At exactly the time when we need leaders to build trust most (with their employees), trust in leadership is falling apart. According to Deloitte’s “Trusted Index,” for example, employees’ trust in both company-created generative AIs and fully autonomous/agentic AIs has fallen dramatically over just two months. Trust in generative AIs declined 31% from May to July 2025, while employee confidence in fully autonomous/agentic AIs decreased by an astonishing 89%.
Manpower Group’s 2026 Global Talent Barometer surveyed close to 14,000 workers across 19 different countries and this is what was discovered: While use of AI increased 13%, workers reported an 18% decrease in trust. Even though many organizations are handing workers with new AI based tools – often without providing them with adequate training, context, or support – workers remain skeptical about these technologies. Expertise builds trust by filling the gaps that exist.
Table of Content
• Leadership and Trust: What’s Actually Breaking
• How Knowledge Builds Trust and Confidence
• The Role of Expertise in Decision Making
• Developing Expertise for Career Growth
• Conclusion
• Frequently Asked Questions
Why Expertise Matters During Uncertainty
Why expertise matters during uncertainty is structural, not sentimental. When conditions are stable, experience and credentials matter less because most decisions are routine. When conditions are volatile — economic shifts, AI disruption, organisational restructuring — the value of someone who can actually interpret what is happening rises sharply.
The Center for Creative Leadership frames this precisely: the old premise for building trust assumed a world where expertise was stable and roles were clear. That world no longer exists. Trust now has to be actively demonstrated rather than assumed from a title or tenure.
Expert guidance becomes the stabilising force specifically because it replaces guesswork with informed judgement at the moment guesswork is most tempting and most costly.
Leadership and Trust: What’s Actually Breaking
Leadership and trust are under specific, measurable pressure right now, not abstract decline.
Workers who trust their direct managers most are 72% more motivated than those with the lowest trust levels — PwC Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2025
Workers with the highest trust in top management are 63% more motivated than those who trust senior leaders least
The largest difference between people’s expectations of artificial intelligence (AI) and their own work experience is seen with the most experienced employees (baby boomers and Gen X). There was a 35% drop for the Baby Boomers, a 25% drop for Gen X.
Three-fourths of HR managers believe that more than half of standard manager functions will be done through an artificial intelligent function by the end of 2026.
When a lack of confidence in leadership begins to grow, the rate at which this can happen is quite fast. Once the message from AI communications seems too impersonal or tone deaf, it expands the very same gap that leaders are trying to close. Employees do not have an equal amount of confidence in an artificial intelligence. They have less confidence in AI, if AI does away with human judgment, as long as no one has explained why or how.
| Trust Dimension | What Is Being Tested |
|---|---|
| Trust of Capability | Whether expertise still applies as AI reshapes roles |
| Trust of Communication | Whether leaders are honest when answers are incomplete |
| Trust of Character | Whether decisions remain fair as accountability blurs |
How Knowledge Builds Trust and Confidence
How knowledge builds trust and confidence comes down to a simple mechanism: people trust judgement they can verify, even informally.
The McKinsey report stated in their 2025 AI Workplace study that most workers (employees) are willing to accept AI into the workforce; however, the biggest barrier to successful implementation is an organization’s leadership. Leaders who are unable to demonstrate to the employee base, with clarity, where the value lies, how they will manage risk, and what AI is really doing, will lose credibility quicker than the employees who lose confidence in AI.
Leadership will need to develop new “trust-building” skills in relation to communication — specifically admitting you don’t know or can’t answer a question without losing authority. As such, Trust of Communication will be created by consistent presence rather than polished messaging. It is those leaders who choose to provide honest communication when there is no complete answer, who create the environment for trust to persist.
The Role of Expertise in Decision Making
In addition to the ever-growing amount of accessible information, we’ve seen an increase in the value placed on expertise in terms of decision-making. While having more data doesn’t mean you’ll make better decisions (it means you will have more noise), if there isn’t someone who genuinely has the ability to interpret it for what it really is, then the value of that data is lost.
Leadership-specifically, the role of expertise is evident by how decisions are being made while working under pressure. PwC found in its 2026 study, that in new tasks assigned to roles exposed to AI those tasks were 2.5 times more likely to rely on skills such as: empathy, judgment, and creative thinking. These areas of expertise are non-automatable.
How experts build trust and confidence during difficult times can be observed consistently. Experts don’t say they know something that they aren’t certain about; they explain the reasoning behind their conclusions; and most importantly, they show the world when they’re wrong and adjust accordingly based on new evidence. Trusting an expert or leader involves measuring behavior. It doesn’t involve surveys.
Developing Expertise for Career Growth
Developing expertise for career growth matters more now precisely because expertise is the asset that compounds while routine skills are being absorbed by automation. Professional growth built on genuine depth not just current job competence — is what positions someone to be the trusted voice when conditions get uncertain.
Professional expertise in India is following the same global pattern. As AI adoption accelerates across Indian industries, the professionals commanding the most credibility are those combining domain experience with formal, verifiable depth — research credentials, advanced qualifications, and demonstrated rigour that cannot be replicated by a quick search.
Leadership development in India increasingly reflects this. Expertise and credibility in the workplace are built deliberately now, not assumed from seniority alone. For professionals pursuing postgraduate or doctoral qualifications specifically to deepen this credibility, the research process itself builds the habits — careful evidence evaluation, honest acknowledgement of uncertainty, rigorous reasoning — that make expertise trustworthy rather than just claimed. Aimlay works with working professionals at exactly this stage, supporting the academic depth that turns experience into demonstrable, defensible authority.
Conclusion
Expertise creates trust precisely because trust has become harder to earn by default. Leadership in uncertain times does not require certainty — it requires the visible discipline of genuine knowledge: honest acknowledgement of limits, rigorous reasoning, and judgement that holds up under scrutiny.
As AI absorbs routine decisions, the decisions that remain with people are exactly the ones where expertise matters most. The professionals and leaders who invest in building real, demonstrable depth now are the ones who will be trusted when the next wave of uncertainty arrives — and there will be a next one.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does expertise create trust specifically during uncertain times?
Expertise builds trust during this time of uncertainty because it can replace guessing with a trustworthy explanation at the one specific point in time where people are likely to be tempted to just “guess”. As research continues to show us, as the volatility (or unpredictability) of our environment increases, so too does the importance of evidence-based decision making from someone who has extensive experience in their field (and/or area of expertise), AND, conversely, the amount of faith being placed into automated systems decreases.
Why is there a growing lack of trust in leadership right now?
There is growing distrust among employees for leadership today due to the fact that AI technology is being adopted faster than the necessary communication to educate employees on how the technology works. It is estimated that two thirds of Human Resource professionals believe that AI will take over most of the daily management duties that managers currently perform by 2026. Poorly communicated decisions made using AI technology will continue to grow the gap between managers and employees instead of reducing it.
Why don’t workers trust AI even as adoption increases?
Workers don’t trust AI uniformly because trust in generative AI tools fell 31% and trust in autonomous AI systems dropped 89% in a recent measured period, even as usage increased. The gap is largest among experienced workers who previously relied on their own judgement and are uncertain how AI’s reasoning compares to it.
How does knowledge build trust and confidence in leadership?
How knowledge builds trust and confidence is through demonstrated, verifiable judgement rather than claimed authority. Leaders who explain their reasoning, acknowledge uncertainty honestly, and update their position when evidence changes build a form of trust that survives scrutiny — unlike authority based purely on title or tenure.
What role does expertise play in effective decision making?
The role of expertise in decision making is to convert available information into a credible position, especially as data volume increases. PwC’s 2026 research found that the tasks growing fastest in value require empathy, judgement, and creativity — precisely the dimensions of expertise that automated systems cannot replicate.
How can professionals develop expertise that builds long-term credibility?
Developing expertise for career growth requires building depth beyond current job competence — through formal study, structured research, and sustained engagement with a domain. Professional expertise in India is increasingly demonstrated through verifiable academic credentials and research rigour, which create credibility that holds up even as automation changes what routine work looks like.
Building the depth that makes your expertise genuinely trustworthy? Visit aimlay.com to explore postgraduate and doctoral programs designed for working professionals.
