Leading in a Grievance Age

By Sarah Jenkins, Menzies Leadership Foundation

In a grievance age, leaders are not remembered for the volume of their messages, but for the fairness of their actions.

Walk into almost any public forum in 2025, a town hall meeting in regional Australia, a corporate all-staff briefing, a climate rally, or even a school assembly and one sentiment cuts through louder than most: grievance. People feel unheard, overlooked, or actively disadvantaged by the systems meant to serve them. They believe decisions are made elsewhere, by others, without transparency or fairness.

This isn’t simply dissatisfaction; it is grievance. And grievance is more combustible. It can unite people in collective demand for change, or fracture societies into camps of mistrust and resentment. For leaders, grievance is no longer background noise. It has become the very stage on which leadership is tested.

Trust on the Brink

The Edelman Trust Barometer 2025 offers a stark lens on the state of global leadership. Trust in governments, CEOs, and media continues to decline across most regions. “My employer” remains the most trusted institution, but even here, confidence has slipped. The report frames society as entering a “grievance age,” where perceptions of unfairness drive disengagement and resistance.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents globally now believe the systems around them are stacked against “people like me.” In Australia, this sentiment is echoed in debates over cost of living, climate adaptation, and Indigenous reconciliation. When people feel their voices do not matter, their trust in leadership falters.

Other research confirms the trend. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2025 shows declining engagement among employees worldwide. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2025 identifies “societal polarisation” as one of the most acute near-term risks, alongside escalating conflict. Grievance is not a marginal phenomenon; it is central to the leadership landscape of this decade.

Why Grievance Matters

Grievance is powerful because it reframes how people interpret leadership actions. A neutral stance is seen not as balance, but as avoidance. A delayed decision is read as neglect. A polished message is interpreted as spin.

This means leaders face a new calculus. They cannot rely on institutional authority to carry decisions. Instead, they must earn legitimacy through fairness, transparency, and a willingness to acknowledge discomfort. Grievance sets a higher threshold for trust — but it also sets a clearer path for those who lead with integrity.

Leadership Across Levels

At the individual level

Leadership begins with how we listen. Teachers who make space for student frustrations, healthcare workers who acknowledge patient fears, and parents who validate young people’s anxieties about the future are practicing leadership. These everyday acts of recognition matter. They demonstrate that grievance, when voiced, is not dismissed but respected.

For individuals in professional or civic roles, the key is humility: the willingness to accept that others’ experiences of exclusion or inequity are real, even if uncomfortable. Leadership is not about resolving every grievance immediately, but about signalling that voices are heard and dignity is acknowledged.

At the organisational level

Organisations risk amplifying grievance when they fail to act transparently. Consider climate reporting: from 1 January 2025, large Australian companies must disclose climate-related financial risks under new ISSB-aligned standards. For boards, this is more than compliance. It is an opportunity to rebuild trust by showing stakeholders, employees, investors, communities, how climate risks are being managed and mitigated.

If treated as a box-ticking exercise, disclosures will confirm suspicions of tokenism. If embraced as a chance to speak candidly about trade-offs, timelines, and accountability, they can counter grievance with legitimacy. The same principle applies to pricing decisions, workforce restructuring, or AI adoption. People are more willing to accept tough decisions when leaders are honest about the “why.”

At the community and system level

Grievance is most visible in civic life. Around the world, citizens are expressing frustration with democratic processes they see as unresponsive. Voter turnout is declining, while populist movements capitalise on grievance to fuel division.

Yet grievance also opens doors to innovation. Citizens’ assemblies, participatory budgeting, and truth-telling initiatives are examples of systems redesigning themselves to be fairer and more accountable. In Australia, explorations such as the Civility Initiative pilots in Ballarat and Tasmania highlight the importance of creating structured spaces where grievances can be voiced, understood, and translated into constructive action.

These initiatives show a deeper truth: grievance is not simply a threat; it is also a signal, a call for leadership that restores legitimacy through fairness.

What Leaders Can Do

1. Acknowledge, don’t dismiss
   Grievance is not always comfortable or convenient, but dismissing it corrodes trust. Leaders must lean into discomfort, recognising that acknowledgement is the first step to legitimacy.
2. Move from neutrality to clarity
   In an age of grievance, neutrality is often seen as complicity. Leaders must articulate principled stances, even if not universally popular. Fairness does not mean pleasing everyone; it means acting transparently on values.
3. Turn transparency into practice
   Leaders should explain not just decisions, but the reasoning behind them. Plain language, published commitments, and visible progress reports all matter. Transparency must be active, not symbolic.
4. Design for fairness
   At a systemic level, institutions must embed fairness into their processes. This could mean equitable access to services, representative participation in decision-making, or restorative approaches to conflict.

The Risks of Ignoring Grievance

Failing to engage with grievance does not make it disappear; it makes it fester. Unacknowledged grievances fuel populism, polarisation, and disengagement. They erode employee loyalty, consumer trust, and citizen participation and make systems brittle, vulnerable to shocks, and less resilient in crisis.

For leaders, the cost of ignoring grievance is not abstract. It shows up in staff attrition, reputational damage, protest movements, and policy gridlock and conversely, leaders who embrace fairness and transparency can transform grievance into agency.

Towards a Leadership of Fairness

Leadership in a grievance age is not about louder voices or more polished communications. It is about fairness, consistently, visibly, and humbly applied, it is about redistributing legitimacy from institutions to people, from positions of authority to communities of trust.

The challenge is profound, but so is the opportunity. If grievance is the defining sentiment of 2025, fairness can be its antidote. Leaders who understand this will not only survive the grievance age, they will help transform it into an era of renewal.