Research
The evidence behind
how we built this.
direxio's approach is grounded in published research on manager engagement, leadership development, and how AI affects judgment, not just this page's claims about it. Every source below is public and links to the original.
Why the manager layer matters
The research on manager impact, trust, and burnout, and why organisations keep naming this the top priority.
Gallup Business Journal
Managers Account for 70% of the Variance in Employee Engagement
Gallup's manager-identity research found that who a team's manager is predicts roughly 70% of the variance in that team's engagement score.
It's why direxio treats the manager layer as the highest-leverage place to invest: get management right once, and the effect compounds across every person that manager leads.
Read the source↗Gallup
State of the Global Workplace 2025
Global manager engagement fell to 27% in 2025, and managers are now more burnout-prone and disengaging faster than the individual contributors they lead.
The people organisations depend on to develop everyone else are themselves running low on support, exactly the gap direxio's continuous coaching layer is built to close.
Read the source↗Gartner
Leader and Manager Development Named the Top HR Priority
In a survey of 805 HR leaders, leader and manager development ranked the #1 HR priority for the third consecutive year.
This isn't a niche concern. It's the standing top item on the HR agenda, and it's exactly the layer direxio is built to serve.
Read the source↗Development Dimensions International (DDI)
Global Leadership Forecast 2025
Only 29% of employees say they trust their organisation's leaders, a marker of the confidence gap between employees and the managers meant to develop them.
Trust erodes when standards are applied inconsistently from manager to manager. Anchoring every conversation to the same organisational definition of good management is a direct answer to that gap.
Read the source↗Development Dimensions International (DDI), Global Leadership Forecast 2025
Only 20% of CHROs Have Leaders Ready for Critical Roles
Across 2,185 HR professionals and 10,796 leaders in over 50 countries, only 20% of CHROs said they have leaders ready to fill critical roles today, and only 49% of critical roles could be filled immediately by an internal candidate.
A succession pipeline is only as deep as the manager-development pipeline feeding it. direxio's continuous, framework-anchored coaching is built to close the gap between wanting to promote from within and actually having someone ready.
Read the source↗Business Today India
What 16.2% Attrition Really Signals for 2026
India's overall attrition eased to 16.2% in 2025, the lowest in five years, down from 17.7% in 2024.
Attrition is easing, not disappearing, and manager quality remains one of the few retention levers an organisation can act on directly.
Read the source↗Why AI needs to guide, not answer
The emerging research on generative AI, judgment offloading, and critical thinking that shaped direxio's non-directive design.
Microsoft Research & Carnegie Mellon University, CHI 2025
The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking
A survey of 319 knowledge workers found that higher trust in generative AI correlated with less critical-thinking effort, while higher self-confidence correlated with more.
This is the exact risk direxio's guide, don't answer architecture is built against: an AI that never hands over the finished answer can't be judgment-offloaded the same way.
Read the source↗APA Monitor on Psychology
How AI Is Reshaping Human Skills and Thinking
Heavy, unstructured reliance on generative AI is linked to weaker critical thinking, but structured use paired with active metacognition can preserve or even strengthen it.
The difference isn't whether you use AI, it's how. Coaching that asks questions instead of supplying answers is the structured-use side of that finding.
Read the source↗Phys.org, reporting SBS Swiss Business School research
AI Use Linked to Eroding Critical Thinking Skills
A study of 666 UK participants found a negative correlation between frequent AI use and critical-thinking scores, mediated by cognitive offloading.
Cognitive offloading is the mechanism, not the tool. It's why direxio's coaching keeps the thinking with the employee instead of doing it for them.
Read the source↗HR Executive, reporting Wharton School research
How "Cognitive Surrender" Takes Hold When Employees Lean on AI
Wharton researchers found people accepted incorrect AI answers roughly 80% of the time, with meaningfully higher, and misplaced, confidence than those working unaided.
Confidence without scrutiny is the failure mode. A coaching model built to ask rather than tell is a direct structural hedge against it.
Read the source↗Why coaching itself is measurable
The evidence that structured coaching changes real behaviour, not just how a session feels, and why a controlled comparison is what turns a trend into proof.
The Journal of Positive Psychology
Does Coaching Work? A Meta-Analysis on the Effects of Coaching
Pooling 18 studies, workplace coaching produced a significant effect on individual-level outcomes overall, strongest for goal-directed self-regulation and for performance and skills.
Foundational evidence that structured coaching changes real outcomes, not just how a session feels, which is the bar direxio's own coaching-quality evaluation is built to clear.
Read the source↗Frontiers in Psychology
The Effects of Executive Coaching on Behaviors, Attitudes, and Personal Characteristics
Restricted to 20 randomised controlled trials (around 5,188 participants) to isolate cause from correlation, coaching's largest gains were in actual behaviour, ahead of personal characteristics and attitudes.
Randomised, controlled evidence, not just before-and-after self-report, that coaching moves behaviour. It's the same experimental logic behind why comparing a coached group against a not-yet-coached one is the credible way to prove impact.
Read the source↗Stress and Health
Autonomy Support, Not Instruction, Predicts Workplace Outcomes
A meta-analysis of 192 studies and 93,552 employees found autonomous motivation predicted higher engagement, performance, and wellbeing, and lower turnover and burnout. The study measures motivation quality, not coaching style directly.
This is the mechanism a non-directive approach is built to protect, autonomous motivation, not a head-to-head test of asking questions versus giving answers. It's why direxio's coaching stance is a deliberate design choice, not a stylistic preference.
Read the source↗Why confidentiality makes the signal honest
The evidence behind why direxio keeps the coaching conversation itself private: people disclose more honestly when a human judge isn't in the room for it.
BMC Psychiatry
Removing the Interviewer Increases Disclosure of Sensitive Information
In 339 young people at a youth mental health service, replacing a face-to-face intake interview with a private electronic self-assessment sharply increased disclosure, more than ten times more likely for sensitive topics like substance use.
A different setting, the same mechanism direxio relies on: honest disclosure goes up when a human judge isn't in the room for it. It's why the coaching conversation itself stays private, by design, not just by policy.
Read the source↗Computers in Human Behavior, USC Institute for Creative Technologies
Virtual Humans Increase Willingness to Disclose
People disclosed more openly, and showed more intense emotional signals on video analysis, when they believed they were talking to a computer rather than a human interviewer, driven by reduced fear of judgement.
The same finding as above, from a different population and method. Confidentiality is not a compliance checkbox for direxio, it's the reason the underlying conversation is honest in the first place.
Read the source↗