Are you a lost leader?

Hello. Welcome to Working It.

Tomorrow is World Mental Health Day. Trying to be enthusiastic about work even when you’re feeling down is a good thing for many of us (unless work is the cause of your problems 😱). The total cost of mental illness in the UK is estimated at £300 billion a year. This is a disaster for affected individuals and employers. (Related: We’re working on a Working It film about loneliness and burnout among leaders and how to support older people to stay on top.)

On the other hand, I continue to hear of the shocking extent of the blatant unhappiness and lack of purpose of many employees. Is your company life in ruin? How can you protect yourself? Read on to find out. And send us your ideas, thoughts, and anything fun to cheer us up 🙏: isabel.berwick@ft.com.

I’m going to shoot in America next week, so I’ll send you a short newsletter.

How to protect yourself from outward success and inner misery 😰

I don’t mean to use the fancy phrase 🧐 to get into “atmospheric” reporting, but I’ve been struck by how often I hear about workers being miserable, apathetic, and generally lacking in motivation and purpose. That’s an anecdote. The survey provides some data. Gallup’s oft-cited 2025 State of the Workplace Survey found that global employee engagement will drop from 23 percent to 21 percent in 2024, with Europe the least engaged region.

We spoke to Christine Armstrong, a leading workplace expert and researcher who delves deep into company employment culture. She is especially in the early stages of uncovering hidden populations of what she calls “lost leaders.” She recently asked people who are unhappy at work to send her an email, and she’s been overwhelmed by the number of responses and heartfelt devastation 😔.

“They’re in leadership roles, which suggests power. They look powerful, but they don’t feel a lot of power. And in most cases, the more senior you are, the less you can talk about it externally. And you have a great salary, but you’ve built a lifestyle around it, so you’re under a lot of financial pressure. So you’re probably sending your kids to private school, you’re carrying a big mortgage, you’re having expectations within your family.”

Add in the threat of global uncertainty, frequent reorganizations, attrition, and AI-related disruption, and the overscheduled lives of corporate executives don’t seem so appealing 🧐. Christine uses a movie analogy to explain how internal corporate narratives control us. “You’re stuck in a movie that you didn’t choose to be in, and you’re so absorbed in playing your role in that movie that you don’t look around and think, ‘What movie do I want to be in? What character do I want to play in that movie?’

So what should you do if you’re feeling miserable at your overwhelming job and can’t quit just yet? Christine suggests taking small steps to look outside. she says: “Even if you’re not looking for a new job, it can give you a little extra energy.” Examples of “small steps” include attending conferences, sitting on panels, contributing to external blogs or publications, seeking out old colleagues who now work elsewhere, and connecting with colleagues at other organizations. the aim? Get noticed not only on your internal messaging systems, but also externally.

More generally, it’s not just a personal issue. Try not to blame yourself for your bad work life. “What I observe on a macro level is that organizations are very often at odds with human behavior. A lot of the messages I get refer to things like hot desking. If you think about the dinner table at home, we all sit in the same place. We like to be back in the same place, but that human instinct is not rewarded in the workplace. People want to talk and talk to each other, but instead we create meetings where one person speaks and the other is silent. It negates human needs for connection, geographic predictability, and temporal predictability.

“People like to follow routines and go to the office on similar days and see similar people. And we’re constantly disrupting all of that and introducing very complex processes that often don’t work.”

Why are so many organizations missing the basics of what it means to be human? (If you know, please email us 📮)

In short, set aside some time each day or week to think about building your external profile in the world beyond your everyday life. You never know when it will be useful. And it gives you a sense of agency. (At the very least, update your “blank” LinkedIn profile with a real photo and update your bio.)

Want to know more? Christine Armstrong offers free resources for those facing the “false peaks” of outward success and inner misery. Dorie Clark is a great reinvention and transition expert to emulate. She recorded the “Think Fast, Talk Smart” podcast with Matt Abrahams about developing a personal brand.

Top 5 stories from the world of work

Ed Zitron is mad as hell: As a longtime reader of Ed Zitron’s newsletter “Where’s Your Ed At,” I’m well aware of his skeptical and abusive views on the burgeoning business of generative AI. The FT’s Tabby Kinder tells the British-born blogger more.

Is the sauna the latest office perk? In this week’s Work Watch column, Emma Jacobs charts the sauna’s evolution from gym equipment (unless you’re Finnish) to office amenity. Sweating in a bathing suit with your boss is still an unusual thing to do for now.

Global tech companies set to benefit from US visa crackdown: Restrictions on H-1B visas, which are popular for skilled workers, could be good news for non-US tech and AI companies that have traditionally had “second-league picks,” an FT reporter notes.

How AI became your personal assistant: Data-powered visualizations by Dan Clark and Caroline Nevitt. For many people, AI is meant to be used in their personal lives rather than for corporate deployment. Lots of fascinating insights.

Why Vibe is Wrong When Vibe Works: We’ve heard a lot in recent months about how Vibe works, but Emma Jacobs tackles the reality that non-experts are creating AI-powered spreadsheets, apps, and more. Some of it, to use the popular phrase, is the result of pure work.

One more thing. . .

Steve, a new movie streaming on Netflix, stars Cillian Murphy as the headmaster of a boarding school for traumatized and sometimes violent teenagers. Set in the 1990s, it conveys the chaos, warmth, and despair of working in such an unpredictable environment. This is an emotional movie and, in my opinion, perfect for solving everyday workplace problems. Bonus: Steve features the great Tracy Ullman as the school’s vice principal.

Graduate student employment crisis 🎓: Reader reactions

Working It’s “Graduate Job Apocalypse” video received over 1 million views on YouTube and received a lot of feedback. Some of my correspondents asked broader questions. Hasn’t it always been difficult for young people to find their own path in life and work 🤷‍♀️?

This perspective from Sharon Ditchburn, Managing Director of Capital Advantage in Dubai, was very interesting. Sharon responded to last week’s op-ed by Abby Miller, who coined the term “quarter-life crisis” in 2001.

As a Gen Xer, I actually disagree with Abby’s comment. Most of us (at least in Australia) have had part-time jobs since the age of 15, so by the time we graduated we were familiar with the basics of the job and needed something a little more grandiose than McDonald’s. Yes, we were in the middle of a recession and didn’t have much choice, but the market was especially dire so we took whatever was offered. (Many friends were earning AU$15,000 a year as clause law clerks working 100 hours a week). But we got our foot in the door and took matters into our own hands from there. Just like today, most law graduates and many accounting graduates did not end up following the path prescribed by their degree.

A view from the Working It community 📸

As the nights get closer and colder, some compensation comes in the form of landmarks being brightly illuminated. This was Big Ben at sunset after an event at the beautifully situated Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors.

Send us your fall workplace scenery 🍁 to isabel.berwick@ft.com. Everyone whose photo is published will receive a large envelope with a book next to their workplace 📕.