“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
— Maya Angelou
Trust is not a soft skill. It is strategic capital—and empathy is the engine that powers it.
According to SparkEffect’s Trust in Turbulence™: The 2025 State of Organizational Trust Report, 97% of high-trust organizations also report strong financial performance, compared with only 46% of low-trust peers. When leaders treat empathy as a business strategy, not a nice-to-have, they build the trust that fuels resilience, retention, revenue, and growth.
As Kim Bohr, SparkEffect’s president and COO and a past The Empathy Edge podcast partner, explained in an interview:
“Trust isn’t a feeling you hope for—it’s a system you build. It’s the sum of every leadership behavior, decision, and communication moment that signals whether people are safe to contribute.”
Trust as Strategic Capital
Forbes research underscores that trust is a quantifiable performance driver: high-trust workplaces experience half the turnover of low-trust peers and significantly higher productivity and engagement.
When disruption strikes—whether through AI adoption, restructuring, or market shocks—trust determines execution speed. High-trust teams move faster and act decisively; low-trust teams stall, withhold information, or disengage. Trust, in other words, fuels operational velocity.
Empathy: The Engine That Powers Trust
Empathy turns policy into practice. It is how leaders understand and respond to human experience so that trust can take root and strategies land as intended.
On The Empathy Edge podcast, psychiatrist and empathy expert Dr. Helen Riess explains that empathy isn’t about being soft; it is rooted in neuroscience and directly improves engagement, retention, and collaboration
Bohr notes in the report that empathy matters most at the local level.
“During change, trust cracks first between employees and their direct managers. Those leaders must demonstrate empathy in real time—listening, acknowledging fear, and communicating with clarity.”
Empathy closes the emotional distance that uncertainty creates. It tells employees, you’re seen and valued, even when conditions are tough. When people know that someone has their back, they are more willing to follow leaders into the unknown.
Earning the Trust Dividend: Lessons from Well-Handled Turbulence
SparkEffect’s report describes organizations that treated a major restructuring as an opportunity to “earn the trust dividend.” By pairing disruptive change with interventions such as manager coaching, fair decision-making, frequent listening forums, and candid conversations, these organizations saw trust scores rise by roughly 12% above baseline after the change—and were twice as likely to retain key talent compared with peers that experienced no crisis or disruption at all.
In other words, well-handled turbulence can strengthen trust and business performance even beyond levels seen in stable periods, while mishandled change can quickly erode both.
“Empathy was critical in high-trust organizations, giving people permission to voice concerns, ask questions, and innovate,” explains Bohr.
The ROI of Empathy in Crisis
Research like this proves that seismic change can be an opportunity to emerge even stronger than before. Meeting crisis with empathy-driven trust yields measurable ROI. And that resilience pays off.
SparkEffect found that high-trust organizations outperform in reputation, retention, and revenue. Neuroscientist Paul Zak’s research echoes this: employees in high-trust cultures experience 74% less stress and 106% more energy.
Those physiological and psychological benefits translate into productivity, lower attrition, and faster innovation—especially vital when change is constant.
Five Trust-Building Moves for Times of Change
- Practice Structured and Intentional Listening: Conduct recurring “sense-making” sessions or short empathy interviews to surface what’s unclear or worrying. Close feedback loops by sharing what will change.
- Be Honest, Be Real: In the absence of information, employees invent their own stories. Communicate often—even when the message is, Here’s what we know, and here’s what we don’t yet know.
- Train Managers in Empathic Leadership: Since trust fractures locally, equip managers with skills to recognize stress signals, listen actively, and provide clarity under pressure. It’s a muscle they need to build.
- Acknowledge and Repair Mistakes: No human is perfect, so stop pretending to be. Transparency after missteps builds credibility. Publicly owning errors and outlining corrective actions models integrity.
- Track Trust Metrics: Include trust and psychological-safety indicators in engagement surveys or team dashboards. Review trends alongside business KPIs; what’s measured gets protected.
Empathy in the AI Era
As generative AI reshapes work, empathy will determine whether employees see technology as empowerment or a threat. Transparent communication about how AI supports, rather than replaces, human work builds trust in leadership intent.
This is all a new frontier. Trust enables employees to co-create strategies that will work and which will not; they will bring forth new ideas and perspectives to foster growth if they know they are safe to do so. As Forbes Coaches Council reminds leaders, “Trust is the foundation of leadership; without it, communication is just noise.”
Shift Empathy From Soft Skill to Strategic Edge
Empathy-driven trust is not a corporate kindness campaign; it is a growth strategy. It reduces friction, unlocks innovation, and anchors teams through volatility.
In a transformation or crisis, employees may forget the slides or slogans—but they will remember how leadership made them feel. When genuine trust is intentionally cultivated as a business strategy, the organization not only survives disruption—it builds the capacity to thrive and emerge even stronger than before.