Trust Within the Organization Isn’t Experienced the Same Way from Every Role

Trust Within the Organization Isn’t Experienced the Same Way from Every Role

In April, the first 2026 meeting of the Companies for Trust Community took place, an initiative of the consulting firm Almabrands and Futuro del Trabajo SOFOFA Capital Humano that brings together organizations interested in placing trust at the center of their management.

 

The gathering brought together leaders from different industries to reflect, based on firsthand experience, on the main challenges in culture and people management.

 

One of the key findings of the meeting was the persistence, and even widening, of a gap in the experience of trust between those who manage people and those who do not. Data from the 2025 Organizational Trust Pulse show that, for example, in the Concern for Working Conditions dimension, net performance among leaders is 55% versus 27% among those without direct reports.

 

The trend repeats in other critical variables. In Adequate Skills and Support for Development, net performance is 48% among managers, while it drops to around 22% in the rest of the organization. In Connection and Commitment to the Environment, the difference is also significant: about 49% among leaders versus just 16% among employees without a leadership role.

 

When looking at this data among companies that are measuring organizational trust with this same model, and that place trust as an important pillar of their conversations, the gaps between people with and without direct reports narrow, with the largest gap being just 9 percentage points between the two groups.

 

In a qualitative analysis to explore this phenomenon further, some of the explanations that stand out are: gaps in access to information, difficulties in cascading decisions, generational differences, and a growing sense of disconnection or lack of belonging among those who do not lead teams.

 

During the meeting, participants agreed that this scenario poses a challenge that goes beyond internal communication. The question that arises is whether organizations are facing a perception problem or, more deeply, an organizational design challenge.

 

The Companies for Trust Community will continue to address these topics throughout the year, with the goal of creating collective learning spaces that help move toward organizations where trust is managed systematically, built in as a criterion in organizational design, leadership styles, and everyday practices. Only then will it be possible to build organizations where the work experience is consistent and where trust operates as a real enabler of engagement, performance, and long-term sustainability.