SEATTLE, Wash., October 4, 2026 – SparkEffect’s Trust in Turbulence: The 2026 State of Organizational Trust is at the center of a new article from Rotary District 5030. In “Trust in Turbulence: What the Four-Way Test Can Teach Us About Leading Rotary Through Change,” Kaj Pedersen applies the report’s findings to leading through change in Rotary clubs. He looks at the shifts clubs and district leaders face in membership, volunteer expectations, technology, finances, and leadership.
Pedersen starts from the report’s core premise: disruption is inevitable, but how an organization responds decides whether trust erodes or grows. He cites the finding that organizations facing disruption with no meaningful intervention averaged a trust score of 68.3, compared with 82.4 for organizations with no disruption. When disruption is handled well, though, organizations can come out with stronger trust than if it never happened.
From there, he uses Rotary’s Four-Way Test as a framework for leaders. The framework asks four things of them: tell the truth even when it’s uncomfortable, make fair decisions and explain them, support the club presidents and chairs who sit closest to members, and be willing to stop what isn’t working. Along the way he draws on several of the report’s findings, including the importance of fair treatment and transparency and the role of direct managers as a key point of leverage. He also echoes the report’s conclusion that managers don’t need more training or more responsibility. They need real capacity and support.
Pedersen also adapts the report’s concept of Trust Elasticity, an organization’s ability to absorb disruption and recover. In the research, organizations that handled disruption with high-quality intervention scored 42.85 on Trust Elasticity. That’s higher than organizations with no disruption (39.75) and organizations that went through disruption without intervention (33.64). He calls his version “Rotary Elasticity”: the ability to change without losing your values and to disagree without losing friendships.
The research was built to apply wherever people rely on leaders during change, from global companies to volunteer service organizations. Pedersen’s article shows it does.
Read the full article from Rotary District 5030.
To explore the research behind the numbers, download Trust in Turbulence: The 2026 State of Organizational Trust
