Leaders and Line Managers Aren’t Aligned: What This Means for Change Management in 2025

Between 2022 and 2024, leaders’ trust in their line managers took a dramatic nosedive, plummeting from 46% to just 29%.

This 17-point decline exposes an increasing scepticism from leadership toward managers, who are the essential frontline connection and vital to team cohesion, morale, and cascading leadership messaging to the wider organisation.

Running parallel to this mistrust is a growing lack of confidence in leadership amongst line managers: Only 27% of line managers feel confident in their organisation’s senior leadership team’s ability to advance strategic goals in 2025.

Compounding this issue is the decline in line managers’ sense of purpose. Since 2020, managers have experienced a 20% drop in their alignment with their organisation’s mission. Meanwhile, the C-suite has seen a steady increase in their sense of purpose, rising from 62% in 2020 to 67% in 2024. This contrast highlights a troubling trend: as leaders feel more connected to their organisation’s mission, their managers are becoming increasingly disengaged and disenfranchised.

The result? A communication and execution gap that threatens the success of change initiatives at a time when managers are more crucial than ever in creating resilient, change-ready teams as organisations undergo disruption. When leaders and managers aren’t aligned, organisations can’t adapt or evolve, and the entire organisational strategy suffers as a result.

The Impact of Misalignment on Change Management

Managers are the linchpin of change management: They are the ones who translate strategic goals into actionable steps, inspire their teams, and help to cascade messaging from leadership to the wider organisation. Research underscores their critical role: employees who feel strongly supported by their managers are 44% more likely to see organisational changes as positive and 40% less likely to view change as unnecessary.

Yet, the growing disconnect between leaders and managers undermines this dynamic. When managers lack confidence in their leadership team or feel disconnected from the organisation’s purpose, their ability to guide their teams through change is severely compromised.

The result is resistance, confusion, and failed change initiatives. Without trust and alignment, even the best-laid plans are doomed to falter at the first hurdle – yet in a world where the pace of change is accelerating, organisations and their leaders can’t afford to have their strategic change initiatives fail.

Bridging the Misalignment Gap

The success of your next change initiative depends on closing the gap and fixing misalignment between your leaders and their managers. It requires intentional effort from the top levels of your organisation to communicate effectively and cascade messaging properly.

Straight from our Leading Through Change Toolkit, here are three steps your organisation can take to realign leadership and management teams:

1) Understand how your managers consume information
Tailor your communication channels to your managers. Do they prefer email, video, or face-to-face meetings? Celebrate the managers and their teams who embody the message in their work, perhaps by introducing an “Ambassador of the Month” award for those who consistently demonstrate the values behind the change initiative. Discover how to maximise the relevance and impact of your change communications ➔

2) Role model from the top layers down
Leaders at all levels must be accountable for embodying change initiatives, not just your line managers. Encourage senior leaders and C-Suite leaders to share their own experiences and challenges in living the narratives of your change initiative. Learn how leaders from best-practice organisations role model change initiatives ➔

3) Create channels for open, two-way dialogue between leaders and managers
Regular check-ins and town halls can help bridge the communication gap and ensure managers feel heard and valued. By treating managers as strategic partners—not just implementers—organisations can create a unified front that drives successful change. Explore tried-and-tested change cascade techniques and tools ➔
 

GET YOUR LEADING THROUGH CHANGE TOOLKIT ➔