Why Return-to-Office Mandates Risk Eroding Trust

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During the toughest times—when organizations faced uncertainty, illness, and even loss—employees showed up. They kept businesses running, served customers, and delivered results while balancing family and personal challenges. They proved, under the worst crisis most of us have ever lived through, that they could be counted on.

Now, as many companies roll out blanket return-to-office policies, those same employees can feel as though the trust they earned has quietly evaporated. That stings—and it raises a fair question: Are rigid RTO mandates solving the right problem, or accidentally creating new ones?

This moment is exposing a classic divide that Harvard has described for decades.

Managers excel at bringing order to complexity—planning, budgeting, structuring, and controlling processes so the train runs on time. Leaders, on the other hand, are wired for change: they set direction, align people around a vision, and inspire others to give their best (John P. Kotter, Harvard Business School professor emeritus).

Both roles are essential. The world already has plenty of capable managers. What we need more of right now are leaders who choose trust over control.

Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei has given leaders one of the clearest road maps for building that trust: the

Trust Triangle—three pillars that must all be strong for people to truly believe in you and your decisions:

• Authenticity – letting your real self be seen (not hiding behind a “professional” mask)
• Logic – making sure your reasoning and evidence are rock-solid and transparently shared
• Empathy – making the people around you feel truly understood and cared about

Frei introduced the Trust Triangle in her acclaimed 2018 TED Talk “How to Build (and Rebuild) Trust” and develops it further in her book Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You (co-authored with Anne Morriss, Harvard Business Review Press, 2020). She put the model into practice at scale when she helped rebuild organizational trust at Uber during its 2017 cultural crisis.

When leaders issue top-down, five-day RTO mandates without clear data, open conversation, or consideration of individual circumstances, the triangle wobbles—often on all three sides at once. The unspoken message becomes: “We’re not sure you’re authentic when we can’t see you, we’re not confident in your logic unless we’re watching, and we’re not prioritizing your life outside these walls.” That’s the fastest way to erode the very culture and engagement leaders say they want to protect.

Forbes contributor Julia Korn adds a sobering data point:

“Strictly enforcing in-office mandates can erode trust, connection, and engagement—ironically, the very elements leaders are trying to strengthen. Seventy percent of companies now have formal RTO policies, yet employee engagement in the U.S. has fallen to a 10-year low.”

(Source: Forbes, Nov 24, 2025)

True leaders mentor. They give their teams room to make decisions, celebrate wins, and learn from missteps. They invest in growth because they genuinely want the people around them to outgrow their current roles—including, one day, their own. The best leaders quietly prepare successors and feel proud (not threatened) when someone is ready to step up.

If you’re a manager reading this and it resonates—great. You don’t need another policy. You need to strengthen your Trust Triangle. Start small: share the “why” behind decisions (logic), ask how the policy actually lands in people’s lives (empathy), and bring your whole self to the conversation (authenticity). The results follow quickly.

The future of work isn’t asking employees to prove themselves all over again. It’s asking leaders to step up, trust the teams they built, and lead with courage instead of caution.

Flexibility and performance can coexist beautifully. The only question left is: who’s ready to lead that way?

Photo by Kirsi Pille on Pexels

https://www.pexels.com/@pille-kirsi-222198/

AI-ASSISTED INTEGRITY STATEMENT

This article was written by a human author and reflects an original perspective and voice. Advanced AI tools were used solely in a supporting capacity to check for plagiarism, verify the accuracy of quoted material and statistics, suggest phrasing improvements for clarity and flow, and confirm that all sourced insights (Kotter, Frei, Morriss, Korn) were represented faithfully. No portion of the core argument, structure, or narrative was generated by AI. The final content, opinions, and conclusions are entirely my own.