Trust by design: how leaders create the conditions for openness in the workplace

At HubSpot, Belonging is a core tenet of our people philosophy. One measure of belonging is the extent to which someone feels comfortable speaking up, without fear of negative consequences. Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson’s research reveals that teams perform best when members feel free to share ideas, take thoughtful risks, and express concerns without fear of judgment. Comfort speaking up is consistently linked to innovation, productivity, and retention, making it a key driver of business success. ^1,2

Yet, while its benefits are well-documented in academic literature, many organizations still struggle to identify precisely what drives this comfort within their own context and how best to sustain it over time. Our data-driven investigation focused on three critical questions:

1. What matters more for creating an environment where employees feel comfortable speaking up — their direct manager or the broader company culture?
2. Are there specific team or manager characteristics linked to stronger employee trust and openness?
3. How can organizations rebuild that trust and openness if it dips?

We set out to answer these questions with a comprehensive analysis of Q2 Employee Experience Survey data. In our survey, we measured employees’ comfort speaking up by asking them to rate their agreement with the following statement: “I can speak up without fear of negative consequences.”

We found that comfort speaking up is a powerful predictor of attrition even after accounting for factors such as career growth opportunities. At one year, employees who strongly agree that they can speak up without fear of negative consequences are roughly 11 percentage points more likely to stay than those who strongly disagree (95% vs. 84%). At two years, the gap widens: only ~67% of employees who disagree are predicted to remain, compared to ~89% of those who agree.³

With the importance of a trust-based, open work environment established, we next examined the key drivers and patterns shaping it across our workforce. 

What matters more: your manager or your company culture?

When it comes to speaking up at work, we find that employees’ direct managers have a more significant impact than the overall company culture. While broad culture is important, the day-to-day experience is shaped most by the person leading the teams.

Specifically, differences between teams (driven by individual managers) account for a significant portion of the variation in comfort speaking up (~8%), while department-level differences more reflective of company culture contribute less than half as much (~3%).
For organizations looking to increase trust and comfort speaking up, this points to more effective outcomes when focusing on empowering managers rather than only relying on top-down culture change.

Are there specific team or manager characteristics linked to greater sense of comfort?

With an understanding of the impact managers have on creating comfort speaking up, we looked deeper to understand what variances we see between managers that may make a difference. Our data surfaced three key factors:

• Belonging: Managers who foster a strong sense of belonging have teams that report less fear of negative consequences if they do speak up. Employees on high-belongingness teams score .58 points higher on comfort speaking up (1-5 scale) than employees on low-belongingness teams.
• Manager’s own sense of comfort: When managers feel comfortable speaking up, their teams do too. Having a manager who feels comfortable speaking up is associated with a 0.26 increase in the employee’s comfort speaking up, as compared to employees who have managers who do not feel comfortable.
• Manager consistency: Frequent manager changes harm comfort, especially for newer employees. For new employees, each manager change they experience is associated with a 0.1 point drop in comfort speaking up.

Interestingly, a manager’s tenure or experience level had no measurable effect, suggesting that both new managers and tenured managers can be effective at creating comfort and building trust within their teams. 

How do you rebound trust and openness after it dips?

Feelings of trust and openness tend to be stable—but when they drop, it’s harder to rebuild. Our data shows that declines in scores are more frequent and more severe than gains. Once trust erodes, it doesn’t easily bounce back.

This highlights the importance of proactive management: prevention is more effective than repair.
To understand how managers create a sense of trust and comfort speaking up, and how they rebuild it after it’s dipped, we interviewed managers whose team scores increased significantly over the past 6 months since our prior survey.

The overarching theme from these interviews is that there’s no silver bullet training or action to take, but managers (re)build a sense of trust and safety by intentionally aligning their actions and behaviors with our culture commitments: 

• Solve for the Customer. Managers view their employees as their customers, and do their best to understand their employees’ daily tasks. 
  
  A strong understanding of my reps’ daily tasks allows me to put myself in their shoes and set clear, realistic goals that take into account the challenges they face.
  - Manager who increased their comfort score by 25% from previous survey
• Be Bold. Learn Fast. Managers who have successfully built trust and safety on their team model courage and risk-taking. 
  
  I try to lead by example by being self-reflective, openly sharing when I question myself, and asking my team for feedback. I don’t shy away from showing vulnerability, which helps create an environment where people feel safe to speak up.
  - Manager who increased their comfort score by 25% from previous survey
• Align, Adapt, and Go! Managers provide safe spaces to air concerns so that the team can successfully align and move forward. 
  
  My tip is to leave the door open for open discussions with empathy and then to align my team’s sentiments with…the company’s business priorities.
  - Manager who increased their comfort score by 27% from previous survey
• Deliver with HEART. Successful managers are empathetic and care about both the personal and professional wellbeing of their employees. 
  
  Priority #1 is you, your family, your health. If those things aren’t in a good place, you can’t perform.
  - Manager who increased their comfort score by 29% from previous survey

Our culture commitments provide not just a set of values, but a blueprint for how managers can build and sustain trust within their teams. By solving for their teams as they would their customers, modeling vulnerability, aligning quickly in moments of change, and delivering with empathy, managers create the conditions for employees to share thoughts openly, even when they may have a differing opinion.

Recognizing the impact that leaders have on building comfort and trust within their teams, and the impact of that comfort on business outcomes like performance and retention, all leaders must be conscious of their impact on their team’s experience and aim to create a space where all team members feel free to openly share ideas and perspectives.

¹Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth. Wiley.

²Google. (2015). The five keys to a successful Google team. re:Work. https://rework.withgoogle.com/intl/en/guides/understanding-team-effectiveness

³Based on Cox proportional hazards model.