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SIGNAL OF THE WEEK
Trust is not restored through announcements. It is rebuilt through behaviour, repeated over time, in the moments that cost something.
Performance recovers faster than trust. Leaders announce the new strategy, redesign the organisation, and set ambitious goals, but beneath the surface people are quietly asking: Can I still trust this place? Can I trust my leaders? Is it safe to commit again?
This is the trust repair gap. The gap between the pace at which organisations declare recovery and the pace at which people actually recover. Leaders who close this gap do not do so by communicating more. They do so by behaving differently, consistently, in the small moments where the choice between convenience and integrity becomes visible to the team.
THE LEADER’S MOMENT
There is a particular loneliness to leading through fractured trust.
The restructuring has happened. The difficult decision has been made and communicated. The leader has done what was required of them. And yet the team that remains is quieter than before. More careful. Less willing to commit fully to what comes next.
The instinct for most leaders in this moment is to move forward. To focus on the new strategy, the fresh start, the opportunity that lies ahead. To treat what happened as something to be absorbed and left behind.
But teams do not move on because leaders decide it is time to move on.
They move on when they have seen enough evidence to trust again.
That evidence takes longer to accumulate than most leaders expect. And it begins not with words, but with the quality of what the leader does next.
In this edition of Leaders Shelf we cover
SIGNAL OF THE WEEK
THE LEADER’S MOMENT
THE WORLD OF LEADERSHIP THIS WEEK
INTERPRETATION
BOOKS FROM THE SHELF THAT CLARIFY THE ISSUE
LEADERSHIP IN PRACTICE
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR LEADERS
LEADERSHIP MICRO PRACTICES
FROM THE AUTHOR’S DESK
SOURCES
CLOSING REFLECTION
THE WORLD OF LEADERSHIP THIS WEEK
A brief scan of what shifted in the leadership landscape this week.
Only 24% of employees say they trust senior leadership, according to recent survey data, with trust declining even as many organisations post strong financial results, a contradiction that is deepening employee confusion and disengagement.
A 2025 Gartner survey finds that only 48% of employees trust their senior leaders, while separate research finds that 68% of people across 28 countries believe business leaders purposely mislead them, up from 56% in 2021.
Internal survey data from SAP reveals that trust in its executive board fell by six percentage points following restructuring, dropping to 59%, compared to over 80% four years earlier, with confidence in strategy execution falling alongside it.
Research finds that even up to 15 years after layoffs, surviving employees may still be 4.5% less trusting of senior leadership, making post-restructuring trust repair one of the longest-running challenges in organisational life.
Research shows that after a layoff, visible, approachable and open leaders cut the likelihood of a drop in productivity by 70% and a drop in quality by 65%, making leader behaviour in the aftermath of difficult decisions one of the highest-leverage variables available.
INTERPRETATION
Of all the leadership challenges I encounter in my work, trust repair is the one that most consistently humbles leaders who thought they understood it.
The instinct is to treat it as a communication problem. To hold a town hall, share the lessons learned, acknowledge what went wrong, and invite the team to look forward together. These things are necessary. They are not sufficient.
The fastest way to lose credibility after change is to move on too quickly. Rebuilding trust starts with acknowledging what people lost, whether it is colleagues, roles, certainty, or a sense of identity. Leaders who name the emotional and human impact of change signal respect and realism. What teams need before they can hear about the future is to feel that the leader understands what the past cost them.
What I observe most consistently is a timing problem. Leaders are ready to rebuild before their teams are ready to follow. The leader has processed the difficult decision, has made peace with what was required, and is genuinely energised by what lies ahead. The team has not yet processed the loss. They are still in the in-between space where the old normal is gone and the new one has not yet proven itself trustworthy.
The leaders who rebuild trust most effectively are those who stay in that in-between space with their teams long enough. Who do not rush to close the distance between where people are and where the strategy needs them to be. Who understand that trust functions like energy in organisations, generated, depleted and renewed by what leaders do every day.
Rebuilding it requires specific, repeatable behaviours. Small commitments made and kept. Honest conversations about what is uncertain rather than premature reassurance. Consistency between what is said in the town hall and what happens in the one-to-one three weeks later. When people feel valued and see follow-through on promises, trust begins to mend. Not because trust is easily restored, but because evidence accumulates. And evidence, over time, becomes a new conclusion.
BOOKS FROM THE SHELF THAT CLARIFY THE ISSUE
Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace
By Dennis and Michelle Reina
The Reinas' framework distinguishes between three types of workplace trust: contractual trust, the trust of agreements and boundaries; competence trust, the trust in each other's abilities; and communication trust, the trust that information will be shared honestly. Their argument that trust violations are almost always specific to one of these three dimensions gives leaders a precise diagnostic for understanding what, exactly, has been broken and therefore what repair looks like in practice.
The Advantage
By Patrick Lencioni
Lencioni's work on organisational health places trust at the foundation of everything that makes a team function. His argument is that without trust, every other effort at organisational improvement is operating on an unstable base. For leaders navigating the aftermath of difficult decisions, his clarity about what trust actually requires, vulnerability, consistency, and the willingness to be wrong in front of others, is both practically useful and appropriately demanding.
Unleashed
By Frances Frei and Anne Morriss
Frei and Morriss argue that trust is built on three interconnected drivers: authenticity, logic, and empathy. Their particular contribution to the trust repair conversation is the concept of the trust wobble, the specific driver that fails first under pressure and causes trust to collapse. For leaders trying to understand not just that trust has broken but precisely where and why, their diagnostic framework is one of the most practically useful available. Their work is especially relevant for leaders navigating the aftermath of decisions that were logically sound but felt humanly mishandled.
LEADERSHIP IN PRACTICE
Two reports worth reading. Two programmes worth knowing.
Korn Ferry - The Race to Regain Trust (2026)
Korn Ferry's research and advisory work going into 2026 identifies trust repair as the defining leadership challenge of the year, with Kevin Cashman, Vice Chairman of Korn Ferry's CEO and Enterprise Leadership practice, noting that consistency amidst change builds trust and that time is the biggest currency leaders have with their people. Their insight that AI adoption is accelerating the trust problem, because leaders who are silent about change allow employees to form their own, often more alarming, conclusions, is particularly timely. Available at kornferry.com.
Great Place to Work - Preserving Employee Trust During Times of Disruption
Great Place to Work's research on how organisations navigate layoffs and restructuring identifies a consistent pattern among companies that preserve trust: they confront the difficult reality directly rather than managing it through communications, they create genuine channels for employee voice immediately after the disruption, and they treat the post-change period as an opportunity to demonstrate values rather than a period to manage optics. Available at greatplacetowork.com.
Korn Ferry - Leadership U Programme
Korn Ferry's Leadership U programme, built around their Six Degrees of Leadership framework, is specifically designed to help mid-level leaders navigate their teams through periods of significant change. The programme addresses the anticipation, trust-building, and communication skills that are most critical in the aftermath of disruption. Delivered in live, interactive virtual sessions for groups of up to 25 leaders, it is one of the most practically accessible options for organisations whose managers are carrying the weight of post-restructuring recovery. Details at kornferry.com.
CCL - Leading Through Change Programme
CCL's Leading Through Change programme equips leaders with the specific skills required to maintain trust, sustain engagement, and preserve team cohesion when the organisation around them is in motion. Grounded in over 50 years of leadership research, the programme focuses on the relational and communication behaviours that most reliably protect trust during periods of uncertainty. For leaders who have recently navigated difficult decisions and need to rebuild from where they are, CCL's approach offers both rigour and practical application. Details at ccl.org.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR LEADERS
Trust repair is not a communication initiative. It is a behavioural commitment made in the smallest moments, kept consistently over the longest period. Leaders who treat it as a message to deliver will find it does not land. Leaders who treat it as a standard to maintain will find it slowly takes hold.
Teams heal on their own timeline, not the leader's. The leader's readiness to move forward is not a signal that the team is ready. Reading where people actually are, not where the strategy needs them to be, is the first requirement of effective trust repair.
Consistency after disruption is worth more than eloquence during it. What a leader says in the difficult moment matters. What they do in the three months that follow matters more.
The real fix will come not from announcements but from behavioural evidence. Every commitment kept, every honest conversation held, every moment of genuine presence in the aftermath of difficulty becomes part of the evidence on which trust is rebuilt.
LEADERSHIP MICRO PRACTICES
This week, identify one person on your team who you sense has not fully re-engaged since a recent difficult change. Not a performance issue. A trust issue. Reach out not to check on their work but to check on them. Ask how they are carrying what happened. Then listen.
Make one commitment this week that is slightly inconvenient to keep. Keep it anyway. Do not mention that you kept it. Let the behaviour speak without the commentary.
In your next team meeting, name one thing that did not go as planned in the recent period and say clearly what you would do differently. Not as a performance of humility, but as a genuine act of honesty. The difference is visible to teams.
FROM THE AUTHOR’S DESK
Marut Bhardwaj - Founder & Curator, Leaders Shelf
The hardest part of rebuilding trust, in my experience, is that it cannot be rushed.
Leaders who have made a difficult decision, communicated it as well as they could, and genuinely tried to lead with integrity through a hard period often feel a quiet frustration when they discover that trust has not simply followed from those efforts. They did the right things. The distance remains.
What I try to help leaders understand is that the distance is not a verdict on their leadership. It is a natural consequence of loss. When people lose colleagues, certainty, or the version of the organisation they had committed to, they need time and evidence before they can extend trust again. That is not obstruction. It is human.
The leaders I have watched rebuild trust most completely are those who understood that the rebuilding was not a project with an end date. It was simply a standard of behaviour, held consistently, until it became the new normal.
That is the hardest and most important act available to a leader in the aftermath of a fracture.
SOURCES
Korn Ferry. The Race to Regain Trust in 2026. Korn Ferry Insights, 2026. kornferry.com
Great Place to Work. Preserving Employee Trust During Times of Disruption. greatplacetowork.com
Gartner. Employee Trust Survey 2025. Gartner Research, 2025.
Edelman. 2026 Trust Barometer. Edelman Trust Institute, 2026. edelman.com
Engage for Success. How to Rebuild Trust After Layoffs. engageforsuccess.org, 2025.
Burchell, Michael. Rebuilding Trust After Organizational Change. michaelburchell.com, 2026.
Korn Ferry. Leadership U Programme. kornferry.com
Center for Creative Leadership. Leading Through Change Programme. ccl.org
Reina, Dennis and Michelle. Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace. Berrett-Koehler, 2015.
Lencioni, Patrick. The Advantage. Jossey-Bass, 2012.
Frei, Frances and Morriss, Anne. Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader's Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You. Harvard Business Review Press, 2020.
CLOSING REFLECTION
Trust, once fractured, does not return because it is invited back.
It returns because it sees something worth returning to.
A leader who shows up consistently
after the difficult decision,
after the restructuring,
after the moment that cost people something,
and who keeps showing up
without requiring the team to pretend it did not happen,
is doing the hardest and most human work leadership asks of anyone.
That is where trust is rebuilt.
Not in the announcement.
In what comes after.
If this brief helped you see the leadership landscape more clearly, subscribe to Leaders Shelf for weekly leadership intelligence drawn from books, research, and real leadership signals.
Leaders Shelf
Published weekly. Curated by Marut Bhardwaj.