As organisations face continual economic, technological and geopolitical disruption, Professor Nicole Gillespie argues that trust is the foundation of genuine resilience.
Concepts such as agile leadership and adaptability have become part of everyday business language as companies respond to conditions where stability is increasingly rare.
But while continuous evolution is often viewed solely as a leadership responsibility, the focus can be placed too heavily on individual skill sets, often overlooking the contributions employees make across their workplaces.
For Professor Nicole Gillespie, organisational resilience creates the conditions for strong relationships to develop, helping teams not only manage disruption but also excel amid uncertainty.
“We often frame resilience as an individual quality. The image that often comes to mind is the calm, steady leader in the storm, but that kind of approach is limiting and potentially dangerous,” she says.
“It places oo much burden on one leader, and in doing so it hides the deeper strategic, structural and cultural work needed to build better ways of working.”
Much of Professor Gillespie’s research focuses on how organisations earn and maintain trust, and how they recover when their actions damage confidence among employees, customers or the broader community.
After studying several high-profile trust failures, including the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the 2008 global financial crisis, Professor Gillespie concluded that the problems stemmed less from individual leaders and more from misaligned organisational systems.
“If we take the 2008 financial crisis as one example, you had a financial system pulling in different directions. Corporate strategy, culture, incentives, and governance were disconnected, and deregulation of the industry removed many of the traditional safeguards that supported trustworthy conduct,” she says.
“So even though there were warning signs, they were often ignored because information was not flowing effectively, and competitive pressure meant short-term commercial priorities weakened the governance mechanisms designed to prevent the system from imploding.”
Resilience and trust are, of course, deeply interconnected.
Companies that are resilient are often better equipped to prevent serious trust breaches, but how can leaders embed this across their teams in consistent and meaningful ways?
Professor Gillespie believes the answer lies in organisational design.
Embedding trust through organisational design
“What makes an organisation genuinely resilient is its ability to design a system that reliably delivers on its responsibilities to all of its stakeholders,” she says.
Professor Gillespie applied this thinking to research commissioned by the Institute of Business Ethics, analysing how multiple organisations recovered trust after a significant failure and redesigned to become more resilient.
Drawing on employee interviews, surveys, and archival case study data, Professor Gillespie and her colleagues developed a working framework, published in Sloan Management Review, to help organisations integrate trustworthiness into their infrastructure and core business processes.
“Resilience comes from embedding trust into the organisation’s purpose and strategy at all levels, including the culture, leadership practices, governance and incentive structures, and the systems and processes that shape product and service delivery,” she says.
“When these aspects of the organisational system are aligned, they absorb disruption, adapt and recover. When they become misaligned, even the strongest leaders struggle to hold things together under pressure."
Psychological safety is key to building resilient organisations
A critical but often overlooked component to this is psychological safety.
Popularised by Harvard Business School professor, Amy Edmondson, the concept of psychological safety empowers people to speak up, to not be afraid of asking questions, raising concerns and challenging decisions without fear of repercussions.
It also encourages leaders to practise deeper listening by creating space for employees to speak openly, helping them access different perspectives rather than only the views they expect or even want to hear.
“Psychological safety is crucial to building organisational resilience,” says Professor Gillespie.
“When I look across our case studies, psychological safety of employees is pivotal to preventing trust failures. We see this across many different sectors from financial institutions, manufacturing, to not-for-profits.”
Perhaps the most sobering finding from her research is that the information needed to prevent major trust failures is often already available within the organisation, known by multiple stakeholders before the problem escalated to cause damage.
“In many of our cases, the issues that led to the trust violations were known widely internally. They were just not surfaced, listened to, or dealt with effectively. Sometimes those who sought to raise the problem were ignored or shut down. ‘Shooting the messenger’ who puts the problems on the table is still too common.”
How organisations can encourage people to speak up
But what strategies can leaders implement to create environments where people feel safe to speak up and communicate problems and warning signs?
Appointing an internal ombudsman to independently investigate problems and employee complaints and concerns that have not been resolved through traditional channels, is one route larger companies can take to identify recurring patterns and issues before problems escalate.
The concern some leadership teams might have is “Are we encouraging a whistleblower culture?” There may be fear that this could lead to more complaints requiring investigation than the organisation has the capacity to manage, and the fear that employees who are emboldened to speak up will be more likely to escalate unresolved concerns to outside parties.
It is worth noting that advocates of ombudsman programs point out that the opposite is usually true: if you provide employees with a safe and trusted reporting channel that is independent of the leadership hierarchy, you are in fact more likely to reduce external whistleblowing.
For many smaller organisations, recruiting an ombudsman may not be an option for budgetary reasons. Professor Gillespie has seen organisations find success with another strategy.
“One strategy I've seen many organisations that genuinely care about their culture and psychological safety use is to regularly canvass the thoughts and opinions of employees as part of a regular processes, including newcomers and those exiting the organisation,” says Professor Gillespie.
“It is not something that is only triggered when there's something wrong; it works best when these are regular, genuine deep listening opportunities. That takes away the discomfort because this is just a regular process that all employees can participate in.”
There's a range of ways organisations can embed psychological safety, but it can only really work effectively if leaders at all levels are open to feedback and commit to it, so that everyone has someone they feel safe to talk to.
Why authenticity matters more than ever
In the era of AI, where so much emphasis is placed on speed and making information as accessible as possible, building trust has become more challenging for organisations and their leaders, who often find themselves under increasing pressure to maximise efficiency and deliver faster results. But many of the ideas connected to psychological safety can play a crucial role, if you already have effective systems in place that prioritise trust and create space for employees to be heard.
“People place a premium on authentic communication, and that’s why it’s essential for leaders to make their communications intentional and tailored to their audience,” says Professor Gillespie.”
However, in the age of AI, people often wonder - Did you write this, or is it AI?
“To ensure AI use is not undermining trust, organisations need to develop a comprehensive AI strategy that’s rooted in good governance and clearly communicates guidelines for responsible use.”
One thing that’s clear from Professor Gillespie’s observations is the need for leaders to understand their stakeholder and their expectations. Trust is built by reliably meeting stakeholders’ expectations and proactively managing expectations in dynamic and uncertain contexts. That requires effective and authentic communication.
“This is where practising deep listening really supports trust: understanding colleagues, customers, and partner's needs, expectations and concerns, and showing that you care about and understand their perspectives,” she says.
“More and more, the evidence suggests that what people are listening for, first and foremost, is: do they really care?”
When people feel heard, organisations thrive
Ultimately, building trust and organisational resilience is not so much about the capabilities of individual leaders, but rather, whether the systems that sit behind them are effective, and whether they genuinely enable trust and give voice to employees.
From governance structures to psychological safety and even the way organisations are now embedding AI agents in communication, what matters most is whether people feel safe to raise concerns early and whether those concerns are actually listened to and acted on. When that happens, organisations are not only better able to withstand disruption, but also to adapt and recover with integrity.
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Featured in this article:
Professor Nicole Gillespie.
Chair of Trust and Professor of Management
