SEATTLE, Wash., August 29, 2026 – SparkEffect President and CEO Kim Bohr joined Fox 5 DC to talk about something every organization is dealing with right now: disruption, and what it’s doing to trust inside the workplace.
Kim’s message was direct: disruption isn’t the exception anymore, it’s the reality every organization is operating inside of. “Disruption is really not an exception anymore. It is absolutely the reality we’re all dealing with,” she said, pointing to the added weight AI is putting on an already strained system.
The conversation centered on SparkEffect’s ongoing Trust in Turbulence research, now entering its second year and set to release its 2026 findings on September 15. Kim shared an early preview of what the data shows: in the first year of the research, 71% of employees reported experiencing a significant disruption in the past 24 months. This year, that number has climbed to 85%.
That shift is landing hardest on managers, who Kim said are being asked to be interventionists for their teams without always being equipped for the job. She used the analogy of a camp counselor, someone expected to know everything and hold the whole group together no matter what’s happening. Her point wasn’t that managers need more training. “It’s not more training,” she said. “There’s some very small specifics that these managers need.” Managers, she explained, are being disrupted by AI and organizational change at roughly twice the rate of their own employees, all while being expected to stay steady for the people who report to them.
Asked how leaders should handle transparency without oversharing, Kim offered a practical answer: set a communication cadence people can count on. Say what you know, say what you don’t, name the date you’ll share more, and then actually hold to it. “When all of that just stays in the executive level,” she said, “that’s where we start to see people just start to lose faith.”
She also shared a real example, details kept anonymous, of a client who had built a genuinely empathetic, human approach to layoffs, and then, in one instance, delivered a layoff by email instead. The result, in her words, “ruptured trust tremendously and absolutely killed morale.” It’s a reminder, she said, that moments like these take planning, not just good intentions.
SparkEffect’s second annual Trust in Turbulence research launches September 15. Visit sparkeffect.com to learn more, and follow along as we break down the full findings.
