Chuck Gose and Jenni Field dig into “quiet cracking,” a new buzzword for burnout nobody notices until it’s too late, then take on a piece arguing that authentic corporate communication is a myth — and that credibility, not authenticity, is what leaders should actually chase. They close with encouraging data on the internal comms job market and a sobering Gallup statistic: only 20% of employees strongly trust their organization’s leadership.
Jenni opens with an Economic Times article on “quiet cracking,” a term describing burnout that creeps in unnoticed until an employee simply disengages. Chuck argues the concept isn’t new — he points to prior iCology conversations with Kelsey Buchholz on burnout — and cautions against treating it purely as a productivity issue, since burnout affects frontline and home-life demands just as much as office work.
The hosts turn to a piece by Sean Randall on Mixternal, shared with them by an iCology member, arguing that corporate communication has never really been about unfiltered truth — only about shaping perception. Jenni says she’d rather leaders aim for credibility than authenticity, and the two swap examples (a retail-division leader who wouldn’t blog, a COO fixated on his golf habit) to illustrate how coaching leaders toward their natural communication style, paired with honesty, beats chasing a manufactured version of “authentic.”
Jenni shares a LinkedIn analysis by Kevin Blasko showing 1,725 internal comms jobs posted in the first half of 2025 — a 32% increase over the second half of 2024, even as market-wide postings declined. Chuck welcomes the positive trend but flags that VP-level openings remain limited and that the hiring process itself, including automated rejections tied to platforms like Workday, still leaves candidates frustrated.
The episode closes on a Gallup-sourced statistic reported by Entrepreneur: just 20% of U.S. employees strongly trust their organization’s leadership, with roughly 70% of the variance in team engagement traced back to managers. Chuck argues leaders often assume trust is automatic rather than something that must be actively built, and both hosts agree that small, repeated erosions — not one big betrayal — are usually what quietly crack it.
Chuck: Welcome to Frequency, the podcast where we tune into the stories, trends and conversations shaping the world of internal communications. I’m Chuck Gose.
Jenni: And I’m Jenni Field. Frequency is your go-to for real talk about comms, culture, and employee experience — beyond the buzzwords and straight to what matters.
Chuck: To kick things off, Jenni, last week we mentioned it was your birthday, and in fact our episode came out on your birthday. Was that the highlight, or was there something else from your week-long celebration that stood out?
Jenni: I feel like this is a trick question today. Of course the episode coming out on my birthday was a highlight. I’d say the other highlight was my barbecue on Saturday with friends and family — a day of absolute joy, quite a lot of alcohol, and everybody just laughing all day. That was a massive highlight.
Chuck: Did you suffer from bun paralysis again?
Jenni: Yes — I couldn’t choose my buns for the hot dogs and burgers because there are so many buns in the supermarket. I got past it. I ended up with too many hot dog buns, so they’re in the freezer for another event. I went to a smaller supermarket and told myself I had to decide. Got brioche for the burgers. Solid choice.
Chuck: Solid. Brioche, pretzel — those are the top ones. It feels very American of you to do a barbecue for your birthday in the summer.
Jenni: Maybe, but everyone here barbecues in the summer, and my husband loves grilling — he’s got two grills now, so any excuse. You’ve got to enjoy the good weather here while you have it, because it doesn’t last long. If you get a two-week window of good weather, you’re outside all the time.
Chuck: So are we officially past your birthday celebrations now?
Jenni: Yes — it wrapped up with a picnic in a London park with my best friends, Advita and Trudy. That was the end of a week-long celebration.
Chuck: So we can officially say my birthday is next. It’s in December, and it’ll really be a two-to-three-month-long celebration, because it’s my 50th. A lot of planning is going into that. But enough about birthdays — Jenni, let’s get into the stories you’ve picked this week.
Jenni: I’ve got a real selection of articles this week, but nothing really about AI, which I think is a first for us. We’ve got burnout and a new buzzword, a topic on authenticity that’s close to my heart, a LinkedIn post on the internal comms jobs market, and some insights from Gallup on trust and leadership. Let’s start with burnout. There’s an article in the Economic Times about “quiet cracking” — a sneaky workplace burnout trend that’s costing billions and breaking spirits. Quiet cracking is the latest buzzword highlighting burnout that creeps in unnoticed. As engagement dips globally, workers find themselves emotionally detached without realizing it. Experts like Peter Duris talk about the need for early intervention — management support and open communication to combat this silent productivity killer. Is this just another buzzword, or is it what happens when relationships break down?
Chuck: We’ve had quiet quitting, quiet firing, now quiet cracking. Fine if a label gets attention, but I don’t think it’s anything new. We’ve spent time inside iCology talking about burnout with Kelsey Buchholz, who’s a member and author on this topic, and also did a virtual event on burnout for communicators. Nobody burns out in a day or a week — it’s a slow burn. Kelsey has a chart showing a match slowly burning down until it hits your mental health, your physical health, your relationships. If a buzzword draws attention to that, fine, but this is just how burnout is. And I think the danger is focusing on it only as a productivity killer — if you only care about burnout from a productivity lens, you’re missing the conversation.
Jenni: Agreed — and you wouldn’t necessarily see it in productivity numbers at first, because people carry on resentfully until they suddenly say “I don’t want to do this anymore.” That’s why open communication and psychological safety matter so much here. It is another buzzword we probably don’t need, but it does start a conversation.
Chuck: And it’d be a misstep to think this only affects knowledge workers or corporate staff. Burnout is an everywhere problem — anyone juggling work with caregiving at home, for instance. Thinking frontline employees aren’t affected would be a massive miss.
Jenni: Moving on — an article from Sean Randall’s Mixternal blog, arguing that authentic corporate communication is an impossible myth, and what to do instead. An iCology member, Nicole Oseguera, flagged this for us. Randall argues authenticity in corporate comms has always been a myth — going back to Ivy Lee’s 1904 PR firm through to AI-generated text today, the goal has never really been unfiltered truth, it’s always been about shaping perceptions to serve business ends. The harder you try to look real, the more staged you become — scripted “unscripted” moments, town halls, feel-good employee spotlights are all manufactured, and employees aren’t fooled by it. Calling something “authentic” actually makes people more suspicious, because they know there’s a playbook. There’s an ethics piece too: it’s one thing to ghostwrite a CEO email, another to pretend the ghostwriting isn’t happening.
Chuck: Thank you, Nicole, for sharing that — and for being an early listener of Frequency. On authenticity: I think we’ve lost the meaning of the word. When leaders are their genuine selves, sometimes that’s not what people want to believe is “authentic.” I think what people actually want when they say “authenticity” is honesty — they want to know what they’re reading is truthful. Companies always spin employee stories positively; nobody publishes an article about an employee’s costly mistake. Communicators know this, but let’s be honest about what we’re doing.
Jenni: I want to share an example. When I was head of internal comms for a UK arm of a global business, a group team rolling out a new collaboration platform insisted every board member blog on it. I told them our retail division head, “Bob,” wouldn’t blog — he spent his time on the shop floor, not at a keyboard, and forcing it wouldn’t feel real to him or to readers. We protected him from doing something inauthentic to his style. How do we navigate that in a digital world that keeps demanding leaders produce content in formats that don’t suit them?
Chuck: I think that’s a misalignment of expectations. If Bob’s better suited to video, do video — not every employee reads blogs anyway. I worked with a COO named Steve who was convinced employees wanted to hear about the golf courses he played every weekend. That was disconnected from what employees actually cared about, since most couldn’t afford $300-500 rounds of golf. My job as the communicator was to redirect him — talk about the game itself, not the price tag of the course. That’s the connection worth building.
Jenni: So it’s always coming back to honesty for you.
Chuck: Exactly — I always go back to honesty. One of my favorite lines, borrowed from a Fast Company piece years ago: “Honesty without compassion is cruelty.” Be honest, but understand that sharing certain numbers or results creates discomfort, and lead with compassion around that. Authenticity is a dangerous thing to chase because it’s faulty as a goal. Transparency’s the same — leaders can never fully show everything. I call it “translucent” — like looking through wax paper, you see some things, not everything.
Jenni: I’ve written a whole book about the fact that authenticity isn’t what we should want leaders chasing. The focus should be on credible leadership — compassion, honesty, transparency, but also vulnerability, trustworthiness, integrity. If communicators coach and advise leaders the way we did with Bob and Steve, communications become more credible and believable — more genuine, not authentic. Let’s take “authentic comms” off the table as a phrase entirely.
Chuck: And with transparency, leaders should be comfortable saying “I actually can’t tell you that” when something’s commercially sensitive, rather than dodging with “great question, we’ll get back to you.”
Jenni: Exactly — there are honest reasons: commercially sensitive, not yet finalized, not appropriate to share. You can articulate that honestly in your own words. It’s a great article, and we’ll link it in the show notes — every communicator should read it and reflect on how manufactured their leadership communication really is.
Jenni: Moving on — a LinkedIn post from Kevin Blasko analyzing the internal comms job market in 2025. I want to share the data because our industry often assumes everything’s doom and gloom, and the numbers tell a more encouraging story. There were 1,725 IC jobs posted in the first half of this year — a 32% increase over the second half of 2024 — while job postings declined 5.1% market-wide in May alone. VP positions doubled from 20 to 40 openings, entry-level coordinator roles grew 47%, manager roles still dominate at 51% of postings, Minneapolis-St. Paul broke into the top 10 markets, and remote IC roles held at 12-13% of postings, nearly double the market-wide average. Kevin’s bottom line: internal comms is showing remarkable resilience in a challenging job market.
Chuck: Shout out to Kevin — he does great work sharing openings and a newsletter people should sign up for. It’s genuinely encouraging. Of those 1,725 jobs, only 40 were VP-level, so there’s still not a lot of growth opportunity at the top. The remote number surprises me — the jobs I’m seeing and posting inside iCology skew far more hybrid or in-office; I’d guess remote is closer to one in ten, not 12-13%. This should be encouraging for people job hunting, but it doesn’t change how frustrated candidates who’ve been searching for 12-18 months feel. There’s a class-action lawsuit against Workday over automated rejections where it seems no human ever reviews some applications — which raises real questions about the hiring process itself.
Jenni: That echoes what I hear in the UK. Recruiters have told me not to rely on LinkedIn’s “quick apply” because it doesn’t stand out from the volume. Industry or sector experience seems to matter more than ever right now — without it, candidates get discounted from the pile. And titles like VP versus manager mean wildly different things at different companies, which makes it hard to compare roles. I spoke to someone outside comms who’s been through four rounds of interviews over two months for one role — nobody’s evolved the hiring process to match the current volume and pace of the market.
Chuck: I wonder if leaning on industry experience is partly a way to auto-filter an overwhelming applicant pool, even if it excludes strong candidates from adjacent industries. And whether long processes also self-eliminate less-committed candidates. Neither approach really helps hiring — if you’re hiring an internal comms director, you should also be looking at hospitality, healthcare, other sectors, or you get an echo chamber.
Jenni: Agreed — and there’s a salary-expectations mismatch too. A UK recruitment consultancy called VMA Group published a report called “Inside Insight” with salary benchmarks by sector, which I use with clients to gauge if someone’s operating at the right level. Both sides — employers and candidates — aren’t approaching this the right way, and the people caught in the middle are the ones trying to find their next job.
Chuck: Here’s what I’d do: publish clear qualifying criteria before people apply — years of experience, specific skills required — so people can self-filter before submitting. Right now there’s no criteria gate, so people apply broadly out of financial necessity and get frustrated by volume. It might not solve everything, but it’d help.
Jenni: Our final article is about employee trust in leadership. I saw this on Instagram and found the source on Entrepreneur.com: only 20% of employees trust the leadership of their organization, according to Gallup’s chief scientist. About 70% of the variance in team engagement comes back to the manager, not just senior leaders. The article references Gallup’s book Culture Shock, which I’ve started listening to — it’s a few hours long, came out in 2023, and already feels dated in how it discusses return-to-office and hybrid work. I’ll bring more from it to a future episode. But I struggle with why this number is still so bad.
Chuck: Can I ask — who’s the “we” who isn’t getting better at this?
Jenni: Leadership broadly — organizations, HR, comms — I think there’s been a long-standing lack of leadership and management development. We’ve been seeing this for twenty years and asking why it isn’t improving.
Chuck: I’m not surprised by the number. I think leaders drastically discount the role trust plays — they assume trust because of their position rather than actively building it. Trust is fragile: it takes one thing to break it, and I’d bet peer-to-peer trust is triple what leadership trust is. I look up to leaders for inspiration and get disappointed by that more often than I’d like, which is probably why I’m not surprised 80% of people don’t strongly trust their leaders.
Jenni: I think you’re right that leaders often assume “you have to trust me because I’m in charge.” It’s part of why I wrote my book — being a leader is a responsibility. You have to do the work: be capable, yes, but also trustworthy, have integrity, be vulnerable, have vision. I wonder if HR, comms and people teams keep fighting for investment in this and keep being told “we don’t need it because we’re great” — and the link between trust, engagement and the bottom line just isn’t being made clearly enough. If a global pandemic didn’t move this number, what will? Open question to anyone listening.
Chuck: Trust is so fragile, and I don’t think leadership treats it that way — they assume it’s just there.
Jenni: And it’s not always one big betrayal — it can be chipped away slowly without you realizing, through small daily behaviors. Unless you’re willing to have a real conversation about what’s happening in your team, you won’t see it.
Chuck: Maybe that’s the real “quiet cracking” — cracks quietly forming in trust. A manager who cancels your one-on-one every week — you might still trust them, but it makes you hedge the next time. I’d love to know whether leaders actually care that only 20% of people trust them.
Jenni: We’ve got a lot more questions on this one — I’ll finish the book and share notes in a future episode. That wraps our articles for today. What’s freaking you out this week?
Chuck: I love hypocrisy, and I’ve got one to call out. Communicators love to critique AI-written text — spotting the em dashes, saying AI shouldn’t write your content — but have zero issue using AI to generate genuinely awful infographics and images. If I were a designer, I’d be roasting communicators for sharing these badly designed, cartoonish AI graphics. You can’t criticize AI writing while giving yourself a pass on AI design — that’s the hypocrisy I love so much.
Jenni: I need to see some of these. I’m here for it.
Chuck: I’ll start sharing them with you — beautiful in their ugliness.
Jenni: My freak-out this week is pavlova, which I wrote about in my newsletter. For my birthday, my mum made her pavlova — a signature dish in our family, made by both my mum and my dad. We’re always debating what’s a pavlova versus a meringue: pavlova has a marshmallow layer, which makes it different. If a restaurant serves you a “pavlova” without that marshmallow layer, you’ve been fobbed off with a meringue.
Chuck: I read your newsletter this week — thank you for translating “fobbed off” for those of us who didn’t know it.
Jenni: Happy to — you’ve educated me plenty on this show when I say “downing tools” or “being poorly” and you have no idea what I mean. I don’t think I’ve ever had to ask you what you meant, so clearly I’ve got more of those than you do.
Chuck: Challenge accepted.
Jenni: That’s it for this week. Thank you for joining us. All the articles and other things we’ve mentioned are in the show notes. Rate and review after you’ve listened, subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, and pass this along to someone you think would enjoy it — you can find us on YouTube too. Thank you to Poet Ali for contributing the music to the show, and we’ll be back next week with more news, insights and opinions about comms and leadership in workplaces today. Keep tuning in and turning up.
Chuck: Welcome to Frequency, the podcast where we tune into the stories, trends and conversations shaping the world of internal communications. I’m Chuck Gose.
Jenni: And I’m Jenni Field. Frequency is your go-to for real talk about comms, culture, and employee experience — beyond the buzzwords and straight to what matters.
Chuck: To kick things off, Jenni, last week we mentioned it was your birthday, and in fact our episode came out on your birthday. Was that the highlight, or was there something else from your week-long celebration that stood out?
Jenni: I feel like this is a trick question today. Of course the episode coming out on my birthday was a highlight. I’d say the other highlight was my barbecue on Saturday with friends and family — a day of absolute joy, quite a lot of alcohol, and everybody just laughing all day. That was a massive highlight.
Chuck: Did you suffer from bun paralysis again?
Jenni: Yes — I couldn’t choose my buns for the hot dogs and burgers because there are so many buns in the supermarket. I got past it. I ended up with too many hot dog buns, so they’re in the freezer for another event. I went to a smaller supermarket and told myself I had to decide. Got brioche for the burgers. Solid choice.
Chuck: Solid. Brioche, pretzel — those are the top ones. It feels very American of you to do a barbecue for your birthday in the summer.
Jenni: Maybe, but everyone here barbecues in the summer, and my husband loves grilling — he’s got two grills now, so any excuse. You’ve got to enjoy the good weather here while you have it, because it doesn’t last long. If you get a two-week window of good weather, you’re outside all the time.
Chuck: So are we officially past your birthday celebrations now?
Jenni: Yes — it wrapped up with a picnic in a London park with my best friends, Advita and Trudy. That was the end of a week-long celebration.
Chuck: So we can officially say my birthday is next. It’s in December, and it’ll really be a two-to-three-month-long celebration, because it’s my 50th. A lot of planning is going into that. But enough about birthdays — Jenni, let’s get into the stories you’ve picked this week.
Jenni: I’ve got a real selection of articles this week, but nothing really about AI, which I think is a first for us. We’ve got burnout and a new buzzword, a topic on authenticity that’s close to my heart, a LinkedIn post on the internal comms jobs market, and some insights from Gallup on trust and leadership. Let’s start with burnout. There’s an article in the Economic Times about “quiet cracking” — a sneaky workplace burnout trend that’s costing billions and breaking spirits. Quiet cracking is the latest buzzword highlighting burnout that creeps in unnoticed. As engagement dips globally, workers find themselves emotionally detached without realizing it. Experts like Peter Duris talk about the need for early intervention — management support and open communication to combat this silent productivity killer. Is this just another buzzword, or is it what happens when relationships break down?
Chuck: We’ve had quiet quitting, quiet firing, now quiet cracking. Fine if a label gets attention, but I don’t think it’s anything new. We’ve spent time inside iCology talking about burnout with Kelsey Buchholz, who’s a member and author on this topic, and also did a virtual event on burnout for communicators. Nobody burns out in a day or a week — it’s a slow burn. Kelsey has a chart showing a match slowly burning down until it hits your mental health, your physical health, your relationships. If a buzzword draws attention to that, fine, but this is just how burnout is. And I think the danger is focusing on it only as a productivity killer — if you only care about burnout from a productivity lens, you’re missing the conversation.
Jenni: Agreed — and you wouldn’t necessarily see it in productivity numbers at first, because people carry on resentfully until they suddenly say “I don’t want to do this anymore.” That’s why open communication and psychological safety matter so much here. It is another buzzword we probably don’t need, but it does start a conversation.
Chuck: And it’d be a misstep to think this only affects knowledge workers or corporate staff. Burnout is an everywhere problem — anyone juggling work with caregiving at home, for instance. Thinking frontline employees aren’t affected would be a massive miss.
Jenni: Moving on — an article from Sean Randall’s Mixternal blog, arguing that authentic corporate communication is an impossible myth, and what to do instead. An iCology member, Nicole Oseguera, flagged this for us. Randall argues authenticity in corporate comms has always been a myth — going back to Ivy Lee’s 1904 PR firm through to AI-generated text today, the goal has never really been unfiltered truth, it’s always been about shaping perceptions to serve business ends. The harder you try to look real, the more staged you become — scripted “unscripted” moments, town halls, feel-good employee spotlights are all manufactured, and employees aren’t fooled by it. Calling something “authentic” actually makes people more suspicious, because they know there’s a playbook. There’s an ethics piece too: it’s one thing to ghostwrite a CEO email, another to pretend the ghostwriting isn’t happening.
Chuck: Thank you, Nicole, for sharing that — and for being an early listener of Frequency. On authenticity: I think we’ve lost the meaning of the word. When leaders are their genuine selves, sometimes that’s not what people want to believe is “authentic.” I think what people actually want when they say “authenticity” is honesty — they want to know what they’re reading is truthful. Companies always spin employee stories positively; nobody publishes an article about an employee’s costly mistake. Communicators know this, but let’s be honest about what we’re doing.
Jenni: I want to share an example. When I was head of internal comms for a UK arm of a global business, a group team rolling out a new collaboration platform insisted every board member blog on it. I told them our retail division head, “Bob,” wouldn’t blog — he spent his time on the shop floor, not at a keyboard, and forcing it wouldn’t feel real to him or to readers. We protected him from doing something inauthentic to his style. How do we navigate that in a digital world that keeps demanding leaders produce content in formats that don’t suit them?
Chuck: I think that’s a misalignment of expectations. If Bob’s better suited to video, do video — not every employee reads blogs anyway. I worked with a COO named Steve who was convinced employees wanted to hear about the golf courses he played every weekend. That was disconnected from what employees actually cared about, since most couldn’t afford $300-500 rounds of golf. My job as the communicator was to redirect him — talk about the game itself, not the price tag of the course. That’s the connection worth building.
Jenni: So it’s always coming back to honesty for you.
Chuck: Exactly — I always go back to honesty. One of my favorite lines, borrowed from a Fast Company piece years ago: “Honesty without compassion is cruelty.” Be honest, but understand that sharing certain numbers or results creates discomfort, and lead with compassion around that. Authenticity is a dangerous thing to chase because it’s faulty as a goal. Transparency’s the same — leaders can never fully show everything. I call it “translucent” — like looking through wax paper, you see some things, not everything.
Jenni: I’ve written a whole book about the fact that authenticity isn’t what we should want leaders chasing. The focus should be on credible leadership — compassion, honesty, transparency, but also vulnerability, trustworthiness, integrity. If communicators coach and advise leaders the way we did with Bob and Steve, communications become more credible and believable — more genuine, not authentic. Let’s take “authentic comms” off the table as a phrase entirely.
Chuck: And with transparency, leaders should be comfortable saying “I actually can’t tell you that” when something’s commercially sensitive, rather than dodging with “great question, we’ll get back to you.”
Jenni: Exactly — there are honest reasons: commercially sensitive, not yet finalized, not appropriate to share. You can articulate that honestly in your own words. It’s a great article, and we’ll link it in the show notes — every communicator should read it and reflect on how manufactured their leadership communication really is.
Jenni: Moving on — a LinkedIn post from Kevin Blasko analyzing the internal comms job market in 2025. I want to share the data because our industry often assumes everything’s doom and gloom, and the numbers tell a more encouraging story. There were 1,725 IC jobs posted in the first half of this year — a 32% increase over the second half of 2024 — while job postings declined 5.1% market-wide in May alone. VP positions doubled from 20 to 40 openings, entry-level coordinator roles grew 47%, manager roles still dominate at 51% of postings, Minneapolis-St. Paul broke into the top 10 markets, and remote IC roles held at 12-13% of postings, nearly double the market-wide average. Kevin’s bottom line: internal comms is showing remarkable resilience in a challenging job market.
Chuck: Shout out to Kevin — he does great work sharing openings and a newsletter people should sign up for. It’s genuinely encouraging. Of those 1,725 jobs, only 40 were VP-level, so there’s still not a lot of growth opportunity at the top. The remote number surprises me — the jobs I’m seeing and posting inside iCology skew far more hybrid or in-office; I’d guess remote is closer to one in ten, not 12-13%. This should be encouraging for people job hunting, but it doesn’t change how frustrated candidates who’ve been searching for 12-18 months feel. There’s a class-action lawsuit against Workday over automated rejections where it seems no human ever reviews some applications — which raises real questions about the hiring process itself.
Jenni: That echoes what I hear in the UK. Recruiters have told me not to rely on LinkedIn’s “quick apply” because it doesn’t stand out from the volume. Industry or sector experience seems to matter more than ever right now — without it, candidates get discounted from the pile. And titles like VP versus manager mean wildly different things at different companies, which makes it hard to compare roles. I spoke to someone outside comms who’s been through four rounds of interviews over two months for one role — nobody’s evolved the hiring process to match the current volume and pace of the market.
Chuck: I wonder if leaning on industry experience is partly a way to auto-filter an overwhelming applicant pool, even if it excludes strong candidates from adjacent industries. And whether long processes also self-eliminate less-committed candidates. Neither approach really helps hiring — if you’re hiring an internal comms director, you should also be looking at hospitality, healthcare, other sectors, or you get an echo chamber.
Jenni: Agreed — and there’s a salary-expectations mismatch too. A UK recruitment consultancy called VMA Group published a report called “Inside Insight” with salary benchmarks by sector, which I use with clients to gauge if someone’s operating at the right level. Both sides — employers and candidates — aren’t approaching this the right way, and the people caught in the middle are the ones trying to find their next job.
Chuck: Here’s what I’d do: publish clear qualifying criteria before people apply — years of experience, specific skills required — so people can self-filter before submitting. Right now there’s no criteria gate, so people apply broadly out of financial necessity and get frustrated by volume. It might not solve everything, but it’d help.
Jenni: Our final article is about employee trust in leadership. I saw this on Instagram and found the source on Entrepreneur.com: only 20% of employees trust the leadership of their organization, according to Gallup’s chief scientist. About 70% of the variance in team engagement comes back to the manager, not just senior leaders. The article references Gallup’s book Culture Shock, which I’ve started listening to — it’s a few hours long, came out in 2023, and already feels dated in how it discusses return-to-office and hybrid work. I’ll bring more from it to a future episode. But I struggle with why this number is still so bad.
Chuck: Can I ask — who’s the “we” who isn’t getting better at this?
Jenni: Leadership broadly — organizations, HR, comms — I think there’s been a long-standing lack of leadership and management development. We’ve been seeing this for twenty years and asking why it isn’t improving.
Chuck: I’m not surprised by the number. I think leaders drastically discount the role trust plays — they assume trust because of their position rather than actively building it. Trust is fragile: it takes one thing to break it, and I’d bet peer-to-peer trust is triple what leadership trust is. I look up to leaders for inspiration and get disappointed by that more often than I’d like, which is probably why I’m not surprised 80% of people don’t strongly trust their leaders.
Jenni: I think you’re right that leaders often assume “you have to trust me because I’m in charge.” It’s part of why I wrote my book — being a leader is a responsibility. You have to do the work: be capable, yes, but also trustworthy, have integrity, be vulnerable, have vision. I wonder if HR, comms and people teams keep fighting for investment in this and keep being told “we don’t need it because we’re great” — and the link between trust, engagement and the bottom line just isn’t being made clearly enough. If a global pandemic didn’t move this number, what will? Open question to anyone listening.
Chuck: Trust is so fragile, and I don’t think leadership treats it that way — they assume it’s just there.
Jenni: And it’s not always one big betrayal — it can be chipped away slowly without you realizing, through small daily behaviors. Unless you’re willing to have a real conversation about what’s happening in your team, you won’t see it.
Chuck: Maybe that’s the real “quiet cracking” — cracks quietly forming in trust. A manager who cancels your one-on-one every week — you might still trust them, but it makes you hedge the next time. I’d love to know whether leaders actually care that only 20% of people trust them.
Jenni: We’ve got a lot more questions on this one — I’ll finish the book and share notes in a future episode. That wraps our articles for today. What’s freaking you out this week?
Chuck: I love hypocrisy, and I’ve got one to call out. Communicators love to critique AI-written text — spotting the em dashes, saying AI shouldn’t write your content — but have zero issue using AI to generate genuinely awful infographics and images. If I were a designer, I’d be roasting communicators for sharing these badly designed, cartoonish AI graphics. You can’t criticize AI writing while giving yourself a pass on AI design — that’s the hypocrisy I love so much.
Jenni: I need to see some of these. I’m here for it.
Chuck: I’ll start sharing them with you — beautiful in their ugliness.
Jenni: My freak-out this week is pavlova, which I wrote about in my newsletter. For my birthday, my mum made her pavlova — a signature dish in our family, made by both my mum and my dad. We’re always debating what’s a pavlova versus a meringue: pavlova has a marshmallow layer, which makes it different. If a restaurant serves you a “pavlova” without that marshmallow layer, you’ve been fobbed off with a meringue.
Chuck: I read your newsletter this week — thank you for translating “fobbed off” for those of us who didn’t know it.
Jenni: Happy to — you’ve educated me plenty on this show when I say “downing tools” or “being poorly” and you have no idea what I mean. I don’t think I’ve ever had to ask you what you meant, so clearly I’ve got more of those than you do.
Chuck: Challenge accepted.
Jenni: That’s it for this week. Thank you for joining us. All the articles and other things we’ve mentioned are in the show notes. Rate and review after you’ve listened, subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, and pass this along to someone you think would enjoy it — you can find us on YouTube too. Thank you to Poet Ali for contributing the music to the show, and we’ll be back next week with more news, insights and opinions about comms and leadership in workplaces today. Keep tuning in and turning up.
Chuck is a US-based internal communications strategist and the founder of ICology – a community and resource hub for IC professionals. He brings a practitioner lens to every conversation. Chuck is a recognised voice in the industry, a regular speaker and event host, and one of the most connected people in the North American IC world.
Jenni is a UK-based leadership and internal communications consultant, author of two best-selling books, and international speaker. She runs Redefining Communications, a consultancy working with organisations around the world to help them communicate better and close the gap between what leaders say and what employees experience.
