Your title used to mean something.

It conferred authority. Your company's reputation spoke on your behalf. Your communications team translated the institutional voice into press releases, talking points, and statements from senior leadership.

Now? Your title is merely a line on LinkedIn that no one reads.

That model no longer holds.

In today's trust environment, credibility is not automatically granted to institutions. It is earned by people. And for founders, CEOs, and executives, that reality has profound implications.

The trust shift is not theoretical. It is measurable. It is already reshaping how influence, confidence, and belief are formed regarding leaders and the organizations they represent.

Trust in institutions has been eroding for years, but the last decade has accelerated this erosion.

Gallup's 2025 data show that only 28 percent of Americans report having a "great deal" or "fair amount" of trust in mass media. More than 70 percent report little or no trust.

Edelman's 2025 Trust Barometer reinforces the same pattern across sectors. Trust in institutions is fragile, while trust in people "like me" remains consistently higher than trust in CEOs, governments, or the media as abstract entities.

This does not mean people reject expertise or leadership. It means authority no longer derives solely from logos.

The implication for executives is clear: if you are invisible, trust does not automatically transfer from your organization to you. And increasingly, it does not transfer at all.

One of the most important findings across trust research is that credibility has migrated to human interpreters.

New Pew Research shows that younger adults, in particular, rely less on institutional sources and more on individuals they perceive as authentic, transparent, and understandable.

Only 15 percent of adults under 30 report following the news closely, yet 76 percent obtain news from social platforms. Nearly half regularly get news from TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube. They are not disengaged. They are filtering information through people, not institutions.

Reuters Institute's Digital News Report 2025 confirms this globally. Social and video platforms have overtaken TV and news websites as primary sources of news for younger adults, and creators now play a central role in how information spreads.

Here's the moment this became real for me:

My daughter explained a breaking news story to me entirely through TikTok creators. I had spent my entire adult life inside newsrooms that earned national awards. More than twenty years of credentials sitting in a box somewhere.

Her trust? It lived somewhere else.

I spent 20+ years in newsrooms telling journalists to hide behind the institution. "You're not the story," we said. "Let the work speak for itself."

Now I watch executives make the same mistake—hiding behind corporate communications, letting the logo do the talking, assuming their track record is self-evident.

It's not.

In an environment defined by fragmentation and skepticism, audiences gravitate toward visible humans who help them make sense of complexity.

This is why trust didn't disappear. It migrated.

The Flamingo x Reuters Institute research offers critical insight into why individuals outperform institutions in trust.

Audiences—particularly younger ones—want information that fits into their lives, not the other way around. They encounter content in four moments: quick updates, time-filling scrolls, intercepted content from peers, and rare deep dives. Institutions often design for the last one. Attention lives in the first three.

They evaluate information based on personal utility:

They prefer transparency over polish, explanation over proclamation, and perspective over institutional neutrality.

They are not asking leaders to be perfect. They are asking them to be legible.

Creators succeed because they show how they think. They explain tradeoffs. They narrate decisions. They speak like humans navigating complexity in real time.

Executives who remain silent or overly scripted appear distant by comparison. Not because they lack expertise—but because they haven't made that expertise visible.

This shift is not confined to journalism or media. It directly affects corporate leadership.

LinkedIn's research shows that individual content consistently outperforms company page content in engagement and perceived credibility. Executives who post, explain, and present themselves as themselves are perceived as more trustworthy and more human.

This is why we see CEOs becoming active on LinkedIn, founders writing newsletters, and senior leaders using video to speak directly to employees, customers, and stakeholders.

Not because it is trendy.

Because silence now creates a vacuum—and someone else will fill it.

In fragmented trust environments, the absence of a visible leader often communicates more than any official statement.

I worked with an executive last year—brilliant operator, 30 years of experience, transformed three companies. When a crisis hit his industry, journalists sought expert voices.

They didn't find him.

He had no LinkedIn presence. No public commentary. No track record of explaining his thinking. So the narrative got shaped by people with half his expertise but twice his visibility.

By the time he wanted to respond, the conversation had moved on without him.

This is what happens when executives stay behind institutional language:

Meanwhile, trust accrues to individuals willing to speak plainly, consistently, and visibly.

This does not require oversharing or performative vulnerability. It requires clarity, presence, and continuity.

Trust today is earned conversation by conversation, not announcement by announcement.

Even large brands increasingly rely on borrowed trust. Edelman's research consistently shows that people trust subject-matter experts, employees, and creators more than official brand messaging.

CMSWire and other brand analysts describe platforms as "trust brokers," not just distribution channels. Attention is fragmented, and predictable reach no longer exists.

The organizations that adapt invest in employee advocates, executive visibility, creator partnerships, and community engagement, not as marketing tactics, but as trust infrastructure.

If you're wondering whether this shift affects you: it already has. The only question is whether you're navigating it intentionally.

Understanding the trust shift is no longer optional knowledge for leaders. It is a strategic competency.

Visibility is not ego. It is responsibility.

The leaders who earn trust now are not the loudest. They are the clearest. They explain decisions. They show up regularly. They participate in the same spaces where trust is being negotiated in real time.

The path forward is not fighting decentralization. It is participating in it.

Trust didn't disappear.

It migrated to the people willing to show up with clarity in a noisy, skeptical world.

The question isn't whether you have time to be visible.

It's whether you can afford not to be.