Organizations today are facing a two-front crisis of trust. Externally, they’ve been losing trust with the publics they serve. A recent Gallup poll found that public perceptions of trust in US organizations have “never been lower.” Internally, organizations have been losing trust with their employees. Distrust in leadership has recently reached an all-time high; according to Gallup, only 21% of US employees strongly agree that they trust the leadership of their organization.

Unlike previous periods of increasing distrust, the current situation cannot be blamed on financial calamities. Instead, broader economic, cultural, and personal factors are at play. Consequently, as reported by Forbes, the country’s trust crisis “isn’t going away any time soon.”

To reverse these alarming trends, we need a better understanding of trust—including its component parts, how it works, and how it’s created. In support of this goal, on June 25, 2025, we hosted a webinar called “Building Cultures of Trust in 21st Century Organizations.” Facilitated by John Voiklis (Knology principal researcher) and Jodi Starkman (executive director of the Innovation Resource Center for Human Resources), the webinar included a discussion of our trustworthiness framework, along with evidence-backed strategies for building, maintaining, and repairing trust. Also included in the webinar were the experiences, perspectives, and recommendations of three organizational leaders who have made a commitment to trust-building efforts in the workplace: 1) Denise Rosario Adusei of the Bronx Children’s Museum; 2) Stephanie Arduini of the Seattle Children’s Museum; and 3) Ellen Pais of the Pretend City Children’s Museum.

You can watch the webinar below.

During the webinar, we conducted four separate audience polls on questions related to trust. The results of these polls are presented below.

Among 71 respondents, only five (7%) said that contentious issues had not affected their workplace. Most chose either “somewhat affected” (45, or 63%) or “greatly affected” (21, or 30%).

Among 59 respondents, most (45, or 76%) said they were “somewhat confident” in their ability to manage contentious issues in the workplace. Six (10%) chose “fully confident” and eight (14%) chose “not at all confident.”

Among 65 respondents, 17 (26%) chose “sincerity,” 12 (18%) chose “integrity,” 11 (17%) chose “competence,” 11 (17%) chose “benevolence,” nine (14%) chose “affinity,” and five (8%) chose “reliability.”

At the end of the webinar, attendees were again asked to rate how confident they felt managing contentious issues. Among 35 respondents, most (26, or 74%) said they were “somewhat confident.” Six (17%) chose “fully confident” and three (8%) chose “not at all confident.”

Throughout the webinar, we received a number of audience questions. We’ll be answering these through our LinkedIn account, so head over there to be part of the continuing conversation!

Next Steps

This webinar was tied to our “Culture of Trust” project, which seeks to give museums and other non-profit organizations concrete strategies for building, maintaining, and restoring leader-staff trust as they work through contentious workplace issues. At this point in the project, we’ve analyzed news media coverage of leader-staff disputes in museums, reviewed the existing academic literature on leadership-staff trust in nonprofit organizations, and interviewed museum leaders about the most pressing trust issues they’ve encountered in the workplace — along with their recommendations for preventing and working through these issues.

In the next part of this project, we’re going to be interviewing staff about their experiences of and perspectives on trust in the museum workplace. If you're a museum professional in a non-executive role (floor staff, middle management, etc.), we'd love to talk to you about trust. You can sign up for an interview by completing this form.

About this Article

Want to learn more about trust? The best place to start is our “Trust 101” primer. From there, take a look at our work on why benevolence is key to our perceptions of trustworthiness, our research into how people assess the trustworthiness of zoos and aquariums, a conversation about the role of trust in public health, some findings pertaining to the role of partnerships in trust-building, and our thoughts about how moral motives factor into considerations of trust and trustworthiness. Be sure to also check out emerging findings from our “Culture of Trust” project.