Executive Teams Are Losing Stakeholders’ Confidence. Here’s How to Get It Back.

Recent research reveals a sharp decline in people’s confidence in their executive teams’ capacity to execute, align, and endure the volatility of economic, geopolitical, and technological disruptions. These views hold true across organizations: Everyone from boards to the C-suite to employees believe their leadership teams are unable to withstand the demands of conflicting constituents and put the interests of the enterprise above their own.

I’m hearing this too. My clients cite several forces that are encroaching on their cohesion and ability to lead—and subsequently diminishing others’ confidence in them. Shifts in political power have led to abrupt policy changes, challenging leaders to remain agile and compliant amid evolving regulations. The whiplash of changing priorities, particularly in areas like DEI, pricing, and supply-chain sourcing, forces leadership teams to make swift decisions with limited clarity. And global tensions and conflicts may well disrupt supply chains and market stability, requiring leaders to proactively assess and manage these risks to protect their organizations. Finally, heightened political activism and societal tensions increase personal risks for executives, necessitating robust security measures to protect leadership and maintain organizational stability.

What makes this new breed of intruder particularly difficult is that unlike previous routine market or organizational challenges, they’re precedent setting. That means leadership teams will naturally fumble a bit as they find their footing in unchartered terrain, and that fumbling can cause confidence in the team to dip further. Meanwhile, your stakeholders are desperately trying to make sense of the unknown. Valid or not, they expect you to know things you don’t know.

While you may not have answers—and new information is likely to change your mind—leadership teams must be prepared to adapt and share your thinking about decisions as things unfold. Here are six things your leadership team can do to maintain and strengthen confidence in the team’s ability to lead amid turbulence.

Align decisions with your organizational values and communicate them that way.

The polarizing geopolitical climate amplifies scrutiny on leadership actions. Leaders who consistently align decisions with organizational values and ethical principles sustain credibility.

In response to a previous HBR article that I co-authored, a reader recently wrote me describing an executive team whose practice of “backroom horse-trading” belied the company’s stated value of the “importance of teamwork and supporting one another.” He said he realized “how destructive it is to our culture when we ask people to act in ways that our own behavior contradicts.” He had come to conclude that such hypocrisy was just normal at that level.

In times of volatile uncertainty, the temptation to retrench to bolster your need for survival is understandable. But to the rest of the organization, the resulting fragmentation appears as condoning self-interest over the greater good. Remaining cohesively aligned behind hard decisions is a vital component of sustaining credibility as a leadership team. In today’s environment, self-protection and entrenchment signal cracks in the team’s commitment to modeling values—and thus reasons to withdraw confidence.

In one organization I work with, the executive team’s initial panic over the impact of tariffs set off a blaze of short-sighted and self-protective ideas in an attempt to fend off feared threats. The CEO listened to her team carefully, and without judging them, said: “The world is watching us. On every wall in our building and on our website we say, ‘We do the right thing, no matter what.’ What I’m hearing from you is the safe thing for you personally, not the right thing for our consumers or our shareholders. So, let’s try this again.” The team then proceeded to have a hard conversation that took a longer view of their options and focused on the needs of their stakeholders, including their employees.

To ensure your team’s decision-making is aligned with your values:

• Begin every strategic decision discussion by explicitly identifying which organizational values are most at stake and use those as criteria for evaluation.
• When communicating decisions, start with “Here’s the value we prioritized in making this choice,” followed by the rationale. Linking action to principle builds credibility.

Model fast learning.

It’s no secret you’re facing things for the first time, so don’t try to hide it. A team that visibly evolves in response to change gives others confidence that they’ll stay adaptive, not defensive, when circumstances shift again.

Tell people what you’re learning, how you’re learning it, and what you’re doing with the new knowledge. Stay ahead of industry shifts, geopolitical risks, and emerging technologies as best you can. Those who invest in continuous learning and upskilling maintain trust in their ability to navigate complexity. Rapid cycles of learning and unlearning demonstrate relevance and humility—both essential leadership qualities for today’s turmoil.

To model fast learning:

• Begin leadership team meetings with a “what I’m learning right now” round, encouraging members to share something new they’re exploring or struggling to grasp.
• Create a shared “leadership learning board” (physical or digital) where executives can post articles, tools, or experiences related to current challenges, promoting a culture of visible, continuous learning.

Cultivate psychological safety among yourselves.

Encouraging dissenting views and open dialogue within teams strengthens decision-making, so create space for diverse perspectives in order to avoid echo chambers, ideological “camps,” and groupthink. Teams that normalize disagreement and curiosity signal emotional maturity and openness—two characteristics others often interpret as strength. Without this safety, individuals retreat into silence or passive resistance, which erodes trust faster than disagreement ever could.

Another reader of our previous article suggested their executive team didn’t have the level of trust “to call each other out.” They asked: “How do we make it safe enough to normalize saying the tough things?”

The assumption behind the question seems to be that this is an “orientation” issue—that saying hard things requires a level of comfort and familiarity. But that’s not true. It’s not supposed to be comfortable, but it does require skills many leadership teams lack.

My advice to them? Practice. Like any skill, you have to go to the “executive team conflict gym” and work out until the muscles you need are strong enough to withstand whatever differences come your way.

To cultivate psychological safety:

• Dedicate regular team time (e.g., monthly or quarterly) to “conflict practice” sessions, deliberately exploring tough issues to normalize dissent and practice non-defensive responses.
• Use a team norm like “disagree, then commit” to encourage full airing of opinions while reinforcing unified execution post-decision.

Vent freely among yourselves and present a single voice to the world.

In addition to normalizing constructive dissent on your leadership team, make it the safest place to be frustrated, anxious, and over your skis. Others in the organization will try to put wedges between you to get at their version of the truth or protect their own interests. Don’t take the bait. The healthiest teams are often the ones that argue the most internally, but they do it with respect, shared goals, and discipline.

Align on key messaging in every conversation, and make sure there is no daylight between the message you agree on and how you each represent that message to the outside world. Once a message leaves the room, the team owns it together. Anything less invites speculation, division, and erosion of confidence in leadership unity.

To ensure you’re presenting a unified front:

• Use a shared message template after each major leadership discussion to align language and key points before communication cascades begin.
• Agree on a “private parking lot” where any lingering frustrations or dissent can be brought back up internally without risking public misalignment.

Strengthen cross-functional collaboration.

Intensified external forces will further entrench leaders into their own worlds/departments/regions. Siloed leadership breeds inefficiency and erodes trust across the organization.

High-functioning teams break down barriers and align efforts across functions, fostering unity in times of external discord. When teams operate as one unit rather than loosely affiliated fiefdoms, they model the alignment they want others in the organization to follow. Especially under stress, seamless collaboration signals shared purpose and coordinated execution—two things people desperately want to believe in.

During one recent global transformation I worked on, three executives leading critical adjacencies—data analytics and AI, cybersecurity, and information technology—had been contending with significant boundary conflicts in their departments. The executives went on a worldwide roadshow to meet with their teams, model alignment, and help increase understanding of how the teams would collaborate. Instead of presenting their own department’s contribution, they each presented each other’s, signaling their shared ownership. It took four months, but in the end, collaboration and synergy dramatically improved.

To strengthen cross-functional collaboration:

• Pair executives from different functions to co-lead initiatives, with shared ownership over outcomes and messaging.
• At the start of each leadership meeting, ask one function to briefly describe how a current enterprise-wide issue is impacting them. This keeps interdependencies visible and relevant.

Lead out loud with context.

Letting people into your own cognitive process allows them to learn from you while learning about you—seeing you as human, vulnerable, and therefore more worthy of their confidence. “Leading out loud” means saying things like, “Here’s what I’m still working out for myself, but here’s what I know,” “Let’s step back and keep in mind that..,” or “I know you may be tempted to interpret this in this way, but here’s what I’d encourage you to think instead…”

Context-setting can help you get in front of people making up stories to fill information gaps. When people understand not just what you’ve decided but how and why you decided it, their trust deepens, even if they don’t agree. In the absence of transparency, made-up narratives form quickly and often unfairly. “Leading out loud” is how you preempt misinformation and rumor with clarity and connection.

To let employees into your thinking:

• Build “framing statements” into all-hands meetings and emails—e.g., “Here’s what we were weighing,” “Here’s what we still don’t know,” or “Here’s how we landed where we did.”
• Encourage leaders to narrate their thinking in real time by using statements like, “I’m processing this as I go, but here’s where my head is right now,” especially in live discussions or Q&As.

. . .

Confidence in leadership teams doesn’t come from perfection—it comes from coherence, conviction, and visible effort. In a time when so much feels out of control, leadership teams that commit to showing up with transparency, humility, and unity give their organizations something rare: a steady hand. The world may not be getting easier to lead through, but teams that embrace these practices will make it easier for others to believe in and ultimately follow their leadership.