Let’s be honest, none of us sees everything, we think we do, but we don’t. And right now, there’s something important happening, in front of us, and many leaders are not fully aware of it. Global unhappiness is rising, not just in the news, not just in certain regions, but almost everywhere. Stress, worry, sadness, even physical pain and anger, year after year they have been increasing. And this didn’t start with COVID, the pandemic only made it clearer, but the trend was there before. That’s the blind spot.

Think of the dashboards we use, GDP (Gross Domestic Product), unemployment, stock markets, inflation, earnings, the numbers look fine. But imagine another dashboard, one that shows how people actually feel. Stress, sadness, anger, pain, going up. The reality is, the first dashboard makes the headlines, the second one hardly does. And most leaders focus on the first.

I’ve felt this myself, when starting in new roles abroad or even at home. You arrive prepared, you read the reports, you speak to the teams. But underneath, there are things you don’t yet see, how people handle stress, how culture shapes what can be said and what is kept silent, how uncertainty is carried in a room. Unless you stop, listen, and look differently, you miss it.

Jon Clifton, in Blind Spot, explains that a meaningful life is not only about money or success, but about five dimensions of wellbeing.

If one of these is weak, people start to struggle. If two or more are weak, unhappiness grows quickly. And yet, in leadership conversations, only one of these dimensions usually gets the spotlight, the financial.

t became clear to me after INSEAD, during a short program that opened my eyes. At INSEAD I learned how powerful it is to pause, and since then I have applied this mindfulness to myself very regularly, once or twice a day. Interestingly, for many years I have followed a simple tactic, in the morning I note down three things - sometimes only in my mind - that I want to get done and no matter what happens, they get done. During the day there are always surprises, good ones and bad ones, but those three priorities keep me focused and motivated - hey remind me that small disciplines are what keep you moving through uncertainty.

The statistics show how serious this is. In 2022, Gallup found that 41% of adults worldwide said they felt a lot of stress the day before, 40% felt worry, 27% felt sadness (Gallup). That means almost half of the people around us carry heavy feelings each day. If leaders don’t notice, how can they respond?

And it matters. In the U.S., Gallup reports that only 50% of employees are thriving, 46% are struggling, and 5% are suffering (Gallup). Behind those numbers are people who show up at work but may not feel seen. That’s not neutral, it affects performance, it affects trust, it affects the future.

We celebrate numbers, quarterly results, revenue curves, but those numbers only tell part of the story. They measure productivity, not purpose, output, not meaning. Feelings shape the future as much as finances do. And emotions spread faster than spreadsheets. One person’s burnout can shift the mood of a team, one team’s exhaustion can drag down a whole business. Research shows that leaders who pay attention to morale and trust are almost twice as likely to succeed in transformation and they adjust faster when challenges come. Numbers lag, emotions lead. If we ignore them, we are always late.

Blind spots do not disappear by themselves, they need attention. The cost of ignoring unhappiness is trust. You can manage for a while with disengaged people, but over time, frustration grows, trust fades and when trust is gone, no strategy or vision survives. A blind spot might already be costing more than we realise.

And here is another reminder, a recent report from Eurofound shows that many young adults in Europe, even as employment has improved post-pandemic, face pressures like the cost of living and housing insecurity, both of which undermine mental wellbeing (Eurofound). The 2025 World Happiness Report, led by Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre, finds that young people under 30 in Western Europe and the UK now report some of the lowest happiness levels globally, below countries such as Moldova and Nicaragua (Reuters).

These are not distant statistics, they are signals in our societies today.

The question remains, do you know your blind spot? Every one of us has one, me included. If we do not explore it with data, with listening, with reflection, we are not really leading, we are assuming. Leadership today cannot rely on assumptions. Paying attention to unhappiness is not an extra, it is part of building the trust and energy that every vision depends on.

I am all for authentic leadership and I am really keen to understand how you see this in your own world. Do we acknowledge the way stress and unhappiness evolve around us, or do we sometimes choose not to? Are we willing to share these feelings openly, or do we still hold back? I would love to hear your perspective - share your thoughts in the comments below.