Gallup Just Confirmed What Trust Does. Here’s What It Left Out.

Think about the best team you’ve ever been on. Now think about the worst.

If you’re like most people, what you remember most is trust, or the lack of it.

Gallup just put numbers behind that. Their new report, CliftonStrengths and Team Experiences, asked more than 3,600 people about the best and most dysfunctional teams they’ve ever been part of. The findings confirm what Team Trek has been built on for more than 30 years. They also stop one step short of the answer.

Trust isn’t one of many factors. It’s the factor.

 

When Gallup asked what made someone’s best team the best, fifty-four percent said it was building trust and strong relationships. The worst teams told the same story from the other side. Sixty-four percent said their most dysfunctional team lacked trust and strong relationships. Sixty-two percent said the team couldn’t collaborate. Nearly half said nobody recognized or valued what people contributed.

When people described their worst team in their own words, the most common theme wasn’t the work at all. It was poor leadership.

Teams don't typically break down because of performance failures. They break down because people don't trust each other. Poor performance is almost always downstream of mistrust.

That’s the whole point of Where Trust Leads, Results Follow. Trust isn’t the reward a team earns after it performs. It’s the condition that makes high performance possible.

The leadership blind spot

The research also sheds light on the growing trust deficit, the 67-point gap between how much leaders believe their employees trust them and what employees actually experience.

People who lead with Executing strengths were 51% less likely than those who lead with Influencing strengths to name lack of trust as the reason their worst team failed, and 32% less likely than those who lead with Relationship Building. Gallup’s interpretation is that execution-wired people may not notice relational problems until those problems get in the way of the work. In other words, they don’t notice until it’s too late.

Many of the executives we work with are wired to execute. That’s how they earned the job, and it’s not a bad thing when paired with trust-building instincts. However, when that trust orientation is missing, the trust problem can cost them before it ever reaches their radar. It shows up as rework, slow decisions and good people who quietly stop taking initiative.

Mistrust is a structural problem

The trust problem isn’t isolated to leaders and their teams. It affects every relationship on your team… and every relationship your team members have with other departments or shifts.

Gallup’s research confirms that trust isn’t just a feel-good addition to teams. Mistrust is a structural problem related to how teams operate. The basics are missing on most teams.

Only 41% of U.S. employees strongly agree they know what their coworkers are expected to do. Only 37% strongly agree they feel like part of their team. Only 25% strongly agree their team takes time to talk about how to get better.

Building a high-trust culture starts with the right mindset, one that treats trust as a priority rather than something you either have or don’t. It then grows from structure: clear expectations, regular conversations that keep those expectations alive, and a shared understanding of who owns what. Transformational trust is the mindset, a shift in how leaders and their teams see and respond to failure. Structure is what makes it show up in how a team actually operates.

Great managers aren’t a personality type

The most useful finding in the report may be this one. People described their best managers the same way no matter how they themselves were wired: supportive, trusting, empathetic, clear, fair and quick to recognize good work. Great management came down to behavior, not personality fit.

Gallup describes the best of these managers as setting clear goals and guardrails, then trusting people to own the work. They share credit and own their mistakes. The top complaint about the worst managers was micromanagement. The rest of the list was arrogance, no empathy, poor communication, absence, favoritism, and an assumption that people can’t be trusted.

Most leaders we work with believe they have two options: step back and hope it works, or step in and control it. Neither builds trust. The third option is a system that makes expectations clear and creating the conditions for ownership, so trust doesn’t depend on hope or on surveillance.

That third option matters more every year. The average U.S. manager now has 12 direct reports, up from about eight in 2013. Leaders and managers are 56% more likely than individual contributors to report extensive disruptive change. You can’t micromanage 12 people through constant change. You can’t ignore them either.

Where to start

You don’t need a new initiative to act on this. You need to change how your team works.

• Ask the question Gallup asked. At your next team meeting, have everyone describe the best team they’ve ever been on and what made it the best. Listen for how often trust comes up, then ask how your team measures up.

• Look for the tension. Tension isn’t bad. It only becomes a problem when leaders and their teams avoid resolving it. Unresolved tensions destroy trust and slow the team down. High-trust teams are teams that are quick to surface the tension, discuss it and resolve it.

• Communicate clear expectations. This includes being clear about what team members can expect from you as a leader. Clear expectations create predictability, and predictability in relationships creates trust.

At Team Trek, we start with 100% Responsibility as a foundational principle: “I take 100% responsibility for how I choose to respond to the people and circumstances in my life.” A leader who lives this principle stops waiting for the team to earn trust and starts building the conditions for it.

Where Trust Leads, Results Follow.

Source: Gallup, CliftonStrengths and Team Experiences: Insights on Trust, Collaboration and Manager Impact (2026). https://www.gallup.com/file/cliftonstrengths/en/713279/CliftonStrengths-and-Team-Experiences.pdf