Dr Michelle King: ‘Who you work with is way more important than who you work for’

There’s one statistic that is keeping global workplace culture expert Dr Michelle King up at night: 77%.

That’s the percentage of people who feel disengaged at work, according to Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workplace study.

“I don’t think we actually know that this means.”

The fact that almost eight in ten people are “going into work every day wishing they weren’t there, doing the bare minimum, hating on their jobs, looking for other jobs, feeling like what’s the point?” is a huge concern because “life and job satisfaction are correlated”.

“The more unhappy you are at work, the more unhappy you are in life”, and vice versa, shared Dr King during a presentation at a recent YuLife and FFinc breakfast event.

UNLEASH Chief Reporter Allie Nawrat at the YuLife FFInc breakfast event.

Therefore, she believes that this 77% figure should also be keeping every CEO, every leader, every manager up at night.

It’s high time we “find ways to make work more meaningful [and] more enjoyable”.

How to build trust at work

For Dr King, the key to making work more enjoyable is building trust.

She defines trust as “predictability” – can I predict that my manager or my colleague is going to show up in a way that has my best interests at heart?

“Everything companies want is on the other side of building a culture of trust.”

It’s time to leave behind industrial era work cultures – where there are hierarchical structures, and dominant, aggressive leaders just tell people what to do.

During her presentation, Dr King explicitly called out Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Last week, Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan in an interview that office culture is missing so-called ‘masculine energy’ – “I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has it own merits”.

Dr King joked that any organizations taking these approach “is not a company that’s going to survive in this new world”.

Instead, there’s a need to build leadership and cultures that are “inclusive, collaborative, democratic, caring, empathetic” – this is where people work together, build relationships, collaborate, which ultimately creates trust.

“We’re seeing this world where who you work with is way more important than who you work for,” adds Dr King.

This echoes findings from Randstad’s 2025 Workmonitor – 83% of the 56,000 employees surveyed said they wanted their workplace to provide a sense of community, plus 36% were prepared to earn less if they had good friends at work.

“The problem is that we don’t have a lot of leaders who know how to build that culture” of trust.

As Dr King tells UNLEASH, leaders are often “in denial” – they think everything is fine as it is, but the 77% disengagement stat tells a different story.

Rather than having “managers who are still sitting there with their little notepads” tracking “who’s in the office, and who isn’t”, Dr King shares three barometers of trust – “you’ve got to be able to disagree and that be okay… you’ve got to be able to grow and change, and you’ve also got to be able to share your emotions”.

If any of those of missing, then it is going to be a challenge for managers and teams to trust each other.

Dr King is clear that this is not about “authenticity nonsense” where people are having a negative impact on others, and being themselves regardless. This is about “being yourself in a way that still manages the impact that has on others”.

At the end of the day, trust has to be mutually beneficial. “You’re not here to just negatively impact people, we want to create an environment where people can express themselves, can ask questions, can feel safe in that environment.”

Trust is not about policy or process, it is about behaviors. These must be anchored in clarity, transparency and consistency, and then collecting feedback on success here.

We need leaders to role model the standard for what good looks like in organizations”, but the buck doesn’t stop with managers; every single employee has a part to play.