Your employees don't trust you. Not you personally — leadership in general. And most leaders have no idea how deep that distrust runs or what it actually takes to fix it.

In this episode of The Self Aware Leader, Jason Rigby breaks down the employee trust crisis happening in 2026 — why your team walks in the door already suspicious, what toxic leadership looks like from the inside, and why servant leadership is the only real answer to a generation that has been let down by every authority figure in their lives.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• Why Gen Z and younger employees distrust authority before you've done anything wrong
• The difference between toxic leadership that relies on title and servant leadership that earns trust through genuine investment
• Why Jesus is the most relevant leadership model for 2026 — not for religious reasons, but because he operated in the exact same environment of corrupt authority and institutional failure that your employees grew up watching
• The three specific things servant leaders do that toxic bosses never will
• Why "not being a bad boss" is not the same as being a good leader
• What it actually looks like to invest in your people — and why the ROI follows genuine care, not the other way around

If this episode hit you, two things:

1. Subscribe so you don't miss the next one — new episodes every week on leadership, self-awareness, and the real stuff underneath the surface
2. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts — it takes 60 seconds and it's the single biggest way to help this show reach more leaders who need it

Go deeper every week: Jason writes about leadership psychology, self-awareness, and the inner work of leading at jasonrigby.substack.com — free to subscribe.

Links:

• Substack: jasonrigby.substack.com
• Quiz — What's Running You? selfawarepodcast.com/quiz

00:00 — Why your team already doesn't trust you before you've done anything
01:45 — The political, institutional, and cultural reasons distrust runs so deep in 2026
04:00 — The Roman Empire, the religious elite, and why that's your workplace right now
06:30 — What Jesus actually did differently — and why it worked
08:45 — Jason's personal story: the mentor who saw him in a crowd of thousands
10:30 — What lazy leadership looks like in 2026 (and why your team can feel it)
12:15 — Three things servant leaders do that toxic bosses never will
14:30 — Why profit and ROI follow genuine investment — not the other way around