Building Trust in 2025: The Power of Effective Leadership Communication

Trust. It’s the bedrock of almost everything we do in the workplace because it creates psychological safety that enables employees to show up and perform as their best selves.

It’s the golden currency for leaders that drives employee commitment, loyalty, productivity, collaboration, innovation, and wellbeing. Without it you have disruption, disengagement and toxic cultures.

According to research by Frei & Morriss (2020), trust in someone is driven by three elements:

• Authenticity—showing up as their real self
• Logic—demonstrating sound reasoning and judgment
• Empathy—

When trust is lost, it can almost always be traced back to a breakdown in one of these areas. To build trust as a leader, each element needs to be consistently shown through both words and actions—basically, in every way you can communicate.

With this in mind, using a framework of T.R.U.S.T., here are some tried and tested best practices that leverage leadership communications to build employee trust.

Transparency | Respect | Unity | Security | Trust in Others

Transparency

Transparency in leadership communications is a cornerstone of building employee trust. It’s about leaders aligning their words with actions, ensuring they walk the talk and, in doing so, are believable, relatable role models for how things should be done in the workplace. Consistent leadership from the top down underpins the culture.

Employees trust leaders who are genuine and honest, so transparency extends to sharing both successes and challenges openly, admitting mistakes, and showing vulnerability when appropriate.

Leaders need to speak truthfully, admit mistakes, and share updates even when the news is challenging. Internal Communications can support leaders to do this effectively by:

• Crafting messages that avoid corporate jargon and feel human.
• Developing templates for sensitive topics to ensure honesty without causing unnecessary alarm.
• Coaching leaders to deliver messages in a way that reflects the leader's personal style and values, ensuring the leader themselves comes across authentically.

Transparency is also about providing context and explaining the why and rationale behind decisions and actions to help people understand, align, and navigate through everyday business life as well as times of change.

When leaders clearly explain the reasoning behind their actions, supported by data and context, employees feel informed and confident in the organization’s direction and the leaders themselves.

Clear explanations ensure employees see not just the “what” but also the “why,” aligning decisions with the organization’s goals and strategic priorities.

Building trust through transparent leadership communications looks like:

• Creative communication tools like FAQs, diagrams, or timelines to explain complex decisions.
• Open, honest crisis communications that ensure timely, regular updates during uncertainty or change.
• Well-structured, people-centric narratives that connect decisions to company goals and employee actions and impact.
• A regular cadence of business updates through consistent channels (e.g., newsletters, intranets, or video messages) to share information proactively.
• Leaders engaging directly with employees through live Q&A sessions or informal chats to reinforce openness, connection, and visibility.

Respect

Respect is the act of treating someone or something with high regard or special attention. It's an important value that involves recognizing and valuing the worth of others as human beings.

Respect is integral to building employee trust because it helps create an environment where people feel valued, understood, and safe.

Respect encourages people to accept others for who they are, even if they are different or their views are not shared. Respect helps resolve conflicts by encouraging people to listen to and understand each other's perspectives.

These ingredients cultivate an environment where everyone can bring their best, true selves to work and thrive.

So, how can we leverage leadership communications to demonstrate respect and catalyze the trust factor, too?

• Develop communication plans, messaging frameworks, and accompanying materials that balance organizational needs with employee concerns and perspectives to ensure employees feel supported and valued.
• Treat employees as valued, respected contributors—seek their counsel, ideas, and questions in town halls, or through employee forum groups, pulse surveys or leadership "Ask Me Anything’" sessions.
• Help leaders integrate recognition into communications, such as spotlighting individual or team achievements, to openly acknowledge employee efforts and appreciate the value of contributions for themselves.
• Coach leaders on tone and language that conveys honesty and sincerity. Nobody respects or appreciates corporate spin, business jargon, or answers that avoid the elephant in the room… or the leaders who deliver those kinds of communications!

Unity 

Unity is all about promoting a sense of team spirit and shared purpose through inclusive and collaborative communication.

Weaving unity into leadership communications can help foster a sense of belonging and community for employees, strengthening employee trust by emphasizing shared goals, mutual support, and a collective identity while embracing and valuing individual’s differences and contributions.

It’s the golden thread that connects everyone to an organization and each other.

However, we need strong leadership to champion unity in our quest to build employee trust. Why? Because great leaders can articulate a compelling vision, rally their people around them to unite behind a shared mission and goals. and provide a clear picture of how everyone can contribute to the greater purpose.

When employees see their roles as part of a larger picture they feel a stronger sense of belonging and trust and believe their contributions are worthy of their effort exchange. It’s the employee value proposition if you like.

We can leverage leadership communications to drive a culture based on unity and build trust by:

• Ensuring leaders recognize the influence they have as role models in upholding the integrity of the organizational values, priorities, behaviors, and culture. Under the scrutiny of employees, they are being watched to see what is expected, acceptable behaviour. Leaders need to walk the talk and be the change they want to see in others.
• Creating storytelling campaigns that showcase authentic examples of impactful teamwork and collaboration across the organization, recognizing and celebrating the diversity of experience, ideas, and perspectives.
• Promoting mentorship programs or peer recognition initiatives that build relationships across teams.
• Enabling and encouraging leaders to be visible and connected through regular interactions with employees, whether through town halls, one-on-ones, or casual conversations.
• Organize leader-led strategy sessions or town halls to clarify priorities and promote alignment. Support them with clear, visually appealing materials such as infographics, videos, dashboards, or slide decks that map individual and team contributions to broader organizational goals.

Stability 

In today’s world of work, the only constant is change. Yet through change comes potential insecurity, doubt and confusion—all catalysts waiting in the shadows with the power to erode employee trust.

All every human being craves is stability, as Abraham Maslow insightfully identified—so it’s imperative for leaders, through their words, actions, and behaviors, to uphold the three drivers of trust to instill as much security or stability as they can for their employees.

Through effective, empathetic communication, leaders can be the stability, strength, and stay for their people. Reliability and consistency both engender trust, and when change happens, they can provide much-needed reassurance for employees. And even through change, any decent leader can be authentic, provide a clear rationale for change, and show genuine care for their people.

Stability through leadership communications can look like:

• Openly communicating about the organization’s challenges and successes. Avoiding sugarcoating difficult situations but offering realistic reassurance by focusing on solutions and opportunities.
• Encouraging and enabling leaders to communicate with a consistent cadence and style so employees trust that information will be shared. Gossip or misinformation fills any void, so even in the absence of being able to share any information or updates, leaders need to be visible and communicate.
• Sharing stories to highlight how challenges have been overcome in the past, reinforcing trust in the organization's resilience and leadership’s capabilities in navigating change.
• Ensuring decisions are backed with evidence and clear reasoning to help employees understand the “why”. Logical, structured communication reassures employees that leaders are thoughtful and competent.
• Address employees' emotional and practical needs by acknowledging employees' concerns and explaining how changes or uncertainties might affect them and what support is available.

Trust in Others

Trusting others is essential if you want them to trust you because trust is a reciprocal relationship. People tend to mirror the behaviors they experience. If you trust others, they are more likely to view you as trustworthy and extend trust back to you. It’s an important dynamic for numerous reasons.

Trusting others:

• Creates mutual respect: Signalling respect for someone’s competence and valuing their contributions builds a strong foundation for trust to flow both ways.
• Builds psychological safety: When people feel trusted, they are more likely to take initiative, share ideas, and admit mistakes without fear of judgment, ultimately strengthening collaboration and deepening bonds built on trust.
• Motivates others to take ownership and responsibility, boosting their confidence and commitment.
• Demonstrates vulnerability, which can inspire others to lower their guard and trust you in return.
• Enhances relationships, fosters deeper connections, and creates a more positive and productive environment.

So when it comes to leadership communications, trusting others in order to build employee trust can be demonstrated in myriad ways, including:

• Publicly recognizing individual or team achievements as well as failures, expressing confidence in their abilities and the benefits of taking risks, trying new ways of working and lessons learned for the future.
• Involving employees in decision-making or problem-solving by soliciting their input through surveys, focus groups, employee forums or brainstorming sessions, and incorporating their ideas where possible.
• Completing the feedback loop - communicating how employees ideas, contributions and solutions added value or influenced broader outcomes.
• Creating opportunities for employees to lead meetings, present updates, spearhead initiatives or share best practices.

With the majority of C-Suite leaders wanting to build higher levels of trust amongst their stakeholders, employees included, according to Deloitte, it’s clear that a focus on trust is one agenda topic that professional communicators can easily gain leadership buy-in on.

As these best practices and ideas show, building trust isn’t actually that difficult, but it does require consistency and an intentional, well-considered approach. Commit now, and the dividends will definitely return their investment.