How do leaders build trust in diverse teams when traditional leadership advice no longer works?
Most books on workplace trust and team leadership assume that teams are demographically neutral. They recommend the same trust-building behaviors regardless of differences in race, gender, identity, lived experience, or power dynamics. In reality, trust does not develop the same way across difference.
In The Trust Gap, leadership strategist and organizational culture expert Alexandra Prassas, PhD, combines original doctoral research with more than twenty years of experience in People & Culture and Global DEI leadership to uncover five specific, learnable behaviors that help leaders build trust across differences.
Drawing on interviews with senior corporate leaders and grounded in real-world experience, this book explores how leaders can:
- Build trust in diverse and distributed teams
- Create psychological safety rather than superficial harmony
- Lead difficult conversations across differences with confidence
- Recognize early signs of employee disengagement and withdrawal
- Strengthen employee engagement, collaboration, and retention
- Foster inclusive workplace cultures where different perspectives lead to better thinking and stronger performance
Each chapter pairs research findings with compelling real-life stories, providing practical leadership strategies rather than abstract theory.
The Trust Gap is for leaders, HR professionals, DEI practitioners, organizational development professionals, and change leaders who want to build high-trust, high-performing teams in today's increasingly complex workplace.
Grounded in original research and lived experience, The Trust Gap challenges conventional leadership frameworks and offers a new approach to workplace trust, inclusive leadership, team effectiveness, and organizational culture.
