The State of Trust: 2025

How Trust Is Really Built Within Companies

Trust is eroding. And yet, it’s never been more essential.

In an era marked by organizational flux, polarized dialogue, and historic lows in employee engagement, trust has become one of the most valuable—and vulnerable—assets inside companies. But despite its importance, trust is often misunderstood, mismanaged, or mistaken for a soft skill.

At DIALOGUE, we set out to change that.

Why This Report—and Why Now?

In partnership with Hirsch Leatherwood, and in collaboration with Claudio Garcia, Adjunct Assistant Professor at NYU, we launched a cross-disciplinary inquiry to explore one question:
How is trust actually built and rebuilt in today’s workplace?

Over the course of eight months, we gathered insights from:

  • 100 senior executives across industries (92% director-level or above)

  • Intimate roundtable discussions and 1:1 dialogues

  • A mix of quantitative data and qualitative narratives from inside the system

The result is The State of Trust: 2025, a perspective-rich field guide for leaders navigating across today's ecosystems.

Who This Is For

If you're a CEO, executive, people leader, or transformation partner wrestling with the emotional, strategic, and systemic dimensions of change, this white paper is for you. We found that the findings transcend industries, functions, and geographies. They speak to what it is uniquely human and key to our collective existence.

It's for those who don’t just want to talk about trust—but want to design from it.

Key Insights from the Report

Trust is declining inside organizations.

56% of leaders report lower trust among colleagues than just four years ago.

Trust operates on an 8-week cycle.

Most organizations see shifts in internal trust levels every 1–2 months—yet most only address it annually.

Trust is a spectrum—not an absolute.

Only 0% of respondents described trust in black-and-white terms. Most see it as fluid, contextual, and dynamic.

Productive distrust is real and valuable.

Healthy skepticism can reduce groupthink, reveal blind spots, and enable stronger decisions.

Leadership drives trust more than mission.

Communication, transparency, and decision quality shape employee trust more than values statements ever could.

Download the Report

What you’ll find inside…

  • The three macro forces driving today’s trust shifts

  • The emerging role of trust brokers inside organizations

  • What actually works (and what doesn’t) to build trust

  • A framework for managing trust as a polarity

  • Design recommendations for resilient, trust-centered cultures