Trust is critical for businesses, nonprofits, governments and other organizations. Yet we live in a time of increasing polarity and pessimism and retreat into our closely held circles.

This creates all manner of challenges for organizations and employees as they navigate a minefield of operational and practical considerations. But it also creates opportunities to wield effective communication and use “trust brokering” to bridge divides.

The newly released 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer puts this landscape into stark perspective. The global survey has been measuring trust, and its implications, for a quarter-century. This year’s barometer, the 26th conducted, measured sentiment with 40,000 respondents across 28 countries.

The barometer has tracked an erosion of trust over the last 20 years. In just the past few years, the annual measurement has clocked respondents’ progression into polarization (a belief that their countries are divided and those divisions are entrenched), then grievance (resentment toward a system they feel is rigged against them) and, with the 2026 results, a retreat into what Edelman deems insularity — a reluctance to trust anyone that’s different from them.

A stew of critical issues is fueling this retreat. Chief among them:

• Economic uncertainty: Concern about international trade and tariff conflicts hurting their companies has risen by 8 percentage points since 2019. Worry about losing their jobs because of a looming recession has grown by 6 percentage points since 2020.
• The rise of AI: The majority of respondents expressed fear that they will be left behind, versus realizing any real advantages from generative AI. In the U.S., this concern was expressed by a full 65% of low-income respondents, 50% of those with middle incomes and 47% of those with high incomes.
• Disinformation: Among U.S. respondents, 63% agreed with the statement, “I worry that other countries purposefully contaminate our media with falsehoods to inflame our differences.” This was an 11 percentage-point rise since 2021.

Across the board, people agreed that insularity needs to be addressed. In the U.S., 78% agreed that rising insularity is a problem, with 47% deeming it a large or crisis-level problem.

There does appear to be a silver lining that can shape companies and other organizations, with strategic communication being an important tool in that effort. Edelman identified an opportunity for “trust brokering” — practices and behaviors that counter insularity by facilitating trust — to bridge the divide.

Trust brokering doesn’t try to change people. It focuses on the common interests of insulated parties and translates their needs, goals and realities for each other. Individuals and organizations can be trust brokers.

The opportunity to broker trust is particularly key for employers. Among institutions and systems, the trust barometer found that employers have the smallest expectation-performance gap and a high degree of trust with their employees. Respondents expressed a drop in trust of national government leaders, major news organizations and foreign business leaders. But it identified a rise in trust in “my” circle — “my CEO,” “my coworkers” and “my neighbors, family and friends.”

Trust still exists, but it’s more closely held. But this provides room to fortify that trust and expand it outward.

How do leaders capitalize on this opportunity to expand trust among employees, clients and customers, partners and peers, and other stakeholders?

Here are a few of the opportunities identified by the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer:

• Bring employees into the workplace to interact with people who are different from them.
• Partner with unexpected organizations to initiate cross-cultural or cross-political conversations.
• Promote a shared identity and culture so that employees are reminded of what unites them rather than divides them.
• Build teams that will require people with different values to work together to succeed.
• Provide mandatory employee training for engaging in constructive dialogue amid conflict.
• When responding to a highly divisive social issue, encourage people to cooperate on finding a solution without taking a side.
• Lead by example. CEOs, in particular, should consult people with different values and backgrounds when making big decisions.

Insularity stops progress. It hurts productivity. Failing to act to broker trust costs companies. In fact, among employees, 34% of respondents said they would put in less effort to help a project leader succeed who had different political beliefs from them. And 42% said they would rather switch departments than report to a manager with different values than them.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Thoughtful, strategic internal and external communication rooted in building trust has never been more important. Exploring the results and recommendations in the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer is a good place to start.