21% of individual contributors trust senior leaders, in a survey by a firm that sells leadership training

Among individual contributors, 21% trust senior leaders and 25% trust their immediate manager, according to the Global Leadership Forecast 2027 that the consultancy DDI released from Pittsburgh on October 14, 2026. Executives answered 43% for senior leaders and 55% for their manager. The survey covers 11,395 leaders and 2,519 HR professionals in more than 50 countries.

Trust thins out toward the people who carry out the decisions

DDI's trust page reads the numbers as a staircase. Mid-level leaders give 36% to senior leaders and 40% to their manager. Managers give 27% and 31%. Individual contributors, at the bottom, give 21% and 25%.

Across all leaders in the sample, 34% trust their immediate manager to do what is right and 31% trust senior leaders. That leaves roughly two thirds without strong trust in the people above them.

The gap that DDI stresses is not between top and bottom but inside the top. Executives trust their own manager at 55% and their fellow senior leaders at 43%, the widest split between the two measures at any level.

So the people who set the direction rate each other lower than they rate the person they report to. DDI does not offer an explanation for that split.

The firm then links trust to execution. Leaders who trust senior leaders are 5.9 times more likely to say that decisions from above translate into action. DDI's reading is that a front-line leader who does not trust the decision is more likely to hedge, wait to see whether a priority sticks, or pass it along without conviction, and that teams notice.

Who is counting, and what the numbers can carry

The press release calls DDI "the global authority in leadership development for more than five decades", which is a claim about itself and not a finding. The same page that reports the trust gap ends with a section titled "How DDI Can Help" and a link to the firm's Strategic Leadership Experience programme. Anyone reading the figures should know the author sells the remedy.

The other limits sit in the wording. The press release describes a survey of leaders, and the trust page does not say how individual contributors were drawn into it. The 5.9 times figure compares what the same respondents say about trust and about decisions, both from their own answers. That is an association between two opinions, not a measured effect on output. The 49% figure is the weakest link. DDI says organizations whose development programmes prioritize trust-building meet financial targets at a 49% higher rate. The figure comes from the firm's own data, and the page shows no control for company size, sector or the health of the business in the first place. A company that is already doing well can afford to invest in trust.

That is the point where a cold reading is useful. A consultancy has measured a shortage of trust and found it correlates with results, and the most natural conclusion for it to draw is that more development spending is needed. The data may be sound. The conclusion arrives pre-approved.

The trust page gives global figures only, with none for the United States or the United Kingdom alone.

What an earlier survey and Gallup add

DDI's previous forecast gives a baseline. UNLEASH, an HR trade outlet, reported that the 2025 edition, based on a survey of 13,000 leaders, found 32% confident in senior leadership at their company. It also reported that leaders who trust their immediate managers had fallen from 46% in 2022 to 29% in 2024.

The 2027 page puts the same kind of group at 34% for immediate managers. DDI's pages do not say whether the question wording is identical, so the move from 29% to 34% is not a recovery anyone should claim.

Gallup reaches a similar place from a different direction, with random-sample polling of US workers. Its tracking of US employees, as of May 2026, shows 20% strongly agreeing that they trust the leadership of their organization. Those who do are 3.7 times as likely to be engaged at work.

In June 2022 Gallup reported 21% for what the pages present as the same measure, down from a peak of 24% in 2019, in quarterly web surveys, the first of which drew a random sample of 15,982 US adults with a margin of sampling error of 1.2 percentage points. The decline over seven years is therefore small and the level has barely moved since 2022.

Gallup also says that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement, and that 56% of managers were watching for or actively seeking a new job as of May 2026. Only 18% say they are very satisfied with their organization as a place to work.

Note what the two series measure. Gallup counts US employees who strongly agree with a single statement about trust in leadership. DDI counts global leaders, with its own wording and its own thresholds. The levels cannot be set side by side, only the direction.

Being in the room does not grant it

DDI includes one finding that cuts against a common instinct. Remote leaders are the most likely to trust their manager at 44%, against 36% of hybrid leaders and 31% of those fully in person.

The firm concludes that proximity alone does not build trust, and that behaviours do.

It names two of them with numbers. Employees whose managers support their development are 4.8 times more likely to trust their manager, and leaders who believe their managers coach them effectively are 9 times more likely to trust them. Both are again the same respondents answering about the same manager. The behaviours it links most closely to manager trust are ethical decisions and concern for team members' well-being, followed by clear direction. Maintaining confidentiality, inspiring employees and encouraging people to speak up without fear of repercussions come after.

The survey cannot say which comes first, the trust or the behaviours, since both are reported by the same respondents. The pairing still matches an old observation about authority: it is extended by the people under it, on conditions, and it can be withdrawn without a memo.

DDI's own sentence is plain enough: "Building trust in the workplace depends less on where people work and more on how leaders show up and treat others." Nobody has yet found a floor plan that does it for them.

One claim in the trust page is worth keeping because it is checkable by any employee. "Trust has to be built before disruption occurs." DDI adds that it develops through repeated actions and experiences over time, which makes the all-hands announcement made after a reorganization a poor substitute.

Promotion without trust

DDI makes one recommendation that concerns the whole chain of authority and not the training budget. Talent reviews and promotion decisions, it writes, can emphasize accomplishments and technical capabilities while overlooking how leaders achieve results.

The risk it names is of "advancing leaders who deliver results but undermine the trust needed to sustain them." The page does not count how often that happens.

The pressure behind the question is documented in the second page of the report. Two thirds of organizations (66%) have restructured in the past two years, and at those organizations only 11% of HR professionals say their leaders are very capable of navigating the pace and nature of change.

A leader who is moved under a new reporting line every few months is asking a team to extend trust to someone it has not yet watched act. That is a hard request to make of anyone.

The next installments

The report is being released in three parts. The first, out on October 14, 2026, covers the challenges leaders face, from change and trust to engagement, future skills and AI. DDI says the installments on HR's priorities and on the future of leadership will follow in November and December.

The release gives some context for the stress behind the trust figures. Only 17% of leaders feel confident anticipating and reacting to change, nearly one in five (19%) frequently feel "used up", and only 9% are fully engaged. Rosey Rhyne, manager of DDI's Center for Analytics and Behavioral Research, said many leaders are struggling to maintain the trust and engagement they need to lead their teams through disruption.

Whether the later installments say anything about leaders who lose that trust, or what the people below do about it, is not announced.

Sources

• DDI, Global Leadership Forecast 2027 press release, October 14, 2026
• DDI, Trust Is Lowest Among Those Carrying Out Leadership Decisions, October 14, 2026
• DDI, Relentless Change Outpaces Leaders, and Performance Pays the Price, October 14, 2026
• Gallup, Leadership and Management indicator, data as of May 2026
• Gallup, Why Trust in Leaders Is Faltering and How to Gain It Back, June 14, 2022