance that number jumps to 87%. That’s not a bad week. That’s a pattern.
Here’s what makes this a leadership problem specifically: your highest performers are the most likely to hide it. They’re wired to deliver. They’ll keep delivering right up until they don’t – and by then the decision is usually already made. Researchers are now calling it “quiet cracking” – a slow fracturing of engagement that doesn’t look like disengagement from the outside. The meeting attendance is fine. The numbers are fine. But the discretionary effort, the ideas, the mentoring of others, the sense that this work matters – that’s been quietly leaving the building for months.
I’ve seen this play out more times than I can count. Always the same arc: a capable leader starts to look a little tired, a little less connected to why they got into this work in the first place. Nobody asks because the performance is still there. By the time someone notices, they’re already halfway out.
The research has a term for what sits on the other end of this: “rustout.” Not burnout from too much – burnout from too little meaning. Underutilized, intellectually stagnant, going through the motions. Same stress response as burnout in the body. Much harder to see from the outside.
The fix isn’t a wellness program or a one-on-one check-in box to tick. It starts with a leader who knows what their people look like at their best – specifically, not generally – and notices when that version stops showing up. Purpose, growth, a sense that there’s still more ahead. That’s what holds people. That’s what reclaiming brilliance is actually about.
The question isn’t whether someone on your team is fading right now. Statistically, the answer is yes. The question is whether you’ll see it before they do.