By Kayla Monroe

Employee trust is at a historic low. Not in your organization specifically. Everywhere.

The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer found that 68% of people believe business leaders deliberately mislead them, up 12 points since 2021. Gallup's latest research shows only 31% of American workers feel engaged at work, the lowest level in a decade. 

If you read the last issue of Growth by Design, you got a clear picture of what the external environment looks like right now. The volatility isn't temporary. Most leaders have accepted that. What is less visible is what that volatility is doing inside their organizations while attention is focused outside.

For leaders of growing organizations, the exposure is even greater. Growth means constant change by definition…roles evolving, structures shifting, new people coming in, priorities adjusting. That's not dysfunction, that's what scaling looks like. But it means the baseline level of internal unpredictability is already higher than it is in a stable, mature company. Add a volatile external environment on top of that and the trust challenge compounds fast.

Why this moment is different

Research tells us that uncertainty about an organization's direction leads to chronic stress, which inhibits the release of oxytocin, the brain chemical that facilitates trust and teamwork. In plain terms: when people can't predict what comes next, the brain registers it as threat. Not metaphorically. Physiologically.

That response was already running before your employees came to work this morning. Tariffs, economic uncertainty, AI reshaping industries, a news cycle that doesn't slow down. People are carrying a baseline level of anxiety that is higher than it has been in years.

When the organization adds its own layer of unpredictability on top of that - shifting priorities, reversed decisions, unclear accountability, commitments that quietly disappear - people stop being able to separate the two sources. It all registers the same way. Nothing is stable. And when nothing feels stable, people stop taking risks, stop raising hard things, and start optimizing for self-protection over organizational outcomes.

What doesn't move the needle

More communication. Town halls. Reassurance. Increased visibility.

None of that is wrong, but it treats trust as a perception problem. Gallup found that only 46% of employees feel clear about what's expected of them at work, down from 56% in 2020. That gap didn't close because leaders communicated less. It widened while many were communicating more.

People don't trust what they hear. They trust what they consistently experience. 

And what they experience every day is how the organization actually operates.

Where the advantage is

Right now your people are navigating two sources of unpredictability at once. The world outside the organization and the organization itself. You can't control the first. The second is entirely within your reach.

The leaders who keep their people through volatile periods are the ones whose organizations feel like stable ground when everything outside is not. And for leaders who are actively growing something, this is where the real leverage lives. 

The organizations that scale well aren't the ones that eliminate change. They're the ones that make everything around the change feel solid. 

That stability doesn't come from messaging. It comes from how the organization operates, and it shows up in four specific ways.

Everyone hears something different

When leaders interpret priorities differently and communicate them differently to their teams, people feel it as a credibility problem, not a communication one. If the leadership team isn't genuinely aligned on what matters most and why, that misalignment shows up two levels down as noise. In an already anxious workforce, noise reads as instability. Getting your leadership team to a real shared understanding before anyone communicates anything is one of the fastest trust signals available to you.

Nobody knows who owns what

Unclear accountability is one of the most anxiety-producing conditions a workforce can operate in. When people don't know who owns what, they can't predict how decisions get made or what they can count on others to do. Clarity about authority and accountability tells people the organization knows how it works and they can count on that. In a high-growth environment where roles and structures are constantly evolving, that kind of clarity isn't a nice-to-have. It's what keeps people oriented when everything else is moving.

The load is invisible to you

When strong performers are overloaded and leadership keeps adding to the pile, people draw a conclusion: that no one at the top has a realistic view of what's happening on the ground. That conclusion moves quietly until someone leaves. Before adding anything new, have an honest conversation about what is actually on people's plates. Not what the org chart suggests. What is actually happening.

Commitments that disappear cost more than you think

Priorities that get announced and quietly abandoned. Decisions that get made and then reversed without explanation. Every time that cycle repeats, people update their model of how much they can count on what leadership says. In a growing organization where change is already frequent, follow-through on what you commit to is what separates productive change from noise. Only commit to what you can follow through on, and close the loop visibly when something changes.

The bigger picture

Edelman's research is clear that the drop in employer trust is unprecedented, reflecting genuine frustration and anxiety in the global workforce. That didn't happen because the external environment got hard. It happened because organizations under pressure became less predictable from the inside.

Growing organizations have a choice in how this period plays out for them. The ones that come through it with their people intact and their momentum building are the ones that treat internal stability as something they design, not something that happens by default. Predictable direction. Clear accountability. Realistic expectations. Commitments that mean something. That is what the nervous system is looking for, and right now it is the foundation that makes growth sustainable.

If you want a quick read on where this is showing up across your organization, the Organizational Friction Map is a good place to start.

Until next time,

Kayla

P.S. The leaders who come out of this period strongest will be the ones who got clear on where their organization was losing ground before it became expensive. The Organizational Growth Diagnostic is designed to give you exactly that clarity.  Click Here and we can talk about whether it's the right fit.

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WORK WITH KAYLA

I partner with CEOs and executive teams navigating growth, complexity, or transition to help their organizations operate with greater clarity and momentum.

Two common ways we work together:

Focused Consulting Engagements

Defined interventions that address specific constraints such as leadership alignment, organizational structure, or execution friction.  Learn More

Strategic Growth Partnership

An ongoing advisory relationship for leadership teams navigating sustained growth, complexity, or transition. Learn More

Not sure where to start? Send me an email directly or schedule a conversation.  

www.kaylamonroe.com