As we enter 2026, many organisations are operating with less room to move. Budget decisions taken in the Autumn 2025 are still being felt, and progress is slow to pick up. While some organisations might be finally ‘thawing’ their hiring freezes, it comes with far more friction than before, which has pushed leaders to focus on the talent they already have.
This article is by Dr Anna Barnett – Head of Research and Insights at Mindtools
In that environment, internal promotion can be seen as the obvious solution. It promises continuity, protects organisational knowledge and offers reassurance that growth is still possible, even during the tight conditions. Yet in practice, progression has become harder to achieve, and it’s not due to a lack of talent or ambition.
Instead, research from Mindtools Kineo shows that when managers have lower levels of trust in their teams, employees are less likely to be promoted. In fact, over a two-year period, teams where managers trust people to make their own decisions see promotion rates climb to 27%, compared with 21% in low-trust environments.
Progression begins long before promotion discussions
Most organisations think of career growth as a structured process. However, it rarely works that way. Managers look at who is trusted with challenging work, who is allowed to make judgment calls without constant oversight, and who gains exposure to situations where there is no obvious right answer. These experiences are what allow people to demonstrate readiness for the next level, yet managers rarely have a full picture.
Where trust is higher, managers are more willing to hand over responsibility that supports learning. The difference is visible in behaviour. Development-focused delegation happens 11% more often when managers trust their team members, creating a steady build-up of experience that formal training cannot replicate.
When manager trust is lower, there are less opportunities to explore. Work that carries risk or visibility tends to stay with the manager, even when individuals are capable of more. Over time, this produces very different career trajectories, despite stellar performance.
Yet, most managers would reject the idea that they are limiting progression, believing they are being careful or considerate. Indeed, four in five managers (80%) believe their decisions are not influenced by others’ emotions, yet interviews show those influences are almost always present, operating below awareness. Delegation decisions are also rarely driven by convenience or self-interest. Instead, trust shapes 27% of those choices, with development considerations close behind at 25%.
This means hesitation is usually emotional: managers worry about pressure, mistakes or how failure might affect confidence and wellbeing. In some cases, strong empathy leads to earlier intervention, with managers stepping in before people have had the chance to work through challenges themselves. While the decision may be made with good intentions, it limits growth in ways that are difficult to spot in real time.
Trust and autonomy influence who stays
The impact of trust does not just affect promotion. Teams where managers support employees to make decisions independently experience significantly lower turnover than those where autonomy is restricted – 15% versus 24% respectively.
Autonomy acts as a form of recognition. It communicates confidence more clearly than praise, and when it is missing, people slowly become disengaged. Being trusted to exercise judgement, influence outcomes and take ownership increasingly shapes whether people feel committed to staying.
As a result, low trust creates a paradox that many organisations struggle to understand and respond to. Managers who hesitate to delegate often feel overstretched, carrying responsibilities that could be shared, while employees feel underused and unclear about their growth. What appears to be a talent problem is frequently a trust problem that managers are simply not noticing.
Rebuilding trust through deliberate delegation
Trust is often described as a mindset, but it’s more like a habit, reinforced through repeated decisions about when to step back and when to step in. Trust plays a decisive role in whether employees are given the opportunity to grow. The report shows that managers are far more likely to delegate development work when they trust the people in their teams.
Where that trust is missing, progression slows. Crucially, the relationship works both ways. While trust encourages managers to delegate, the act of delegation itself – particularly when it supports development – helps to build trust over time.
This does not mean lowering standards or removing accountability. Managers need to accept that development cannot take place in perfectly safe conditions. Judgement is learned through experience, and experience involves being placed in challenging conditions.
Trust can fade in everyday decisions, and by the time organisations notice talent drifting, the momentum is already gone. Organisations that want internal mobility to work need to help managers make these decisions deliberately, with greater awareness of emotional bias, access to practical guidance and permission to tolerate learning-led risk. When managers support people to reach decisions independently, rather than stepping in early or taking work back, confidence can grow on both sides.
Rebuilding trust also requires better support for managers at the point where decisions are made. This could be simple, timely resources, such as how-to guides, checklists and video support, or modern technologies like AI chatbots and conversation simulators. By providing managers with tools that promote reflection and build self-awareness, organisations can help them pause and reflect before instinct kicks in, encouraging more deliberate judgment.