[Newsletter] 80% of Followers Want These 2 Things (New Gallup Global Data)

Gallup just released global leadership data that should stop every CEO, manager, and team leader in their tracks.

After surveying followers across 52 countries, they've identified exactly what people need from their leaders. And here's the part that matters: 80% of what followers want worldwide comes down to just two things.

Hope and trust.

Not strategy. Not vision statements. Not even compassion or stability, though those matter too.

Hope accounts for 56% of leadership needs globally. Trust makes up 33%. Together, they represent the vast majority of what your team is looking for when they decide whether you're worth following.

The Four Leadership Needs That Drive Everything

Gallup's research identified four core needs that followers have from their leaders, ranked by global importance:

Hope: 56% – The belief that the future will be better and that leaders can help make it happen

Trust: 33% – Confidence in a leader's integrity, competence, and follow-through

Compassion: 7% – The sense that leaders genuinely care about their wellbeing

Stability: 4% – The need for consistency and security in uncertain times

The data held consistent across demographics, industries, and countries. Whether your team is in Toronto or Tokyo, these needs remain foundational.

Regional variations exist but tell the same story. Europe registers hope at 53%, while the Asia-Pacific region comes in at 59%. Latin America sits at 56%. The pattern repeats everywhere Gallup looked.

Why This Matters for Return on Relationship (ROR)

For leaders working within a Return on Relationship (ROR) framework, this data validates something trauma-informed coaching has emphasized for years: psychological safety and relational trust aren't soft skills. They're the infrastructure that determines whether teams thrive or merely survive.

When followers experience hope, they invest discretionary effort. When they experience trust, they take the risks necessary for innovation. Remove either, and you're managing compliance rather than leading engagement.

The ROR model argues that every leadership interaction either builds or depletes relational capital. Gallup's findings confirm this. Leaders who meet followers' needs for hope and trust create resilient teams capable of navigating complexity and change. Leaders who don't find themselves managing disengagement, turnover, and quiet quitting.

Senior Leaders Need to Deliver Hope: Or Get Out of the Way

Here's where the research gets uncomfortably specific.

The more senior a leader is within an organization, the more followers expect hope from them. 64% of respondents said they need to see hope from organizational leaders, compared to 59% from managers and 58% from colleagues.

Translation: If you're at the executive level and you're not actively building hope, you're not just failing to lead: you're actively harming organizational culture.

Hope isn't optimism. It's not toxic positivity or pretending challenges don't exist. Hope is the credible articulation that problems are solvable, that effort matters, and that there's a pathway forward.

Leaders who can't or won't provide that create vacuums. And vacuums fill with cynicism, disengagement, and the slow erosion of trust.

Trust Is Non-Negotiable (And You Can't Fake It)

Trust accounts for a third of what followers need globally. That's not surprising to anyone who's worked in a low-trust environment.

What's worth noting is how trust interacts with the other three needs. Without trust, hope feels manipulative. Compassion feels performative. Stability feels like control.

Trust functions as the foundation. It's what makes the other leadership qualities credible.

Building trust requires consistency over time. It requires leaders to say what they'll do and then do it. It requires acknowledging mistakes instead of deflecting blame. It requires trauma-informed coaching approaches that recognize how past experiences shape current behavior and create space for people to bring their whole selves to work.

You can't manufacture trust with a town hall or a team-building retreat. Trust accumulates through small, repeated interactions where leaders prove they're reliable, honest, and genuinely interested in their team's success.

The Compassion and Stability Gap

Compassion and stability combine to make up just 11% of what followers need globally. That doesn't mean they're unimportant: it means they're insufficient on their own.

A compassionate leader who can't inspire hope or earn trust becomes a kind manager who nobody follows. A stable leader who lacks hope or trust becomes a bureaucrat maintaining the status quo.

These qualities matter most when they support the primary needs. Compassion deepens trust. Stability creates the conditions for hope to take root. But without hope and trust as the foundation, compassion and stability can't carry the weight of leadership.

What This Means for Leaders Right Now

If you're reading this and wondering where you stand, start by asking your team two questions:

1. Do they believe the future will be better because of the work you're doing together?

2. Do they trust you to follow through on what you say you'll do?

The answers will tell you everything you need to know about your leadership effectiveness.

For leaders building resilient teams, this data offers a roadmap. Focus relentlessly on creating hope and building trust. Everything else: strategy, processes, culture initiatives: becomes easier when those two foundations are solid.

For leaders struggling with engagement, retention, or performance issues, this data offers a diagnostic tool. If 80% of what people need is hope and trust, and your team lacks those, no amount of perks, incentives, or restructuring will fix the underlying problem.

The ROR Connection: Relationships First, Results Follow

The Return on Relationship framework argues that sustainable results come from prioritizing relationships over transactions. Gallup's global data supports this thesis with hard numbers.

When leaders invest in hope and trust: when they prioritize the relational dimensions of leadership: suffering decreases and wellbeing improves among those they lead. Gallup documented this correlation across their global sample.

Better relationships don't just feel good. They drive measurable outcomes: higher engagement, lower turnover, increased innovation, and improved performance.

The book ROR: Return on Relationship – Authentic Leadership for Resilient Teams explores how trauma-informed coaching principles create the psychological safety necessary for these outcomes. It's built on the premise that leadership development isn't about learning new techniques: it's about building the relational capacity to meet people's fundamental needs.

Moving Forward: From Data to Action

Knowing what followers need is one thing. Delivering it consistently is another.

Hope requires leaders to articulate a compelling future and demonstrate progress toward it. That means clear communication, transparent decision-making, and the courage to acknowledge setbacks without losing sight of the larger vision.

Trust requires integrity in every interaction. That means following through on commitments, admitting mistakes, owning failures, and treating people with consistent respect regardless of circumstance.

Neither hope nor trust can be delegated or outsourced. They're built: or destroyed: through the daily choices leaders make about how they show up, what they prioritize, and who they are when nobody's watching.

For organizations committed to trauma-informed coaching and resilient teams, this global data confirms the path forward. Build hope. Earn trust. Create the conditions where compassion and stability can flourish.

Everything else is details.

---

Roxanne Derhodge is a trauma-informed coach, keynote speaker, and CEO of Roxanne Derhodge Consulting. She works with leaders building resilient teams through Return on Relationship (ROR) principles. Learn more at roxannederhodge.com.