Why Being a “Nice Guy” Isn’t Enough

Let me say this as plainly as possible.

A lot of “nice guys” aren’t actually nice.

They’re transactional.

The Deal Nobody Agreed To

For years, I operated with a quiet assumption: If I’m nice, if I show up, if I do the right thing, then things should work out for me.

People should respond well. Opportunities should come. Relationships should feel fair.

I didn’t say it out loud.

But it was there.

A deal I thought the world had signed.

It hadn’t.

When “Nice” Turns Into Entitlement

This is where the “nice guy” logic breaks.

Because underneath it is often a hidden expectation: I did this so you should do that.

I was respectful so I deserve something in return.

I showed up so I should be chosen.

And when that doesn’t happen?

Frustration. Resentment. Confusion.

Not because something unfair happened.

But because the deal was never real.

The Leadership Version of This

This doesn’t just show up in dating culture.

It shows up in leadership all the time.

Leaders who think: “I’ve been supportive, so my team should perform.” “I’ve been approachable, so people should speak up.” “I’ve created a good environment, so results should follow.”

And when they don’t?

They feel let down.

But support is not a transaction. Trust is not a transaction. Leadership is not a transaction.

The Hard Lesson

One of the most uncomfortable things I had to confront was this: I wasn’t being “nice.”

I was trying to control outcomes without admitting it.

Niceness was the strategy.

Expectation was the goal.

And when reality didn’t match that expectation, I blamed everything except the assumption itself.

What Decency Actually Requires

Decency is different.

It’s not about being pleasant.

It’s about being grounded.

You do the right thing because it’s the right thing. You show up because that’s who you are. You lead because you take responsibility.

No hidden contracts. No silent expectations. No scorekeeping.

The Takeaway

Being a “nice guy” often comes with strings attached.

Being a decent man doesn’t.

And in leadership, that difference shows up fast.

Because people can feel the gap between: someone who is genuinely grounded and someone who is waiting for something in return

even if nothing is ever said out loud.

P.S. A lot of the mistakes in The Big F#cking Book on How to Be a Decent Guy come from this exact pattern, confusing good intentions with clean motives. It took me a long time to realise how often I was expecting something back.

The Leadership Failure Behind the Manosphere Debate

There’s a lot of noise right now about young men.

Podcasts. Documentaries. Opinion pieces. Everyone trying to explain what’s going on.

Most of the conversation focuses on extremes.

On one side, influencers selling dominance, control, and grievance. On the other, criticism that often stops at what’s wrong.

What’s missing is something much simpler.

Leadership.

The Gap Nobody Filled

Young men are not born knowing how to lead.

They learn it.

From fathers. From teachers. From managers. From the cultures they grow up in.

Or they don’t.

And when they don’t, they go looking for it somewhere else.

The problem is not that young men are looking for guidance.

The problem is where they’re finding it.

What Happens When Leadership Is Absent

If no one teaches you how to listen, you learn how to dominate.

If no one teaches you how to handle rejection, you learn how to resent it.

If no one teaches you how to hold responsibility, you learn how to externalise it.

That’s not ideology.

That’s learned behavior filling a vacuum.

The Part We Don’t Like to Admit

We tend to treat the manosphere as the problem.

It’s not the starting point.

It’s the symptom.

The uncomfortable question is: Where were the credible voices before that?

Where were the mentors who could say: Here’s how to deal with failure. Here’s how to show up in relationships. Here’s how to lead without control.

Not in theory.

In practice.

Leadership Is Taught Through Failure

Most of what matters in leadership isn’t taught in schools.

Listening. Accountability. Holding space. Owning mistakes.

These are learned through experience.

Often through getting it wrong.

The problem is that many young men are left to learn these lessons alone.

And alone, people tend to reinforce the wrong patterns.

What Needs to Change

The answer isn’t louder criticism.

It’s better examples.

Men who can say: Here’s where I got it wrong. Here’s what it cost me. Here’s what I had to change.

Not from a pedestal.

From experience.

Because credibility comes from honesty, not perfection.

The Takeaway

The manosphere didn’t appear out of nowhere.

It filled a gap.

If we want a different outcome, we need different inputs.

Better leadership. Earlier guidance. More honest conversations.

Because if young men don’t learn leadership from people who have done the work,

they will learn it from people who haven’t.

P.S. This is the space The Big F#cking Book on How to Be a Decent Guy is trying to step into. Not as another voice shouting from the sidelines, but as someone willing to say: I got this wrong and here’s what I learned.

Why “Fixing It” Is the Mistake Most Men Make

I used to think being helpful meant being useful.

If there was a problem, I solved it. If someone was struggling, I offered a solution. If something felt uncomfortable, I tried to fix it quickly.

That’s what I thought good men did.

That’s what I thought good leaders did.

I was wrong.

The Moment I Got It Wrong

A student once told me something that stopped me cold.

Her family was forcing her to leave university and return home for an arranged marriage.

She said it calmly. Almost clinically.

Then she told me she had been thinking about ending her life.

My brain did exactly what it had been trained to do.

Fix it.

Find resources. Call someone. Intervene. Solve the problem.

I was already halfway into a plan before I realised: She wasn’t asking me to fix anything.

She was asking me to hear her.

Why Men Default to Fixing

Most men are trained early: Problems are solved. Emotions are managed. Discomfort is reduced.

We learn that value comes from being effective.

So when someone brings us pain, we translate it into a task.

We move from: “This is hard.” To: “How do I solve this?”

And in that moment, something important gets lost.

Fixing Is Often About Us, Not Them

Fixing is often a way to reduce our discomfort.

Silence feels awkward. Pain feels overwhelming. Uncertainty feels threatening.

So we act.

We offer solutions. We give advice. We take control.

It doesn't help the other person. It only helps us feel useful again.

What Leadership Actually Looks Like

That day, I did something very different.

I stopped talking.

I listened.

I told her I believed her. I told her she wasn’t alone. I stayed in the discomfort instead of trying to escape it.

It felt like I wasn’t doing enough.

It felt like I was failing.

It was the first time I was actually leading.

The Shift Most Men Need to Make

There’s a difference between solving and holding.

Solving is fast. Holding is slow.

Solving is about control. Holding is about presence.

Solving ends the conversation. Holding deepens it.

Most of the situations that matter, in leadership, in relationships, in life, don’t need immediate solutions.

They need space.

The Takeaway

If your first instinct is to fix, pause.

Ask yourself: Am I helping? Or am I trying to escape discomfort?

Because the moment you stop trying to fix everything is the moment people start trusting you with what actually matters.

P.S. Hanne is now thriving. She's working and living her life on her terms. This chapter is part of The Big F#cking Book on How to Be a Decent Guy, a guide built on the mistakes I made so you don’t have to.

If Your Only Case Studies Are American, You’re Not Global. You’re Nostalgic.

I sat through a professional talk recently.

Smart speaker. Confident. Experienced.

Every example?

U.S. companies. U.S. politics. U.S. case studies. Mostly from the 1990s.

That’s not global expertise.

That’s intellectual inertia.

The World Has Moved

We are not operating in a unipolar moment anymore.

Innovation ecosystems are scaling in China at breathtaking speed. Digital identity systems are transforming public services in India. Defense and cybersecurity collaboration is intensifying across the Baltics. Climate governance is being redesigned inside the European Union. Fintech and mobile infrastructure are leapfrogging legacy systems across parts of Africa.

Power is distributed. Influence is regional. Execution is local.

If your frameworks never leave one national context, they’re not universal.

They’re local models with international branding.

Dominance Doesn’t Equal Relevance

For decades, U.S. business schools and corporations were treated as default reference points.

That made sense in a certain era.

It makes less sense now.

Global audiences don’t need a rerun of American case studies.

They need tools that reflect the realities they’re actually navigating.

Multipolar markets. Regional governance blocs. Cultural variance in leadership norms. Diverging regulatory environments. Shifting power centers in tech, security, and sustainability.

If your intellectual map still centers one country, you’re teaching from habit, not awareness.

If your examples haven’t evolved since the 1990s, your authority hasn’t either.

The Takeaway

The world is multipolar.

Your slide deck should be too.

Before your next presentation, ask yourself: Does my intellectual map reflect the world as it is or the world as it used to be?

If your only case studies are American, you’re not global.

You’re exporting nostalgia.

P.S. This isn’t about rejecting U.S. insight. It’s about expanding intellectual range. Global leadership requires curiosity beyond your own borders and the humility to admit the center has shifted.

Neurodiversity Isn’t a Side Quest. It’s Where Inclusion Gets Real.

Most inclusion work focuses on who is visible.

Neurodiversity exposes something harder: how work itself is designed.

Because many organisations are doing inclusion “right” and still excluding neurodivergent people every single day.

The Problem Isn’t People. It’s Design.

Neurodiversity includes autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and other neurological differences.

It’s often invisible. Often undisclosed. Often punished socially, even when unintentionally.

The 2025 research is clear on this point: Neurodivergent employees are not excluded primarily through bias. They are excluded through workplaces built around narrow cognitive assumptions.

How meetings run. How communication happens. How performance is interpreted. How ambiguity is normalised.

Inclusion can look successful on paper and still create constant friction for people whose brains process differently.

When “Inclusive” Practices Backfire

Well-intentioned inclusion often assumes one default way of working.

That’s where things break.

• Open-door cultures rely on spontaneous interaction and social timing. • Indirect communication rewards reading between the lines.

• Brainstorming privileges speed, verbal dominance, and ambiguity.

• Unstructured flexibility creates uncertainty instead of autonomy.

None of this is malicious.

But it quietly shifts the cost of adaptation onto neurodivergent employees, who spend energy masking, translating, and managing misalignment instead of doing their actual work.

What Actually Works (According to the Evidence)

Across the 2025 studies, four things consistently matter:

• Psychological safety before disclosure: People don’t ask for support unless they trust what will happen next.

• Clarity instead of constant interpretation: Concrete language, written summaries, and explicit expectations reduce cognitive load.

• Accommodation as infrastructure, not exception: Quiet spaces, advance agendas, sensory awareness, and predictable rhythms are access conditions, not special treatment.

• Visible normalisation, not private tolerance: When leaders name neurodiversity openly and model acceptance, safety increases for everyone.

This isn’t about lowering standards. It’s about removing unnecessary barriers.

Why This Strengthens Inclusion for Everyone

Designing for neurodiversity doesn’t fragment inclusion.

It deepens it.

Clarity reduces anxiety. Predictability preserves energy. Multiple ways of contributing improve decision-making.

Neurodiversity forces inclusive leadership to move beyond intentions and into how work actually works.

The Takeaway

True inclusion isn’t about treating everyone the same.

It’s about building systems that don’t require people to exhaust themselves just to belong.

Neurodiversity makes that impossible to ignore.

P.S. If your inclusion strategy only works for people who thrive on ambiguity, noise, and social guesswork, it’s not finished yet. Neurodiversity doesn’t complicate inclusion. It reveals whether it’s real.

Humility Comes Before Mastery

A few years ago, I took the Norwegian language test required for citizenship.

You need B1.

I got A1.

There is no A0.

That wasn’t a technicality.

That was ego.

The Status Story I Told Myself

For 15 years, I had very convincing reasons not to learn Norwegian properly.

I ran businesses. I employed people. I brought money into the country. I was publishing in international scientific journals. I was speaking to corporate audiences in the thousands. I was travelling internationally as a researcher and keynote speaker.

English was my arena. And I was winning in it.

So I told myself a quiet story:

Why should I lower myself to being a beginner?

No one would have said that out loud. But that was the attitude.

I confused being impressive with being integrated.

I thought my achievements excused my avoidance.

I Hid Behind Intelligence to Avoid Vulnerability

The truth is simpler than the narrative I built.

I didn’t want to sound clumsy. I didn’t want to be corrected. I didn’t want to feel small.

So I hid behind intelligence.

I stayed in the language where I had power, vocabulary, status.

And I justified it as strategy.

But it wasn’t strategic.

It was defensive.

Men Do This With Everything

We double down in the rooms where we dominate.

We avoid the rooms where we would be exposed as beginners.

Then we call it preference. Or efficiency. Or being “strategic.”

But most of the time, it’s fear.

Fear of not being competent. Fear of losing status. Fear of looking average.

This Is Why So Many Men Avoid Therapy

Not because they don’t need it.

But because therapy requires the same thing language learning requires:

Admitting you don’t already know. Admitting you’re not fluent. Admitting you need help.

It threatens the identity of the man who is supposed to have answers.

So instead of walking into a room where we might feel inexperienced, we stay where we feel impressive.

And we call that strength.

You Can’t Demand Belonging in a Language You Refuse to Speak

I talk about inclusion for a living.

Belonging. Participation. Meeting people where they are.

And yet for 15 years, I expected Norway to meet me halfway.

Because I was contributing. Because I was visible. Because I was successful.

That’s not integration.

That’s transactional thinking.

Belonging isn’t earned through achievement.

It’s built through participation.

Scheduling the Humbling

This time, I stopped negotiating with myself.

I booked the exam.

Two hours of tutoring every week. Four hours of crash course. Extra practice with colleagues. Conversations that made me tired and exposed.

Somewhere along the way, it stopped being about B1.

It became about identity.

Was I the kind of man who protects status?

Or the kind who pursues growth?

The Masculinity Nobody Applauds

We teach boys to compete.

We rarely teach them to be novices.

Humility feels like demotion when your identity is built on competence.

But confidence built on avoidance is brittle.

Confidence built on humility is durable.

Mastery doesn’t begin when you feel powerful.

It begins when you admit you’re not.

The Real Lesson

Humility comes before mastery.

Not talent. Not dominance. Not intellect. Not success.

Humility.

The willingness to mispronounce. To fail publicly. To look average before you become good.

Most men don’t avoid growth because they lack discipline.

They avoid it because they don’t want to feel small.

I did.

For 15 years.

The Takeaway

If there’s an area of your life you keep dismissing as unnecessary, ask yourself: Is it actually beneath you? Or does it threaten the version of you that needs to look impressive?

The language you avoid might not be Norwegian.

It might be emotional fluency. Relational fluency. Cultural fluency.

Mastery begins where ego ends.

P.S. Passing B1 will feel good. But becoming the kind of person who isn’t threatened by being a beginner, in language, in therapy, in identity, for me, that’s the real milestone. This chapter belongs in The Big F#cking Book on How to Be a Decent Guy. Because decency requires humility before it produces mastery.

The Quiet Genius of Letting Younger Employees Teach You

Here’s something a lot of leaders rarely admit out loud: Age makes us awkward.

Not because people are difficult. But because power, experience, confidence, and insecurity collide in strange ways when generations work together.

And most leadership models still pretend age is a footnote.

It isn’t.

Age Changes What Inclusion Even Means

Age is not a fixed identity. It moves.

What people need at 25 looks nothing like what they need at 55. What feels supportive early in a career can feel suffocating later on. What feels empowering to one generation can feel dismissive to another.

The 2025 research is clear on this: inclusive leadership works across ages, but only when it adapts across the life course.

Static frameworks don’t survive dynamic lives.

Where Leaders Start Losing People (Quietly)

Age-related exclusion rarely shows up as conflict. It shows up as hesitation.

Younger employees hold back to avoid sounding naïve or entitled. Older employees hold back to avoid being seen as outdated or “in the way.”

Add hybrid work and digital acceleration, and the gap widens fast.

What leaders often read as disengagement is something else entirely: calculation.

Reverse Mentoring, Minus the Theatre

This is where reverse mentoring should come in.

Not as a programme. Not as a branding exercise. And definitely not as “young teaches old.”

The research shows it only works when one thing is true:

Both sides are treated as legitimate sources of knowledge.

Younger employees bring:

• digital fluency

• emerging norms

• speed and pattern recognition

Older employees bring:

• discernment

• institutional memory

• risk awareness

When leaders explicitly protect that symmetry, something important happens: trust stabilises across ages.

When they don’t, reverse mentoring turns into polite discomfort or quiet humiliation.

The Power Move Leaders Miss

Age differences amplify leadership impact.

The larger the gap, the more inclusive leadership matters.

Avoiding age doesn’t neutralise it. It hands the narrative to stereotypes.

Leaders who name age differences, calmly, without drama, give people permission to contribute from where they actually are, not where they think they’re supposed to be.

That’s not soft leadership. It’s precise leadership.

Inclusion Has a Time Dimension

Here’s the part most organisations still resist: Inclusion isn’t a moment. It’s a career-long practice.

• Early career: growth, feedback, visibility.

• Mid career: sustainability, integration, flexibility.

• Later career: autonomy, legacy, health.

One organisation. Multiple timelines.

Treating everyone the same doesn’t create fairness. It creates drift.

The Takeaway

Letting younger employees teach you isn’t generosity.

It’s competence.

Because organisations that only let knowledge flow one way eventually run out of it.

P.S. If your inclusion strategy works beautifully for early-career talent but quietly loses people later on, that’s not a pipeline problem. It’s a leadership design problem. Reverse mentoring is one signal of whether you’ve noticed.

Hybrid Work Rewards the Loud. What About Everyone Else?

Hybrid work was supposed to level the playing field. More flexibility. More autonomy. More inclusion.

Instead, something quieter is happening.

Some people are thriving. Others are slowly disappearing.

The Thing I Didn’t Realise (Until Hybrid Work)

Quick confession.

I used to think reaction emojis were fluff. Nice-to-have. Not leadership.

In hybrid teams, presence isn’t physical anymore. It’s inferred.

A 👍 A ❤️ A quick “saw this, thanks”

Those tiny signals now decide who feels seen.

Hybrid Work Doesn’t Create Inclusion. It Exposes It.

The 2025 research is very clear on this:

Technology connects people. It does not create inclusion.

In hybrid work, inclusion doesn’t emerge organically through proximity. It has to be designed.

When leaders assume it will “just happen,” the same pattern shows up again and again:

• Fast, confident digital communicators dominate

• Reflective thinkers fade

• Neurodivergent employees lose cues and context

• Caregivers get read as “less present”

• Ideas survive meetings but die in summaries

No conflict. No complaints. Just less traction.

That’s not neutrality. That’s exclusion by design.

Digital Empathy Is the Missing Skill

This is where digital empathy comes in.

Not being “nice online.” Not emoji spam.

Digital empathy is intentional signalling.

It’s leaders paying attention to:

• Who gets responses

• Who gets acknowledged

• Whose ideas get carried forward

• Who slowly stops contributing

In hybrid work, people rarely disengage loudly.

They evaporate.

AI Makes This Even Riskier

Now add AI into the mix.

Algorithms shape:

• task allocation

• performance narratives

• idea prioritisation

When leaders treat AI as objective, bias gets automated.

Inclusive leadership in hybrid work means:

• questioning summaries

• auditing outputs

• noticing whose contributions survive the system

Otherwise, exclusion just looks efficient.

The Real Risk for 2026

Some organisations are already seeing this:

They were more inclusive before hybrid work than after.

Because flexibility without leadership norms creates a two-tier system:

• the loud thrive

• everyone else goes quiet

Hybrid work doesn’t fail inclusion dramatically. It fails it politely.

P.S. Here’s a question worth sitting with: Who on your team used to contribute, and doesn’t anymore?

Not because they left. Because they stopped being noticed. That’s where inclusion work lives now.

Inclusion Doesn’t Travel Well (And That’s a Problem We Created)

Let me start uncomfortably.

Most of what I was taught about inclusive leadership was designed in the Global North. By people like me. For contexts that look a lot like mine.

And for years, I assumed it traveled.

It doesn’t.

The Mistake I Had to Unlearn

I used to believe inclusive leadership was a universal skillset.

Open doors. Speak up. Challenge authority. Be radically transparent.

All good things.

Also deeply Western.

The 2025 research makes this painfully clear: when inclusion models built in low-power-distance, individualistic cultures are exported without translation, they often reduce safety, voice, and trust instead of increasing them.

Good intentions. Bad outcomes.

When “Good” Inclusion Backfires

Here’s what shows up again and again in the research:

In high power-distance contexts, leader accessibility can signal weakness, not care. In collectivist cultures, spotlighting individual uniqueness can disrupt belonging. In high-context cultures, verbal inclusion matters far less than timing, presence, and relational signals.

So when leaders in Europe say:

“Why won’t people speak up?”

The answer is often:

“Because you just made it unsafe, in this context.”

Silence isn’t disengagement everywhere. Sometimes it’s respect.

This One Stings (Especially for People Like Me)

Multinationals roll out “global inclusion frameworks.” Scores drop in Global South subsidiaries. Leaders panic.

The usual diagnosis?

“Resistance.” “Low inclusion maturity.” “Cultural barriers.”

The research says otherwise.

What’s eroding isn’t inclusion. It’s leader legitimacy.

When inclusion behaviors violate local norms of authority, harmony, or credibility, people don’t lean in. They pull back.

What the Research Forces Us to Admit

2025 studies don’t treat inclusive leadership as a fixed competency anymore.

They treat it as culturally adaptive practice.

Same principles:

• dignity

• fairness

• belonging

• voice

Different expressions.

Not copy-paste. Recomposition.

Translate the why. Not the how.

The Question I Keep Asking Myself Now

Not:

“Are we being inclusive?”

But:

“Who decided what inclusion is supposed to look like here?”

And:

“Who pays the price when we get that wrong?”

Because too often, it’s not European leaders carrying the risk. It’s everyone else.

What I’m Taking Forward Into 2026

Inclusive leadership that works globally requires:

• humility, not export confidence

• listening before rolling out

• local leaders shaping the model

• and a willingness to let go of familiar behaviors that feel inclusive to us but land badly elsewhere

Inclusion isn’t universal behavior.

It’s situational leadership with a moral compass.

The takeaway

If your inclusion model only works where you designed it, it’s not inclusive.

It’s colonial with better branding.

P.S. This tension — between intention and impact, principle and practice — runs through the entire Inclusive Leadership Trends for 2026 white paper. If you’ve ever led across cultures and felt that “something isn’t landing,” you’re not imagining it. Next week, I’ll show you what the research says leaders need to do instead.

High-Pressure Leadership and the Mistake We Keep Repeating

When decisions are fast, stakes are high, and consequences are real, leaders make a familiar move.

They tighten control. They narrow voices. They prioritise speed over conversation.

And they quietly drop inclusion.

Not because they don’t believe in it but because inclusion feels too soft for hard moments.

That’s the mistake. And the 2025 research is unambiguous about it.

The Assumption That Keeps Breaking Systems

In high-pressure environments (defence, cybersecurity, healthcare, critical infrastructure), leaders often assume:

We don’t have time for inclusion right now.

But pressure doesn’t remove the need for inclusive leadership. It amplifies it.

Because under stress, people:

• hesitate to report errors

• hide uncertainty

• push through fatigue

• default to silence

And silence is not discipline. It’s unreported risk.

What the Evidence Actually Shows

Across healthcare, construction, high-risk infrastructure, and safety-critical operations, inclusive leadership consistently predicts:

• lower burnout and emotional exhaustion

• higher error and near-miss reporting

• stronger vigilance and safety participation

• reduced harm

Not eventually. Not culturally. Operationally.

The mechanism isn’t politeness. It’s fear reduction.

When leaders remove punishment from honest reporting, information surfaces earlier, before errors compound into incidents.

One Leadership Approach. Two Safety Outcomes.

Inclusive leadership works on two safety systems at once.

1. Psychological safety: People speak up. They admit uncertainty. They protect cognitive bandwidth instead of burning it.

2. Physical and operational safety: Hazards get reported. Procedures get questioned. Small failures don’t grow in the dark.

This isn’t softness. It’s signal quality.

Why This Hits Defence and Cyber Especially Hard

European defence and cybersecurity organisations operate in environments defined by:

• zero tolerance for failure

• strong hierarchies

• constant readiness

• moral and legal consequence

In those conditions, silence often gets mistaken for strength.

But the research shows the opposite.

The most dangerous moment is not disagreement. It’s when people stop correcting the system.

Inclusive leadership improves decisions by widening the information leaders receive before it’s too late.

Care Is Not the Opposite of Readiness

One of the sharpest shifts in the 2025 literature is this: Care is no longer framed as kindness. It’s framed as risk management.

Leaders who legitimise rest, listen for strain, and invite dissent don’t weaken teams. They prevent fatigue-driven error, presenteeism, and catastrophic silence.

In high-pressure work, ignoring exhaustion doesn’t create toughness. It creates fragility.

The Pattern Leaders Miss

The dominant causal chain now looks like this:

Inclusive leadership → psychological safety → engagement → safety behaviour → reduced harm

Break the first link, and everything downstream collapses.

That’s why compliance-heavy safety models keep failing under pressure. They manage rules. They don’t manage fear.

The Takeaway

When the stakes rise, leaders don’t need less inclusion.

They need better inclusion.

High-pressure leadership doesn’t require narrowing voices. It requires making sure the right ones don’t go quiet.

P.S. Inclusive Leadership Trends for 2026 goes deeper into how psychological safety predicts error reporting, vigilance, and burnout reduction in safety-critical environments. If your work depends on reliability under pressure, this research is worth engaging with before the next hard decision arrives.

What People Actually Mean When They Say “You Have Good Energy”

For years, people have told me some version of the same thing: “You have good energy.” “I feel energized after we meet.” “Your energy on stage is contagious.”

I always smiled, said thanks, and moved on.

I didn’t really know what they meant.

This year’s research changed that.

The Thing We Feel but Rarely Name

The inclusive leadership literature in 2025 starts using a phrase that stopped me cold:

Relational energy.

It’s not charisma. It’s not positivity. It’s not personality.

Relational energy is what people carry with them after an interaction with you.

Do they walk away clearer or heavier? More willing to speak, or more cautious? Energised, or quietly depleted?

That emotional residue, not your intent, not your values, not your leadership style, is where inclusion actually happens.

Or quietly dies.

Inclusion Isn’t Built in Big Moments

Most leaders I work with assume inclusion shows up in:

• policies

• programmes

• town halls

• big statements at big moments

The research says otherwise.

Inclusive leadership is enacted, or undone, in micro-interactions:

• the two-minute check-in before a meeting

• the Slack message you don’t send

• how quickly you respond when someone flags a problem

• whether you pause, or push on, when tension appears

These moments feel small.

They’re not.

They are the mechanism.

Across healthcare, virtual teams, project work, and crisis environments, the same pattern shows up again and again:

Leaders who consistently engage in high-quality micro-interactions build relational energy. Leaders who don’t slowly drain it, even when everything looks fine on paper.

What “Good Energy” Actually Is

Here’s the uncomfortable reframe.

Good energy is not something you project. It’s something people experience.

Relational energy forms when interactions leave people with:

• a sense of safety

• a sense of being seen

• a sense of forward momentum

It builds on psychological safety, but it doesn’t stop there.

Safety allows people to exhale. Energy gives them the fuel to re-engage.

And once that energy exists, it changes everything downstream:

• engagement rises without being demanded

• discretionary effort appears without incentives

• work-life strain eases instead of compounding

• commitment deepens without pressure

Not because people are told to care more, but because they have emotional resources to draw from.

Where Micro-Interactions Matter Most

The research is especially sharp in four settings leaders often underestimate.

1. Hybrid and virtual teams: When informal contact disappears, micro-interactions are the culture. Predictable, human touchpoints matter more than grand digital strategies.

2. High-stress environments (like healthcare): A two-minute leader check-in can buffer burnout more effectively than another resilience workshop.

3. Project-based and temporary teams: When trust has to form fast, energy is built, or lost, in the first few interactions.

4. Crisis and peak-load periods: Under pressure, small moments function as micro-recoveries. Ignore them, and exhaustion compounds fast.

Across all four, one finding is consistent: Formal inclusion training without daily micro-practice does almost nothing.

Inclusion Is No Longer Stable. It’s Variable.

This may be the most unsettling insight in the 2025 literature.

Inclusion is not something you “achieve.” It fluctuates.

Week to week. Interaction to interaction.

Relational energy rises and falls based on presence, attention, and responsiveness, not values statements.

And it’s not one-size-fits-all:

• neurodivergent employees often need predictability, not spontaneity

• caregivers respond to clarity more than enthusiasm

• some people recharge through written affirmation, others through brief verbal connection

The question for leaders is no longer:

“Am I inclusive?”

It’s:

“What do people walk away with after interacting with me?”

Inclusion Lives in the Gaps

The cumulative evidence lands on a simple but uncomfortable truth.

Inclusion is not built in:

• annual reviews

• leadership programmes

• diversity summits

It is built in the hundreds of small moments between them.

When leaders treat micro-interactions as active inclusion sites, pausing, noticing, responding, they build energy reserves people draw on for voice, learning, and contribution.

When they don’t, inclusion becomes performative fast.

The research doesn’t ask leaders to be louder, nicer, or more inspirational.

It asks them to be more aware.

Because inclusion doesn’t live in what you say when it counts. It lives in what people carry away when you think it didn’t.

Inclusion Doesn’t Work in Straight Lines. And That’s the Problem.

For years, we’ve argued about whether inclusive leadership works.

The research has quietly moved on.

The real question now is whether leaders understand how inclusion actually works, over time, under pressure, and through people.

Because inclusion doesn’t jump straight from good intentions to great outcomes.

It moves in chains.

And if you can’t see the chain, you keep pulling the wrong lever.

What the Research Changed in 2025 (Whether Practice Has or Not)

Most leadership advice still assumes a straight line:

Do inclusive things → get engagement, innovation, performance.

That model is basically gone from the serious research.

The 2025 literature is dominated by serial mediation models, studies that trace inclusion step by step as it moves through psychological states, behaviours, and outcomes.

The message is consistent:

Inclusion works sequentially, not instantly. Miss a step, and the whole thing stalls.

Let me show you what that actually looks like in real life.

Chain #1: Voice → Learning → Innovation

A hospital unit under constant strain. Short staffing. High stakes. No time for nonsense.

Leadership rolls out an “open feedback” initiative. Posters go up. Meetings end with: “Any thoughts before we move on?”

Silence.

Not because people have nothing to say. Because they know what happens when you speak up at the wrong moment.

Then something shifts.

A senior leader starts responding differently when issues are raised. No defensiveness. No public correction. No quiet payback later.

Slowly, psychological safety appears.

A nurse flags a near-miss. The team dissects it, not to blame, but to learn. A workaround becomes a new protocol. That protocol spreads.

Innovation didn’t start with creativity. It started with safety. Safety enabled voice. Voice enabled learning. Learning produced better outcomes.

That’s the chain.

Break it anywhere, and you get silence dressed up as compliance.

Chain #2: Thriving → Adaptive Performance

A fast-growing organisation hires a young, diverse team into hybrid roles.

On paper, everything looks right.

But under change, new tools, shifting goals, constant ambiguity, performance wobbles.

Leadership responds with pressure: clearer KPIs, tighter deadlines, more monitoring.

Performance drops further.

Why?

Because adaptability doesn’t come from pressure. It comes from thriving, a combination of energy and learning momentum.

In teams where leaders made it safe to ask questions, admit confusion, and experiment early, people stayed curious instead of defensive.

They adjusted faster. Recovered quicker. Learned in real time.

Adaptive performance wasn’t a personality trait.

It was the downstream effect of inclusion done in the right order.

Chain #3: Relationships → Identity → Performance

In a traditional manufacturing setting, inclusion doesn’t look like workshops or slogans.

It looks like whether the supervisor actually knows your name, and whether it matters.

Inclusive leaders invest in the relationship first. They listen. They follow through. They treat people as insiders, not replaceable labour.

That shifts something subtle but powerful: identity.

People stop thinking, “I work here.” They start thinking, “This is my place.”

And when that happens, effort changes.

Not because of bonuses. Because performance becomes personal.

Again: no shortcuts. No straight lines. Just a chain leaders either build or accidentally break.

The Disruptive Bit Most Leaders Miss

Here’s the uncomfortable truth the research keeps pointing to:

Most inclusion efforts fail not because leaders don’t care but because they don’t see the system they’re operating in.

They act without awareness of which psychological condition must exist first.

They push for outcomes before foundations. They reward results before safety. They demand behaviour before belief.

That’s not a motivation problem. It’s a systems awareness problem.

Why This Is Bigger Than One Newsletter

I’ve shared three chains here.

The 2025 research maps many more including how inclusion drives:

• Green innovation

• Citizenship behaviour

• Knowledge sharing

• Sustainability outcomes

And crucially, where those chains snap depending on context, power, identity, and time.

That’s why Inclusive Leadership Trends for 2026 exists.

Not to convince leaders inclusion matters but to show how to make it work on purpose, in sequence, over time.

The Takeaway

Inclusion isn’t a single behaviour. It isn’t a checklist. And it definitely isn’t instant.

It’s a system.

And once you see the chains, you can finally stop guessing where things went wrong.

P.S. If you’ve ever thought “we’re doing the right things, so why isn’t this landing?” the answer is probably hiding in a broken link.

The full report maps the chains. This article just shows you why they matter.

What Psychological Safety Actually Is (And Isn’t)

Psychological safety means this: People believe they can speak up, admit mistakes, challenge decisions, or ask for help without paying a personal price.

No punishment. No subtle retaliation. No reputational damage.

And no, it’s not about being “nice” or lowering standards. It’s about whether information moves or gets trapped.

The 2025 research is blunt on this point:

Without psychological safety, inclusion collapses.

The Shift the Research Has Already Made

Here’s what changed in the literature last year, even if leadership practice hasn’t caught up yet.

Psychological safety is no longer treated as a cultural bonus.

It’s treated as a foundational condition.

Inclusive leadership reliably creates psychological safety. Psychological safety reliably unlocks everything that follows.

Across healthcare, hospitality, telecoms, education, hybrid work, same pattern, over and over again.

Different sectors. Different cultures. Same sequence.

The Chain Leaders Keep Breaking

Most leaders still think inclusion works like this:

Do inclusive things → get engagement, innovation, performance.

That’s not how it works.

The evidence shows a much stricter order:

Inclusive leadership → psychological safety → engagement or thriving → results

Miss the first step, and the rest never stabilises.

When leaders demand voice without safety, people go quiet. When they demand innovation without safety, people play safe. When they demand accountability without safety, people hide mistakes.

That’s not resistance. That’s risk calculation.

What Safety Actually Does (In Real Life)

Psychological safety isn’t abstract. It shows up in four very practical ways:

1. People speak up before damage is done: Concerns, weak signals, bad ideas, surfaced early instead of buried.

2. Mistakes become material, not liabilities: Especially in healthcare and safety-critical work, where reporting errors saves lives.

3. Knowledge flows instead of being hoarded: People share what they know because they trust it won’t be misused or misattributed.

4. Trust survives pressure: Not charisma-based trust. Evidence-based trust. People remember what leaders do when something goes wrong.

Where the Evidence Is Strongest (And Most Uncomfortable)

Healthcare leads the data.

ICUs, nursing units, high-pressure clinical teams, again and again, psychological safety predicts:

• Lower burnout

• Better learning from failure

• Fewer harm events

Hospitality follows closely. Education confirms it in multicultural contexts. Telecoms shows the same mechanism in hierarchical environments. Hybrid and remote teams prove safety matters even more when informal cues disappear.

Different settings. Same pattern.

Measure It or Miss It

Here’s the uncomfortable bottom line:

If you’re chasing innovation, engagement, or retention without measuring psychological safety, you’re treating symptoms instead of causes.

Safety is measurable. It changes with leadership behaviour. And in high-risk environments, low safety correlates with real harm.

Psychological safety should be tracked like any other core performance indicator.

Because if inclusion is the promise, psychological safety is the proof.

P.S. If your organisation keeps saying “we want people to speak up” but they don’t, the problem isn’t motivation. It’s safety.

Next in the series, we’ll look at what leaders actually do that destroys safety without realising it.

Stay with me.

Inclusive Leadership, When the World Is On Fire

I’m publishing Inclusive Leadership Trends for 2026 today.

And I want to be honest about the moment it’s entering.

This is not a calm year for leadership.

Across the U.S., Europe, and beyond, leaders are navigating political volatility, economic pressure, rising polarisation, and very real fear about what comes next. Institutions feel fragile. Trust feels thin. People are tired and sharper, faster decisions are being demanded anyway.

So the question isn’t whether inclusion still matters.

The question is whether our current ideas about inclusion are strong enough to survive reality.

That question is what shaped this year’s report.

When “Doing the Right Thing” Stops Working

One pattern kept surfacing as I reviewed the 2025 research:

Most leaders are trying. Most organisations are saying the right things. And yet… something still isn’t landing.

Over the past few days, I’ve shared the report quietly with a small group of colleagues, researchers, practitioners, and educators. What came back wasn’t applause. It was recognition.

That response matters because the research doesn’t point to bad intentions as the problem.

It points to fragile assumptions.

What the Research Makes Unavoidable

Across 100 peer-reviewed studies published in 2025, one thing became unambiguous:

Inclusive leadership no longer works as a set of values, traits, or statements.

It functions or fails as a system of mechanisms.

When psychological safety isn’t present, everything downstream collapses: voice, learning, error reporting, innovation, even basic trust.

When leaders demand outcomes (engagement, innovation, accountability) without building the upstream conditions, inclusion becomes performative, especially under stress.

And when work becomes hybrid, AI-mediated, cross-cultural, or cognitively diverse, “standard” inclusion practices quietly exclude the very people they claim to support.

In other words:

Inclusion doesn’t fail because leaders don’t care. It fails because it’s being applied out of sequence, out of context, and without accountability.

Why This Matters Now

In unstable times, leadership shortcuts are tempting.

Pressure compresses behaviour. Ambiguity exposes power. And whatever inclusion is really built on gets revealed very quickly.

This report doesn’t offer comfort.

It offers clarity.

It shows where inclusion still works, where it breaks, and why many well-intentioned leaders keep getting it wrong, not in theory, but in practice.

A Question to Leave You With

If inclusion only functions when conditions are calm, what happens when leadership gets hard?

That question is at the heart of Inclusive Leadership Trends for 2026.

The report is now public. Read it if you’re serious about leading in the world we actually have, not the one most leadership advice still assumes.

A Quiet Question Before I Publish "Inclusive Leadership Trends for 2026"

I’m about to publish Inclusive Leadership Trends for 2026. And before I do, I want to name something uncomfortable.

Most leaders I work with are genuinely trying to do the right thing. And yet… something still isn’t working.

The Pattern I Keep Seeing

Across sectors, countries, and leadership levels, I keep hearing versions of the same sentence:

“We’re doing all the right inclusion things… so why doesn’t it feel different?”

That question didn’t come from opinion pieces or conference stages. It came from reading the research published in 2025, slowly, carefully, and with a growing sense of unease.

Because the problem isn’t lack of effort. It’s something else.

When Leadership Advice Sounds Right But Doesn’t Land

Here’s the tension I can’t ignore:

Inclusive leadership advice often sounds sensible. But in practice, it keeps missing the moment where things actually go wrong.

Not in the big announcements. Not in the strategy decks.

But in the small, everyday decisions, under pressure, under uncertainty, and under time constraints.

That’s where inclusion quietly fails. And where most frameworks stop helping.

Why I’m Hesitating Before Hitting Publish

This year’s research doesn’t flatter leaders. It challenges some deeply comfortable assumptions about how inclusion works.

It raises awkward questions about what leaders do when inclusion becomes inconvenient

I’ve rewritten parts of this report more times than I expected to. Not because the evidence was unclear but because it was.

What Comes Next

Next week, I’ll release Inclusive Leadership Trends for 2026. I’ll share what the research actually shows, and where it keeps pointing, even when we’d rather look away.

For now, I’ll leave you with the question that shaped the entire report:

The Question That Wouldn’t Let Go

If inclusion only works when conditions are calm, what happens when leadership gets hard?

P.S.

If you’ve ever felt that inclusion advice made sense on paper but collapsed in real life, you’re not alone.

Next week, I’ll show you why.

Frameworks Don’t Lead. People Do.

Frameworks won’t save leadership. But the right ones can make it easier to lead well, especially when the ground keeps shifting under our feet.

This week, I want to talk about inclusive leadership frameworks. Not as theory. Not as slides. But as tools that help real leaders make better decisions, day after day.

Why Leadership Frameworks Matter Right Now

Leadership today is messy.

More diversity. More complexity. More pressure to perform without burning people out.

In that environment, “good intentions” aren’t enough. Leaders need structures that help them notice overlooked issues, slow down bad habits, and act with consistency, even when things get uncomfortable.

That’s why Inclusive Leadership Trends for 2025 focuses on frameworks that translate values into behaviour. Not abstract ideals, but repeatable practices leaders can actually use.

What Strong Inclusive Frameworks Actually Do

Good frameworks don’t add bureaucracy. They reduce guesswork.

Here’s how the ones in the white paper show up in practice:

They build self-awareness on purpose

Assessment centres, feedback loops, and mentoring aren’t about ranking leaders. They’re about helping people understand how their behaviour lands, especially under pressure.

Self-aware leaders manage diverse teams better because they notice themselves before they react.

They make cultural competence actionable

Cultural awareness isn’t about knowing facts. It’s about adjusting decisions, communication, and expectations when one size doesn’t fit all.

Frameworks help leaders pause and ask: Who does this work for? Who might it unintentionally exclude?

That question alone changes outcomes.

They connect inclusion to strategy

Inclusive leadership works best when it’s tied to real goals like innovation, retention, performance.

When leadership practices align with strategy, teams experience clarity instead of confusion. And cohesion grows because people understand why things are done the way they are.

What Leaders Can Take From This Right Now

You don’t need a full transformation programme to start.

Use reflection as a leadership skill

Build in moments to review decisions, not just results. Ask what you’d repeat and what you’d change next time.

Treat inclusion as a system, not a personality trait

Good intentions vary. Systems scale.

Frameworks help make leadership less dependent on who happens to be in the room.

Invest in learning that sticks

One-off training fades fast. Ongoing practice changes behaviour.

That’s the difference between checking a box and building capability.

The Real Lesson

Inclusive leadership isn’t a moment. It’s a practice.

Frameworks don’t replace judgment. They support it. They help leaders stay steady, fair, and human as the future gets more complex.

That’s how leadership grows without losing its soul.

P.S.

The frameworks chapter in Inclusive Leadership Trends for 2025 goes deeper into what actually helps leaders adapt over time and what tends to fall apart once the workshop ends.

I’m already building on this for the 2026 edition.

Curious: What leadership habit has helped you most when things got uncertain?

Fairness Is the Floor. Everything Else Is Built on It.

Most leaders say they value fairness. Far fewer realise how quickly things fall apart when people stop believing it’s real.

Justice at work isn’t a moral extra. It’s the base layer that determines whether trust, engagement, and innovation ever show up.

Why Fairness Changes How People Show Up

When people believe decisions are fair, they relax. When they don’t, they start protecting themselves.

That shift matters more than most leaders realise.

Fairness influences whether people:

• speak up or stay quiet

• share ideas or keep them to themselves

• collaborate or quietly disengage

This is why justice plays such a central role in Inclusive Leadership Trends for 2025. Across sectors, the same pattern keeps appearing: when fairness erodes, everything else follows.

What Justice Actually Does for Teams

Let’s be concrete.

It deepens engagement

People invest more effort when they believe the system isn’t stacked against them. Fair workloads, clear expectations, and consistent decisions create energy instead of resentment.

It lowers friction before it turns into conflict

Most workplace conflict isn’t about personality. It’s about perceived unfairness, who gets heard, who gets credit, who gets exceptions.

Transparent processes reduce tension long before HR gets involved.

It creates psychological safety that holds

People take risks when they trust outcomes will be handled fairly. Justice tells your team: even if this doesn’t work, you won’t be punished for trying.

That’s where learning and innovation come from.

What Leaders Can Do This Week

Justice doesn’t start with policy. It starts with everyday behaviour.

Explain decisions, especially unpopular ones: Silence breeds stories. Clarity builds credibility.

Apply rules consistently: Exceptions may feel kind in the moment, but inconsistency corrodes trust fast.

Invite challenge without retaliation: If people can’t question decisions safely, fairness becomes performative.

These are small moves. They send big signals.

The Real Takeaway

Fairness doesn’t make leadership soft. It makes leadership sustainable.

When people trust the system, they stop wasting energy on self-protection and start putting it into the work itself. That’s how resilient teams are built.

Justice isn’t the finish line. It’s the foundation everything else depends on.

P.S.

The justice and fairness chapter in Inclusive Leadership Trends for 2025 goes much deeper into how leaders unintentionally undermine trust and what consistently works instead.

I’m also building on this for the 2026 edition.

Curious: What’s one leadership decision that felt fair, even if you didn’t like the outcome?

Knowledge Sharing Is How Teams Actually Grow

Everyone says knowledge is power. But most workplaces treat knowledge like personal property.

This week, I want to talk about what really happens when leaders create environments where people want to share what they know, and why inclusive leadership is the difference between growth and stagnation.

Why Knowledge Sharing Changes Everything

When teams share knowledge freely, work moves faster. Problems get solved earlier. And people stop reinventing the same wheel…badly…over and over again.

But knowledge sharing doesn’t happen because you ask for it in a meeting. It happens when the conditions are right.

Inclusive leadership creates those conditions.

That’s why I dedicated an entire chapter of Inclusive Leadership Trends for 2025 to this exact topic, not as theory, but as pattern recognition from real teams and real organisations.

What Inclusive Leaders Do Differently

They build trust that actually holds

People share what they know when they trust how it will be received.

Not just trust in intentions, trust in reactions.

Inclusive leaders don’t punish honesty, hijack ideas, or play “gotcha” with expertise. They respond with curiosity and respect, which makes collaboration normal instead of risky.

They make it safe to think out loud

Most ideas start half-formed. In unsafe cultures, those ideas die quietly.

Psychological safety gives people permission to say: “I’m not sure, but…” “I might be wrong, but…” “What if we tried…?”

That’s where learning and innovation actually begin.

They create motivation from meaning

People don’t share knowledge because it’s in their job description. They share it because they feel useful, seen, and part of something that matters.

Inclusive leaders connect contribution to purpose. When people feel their input counts, they offer more of it, freely and often.

What Leaders Can Do This Week

No grand transformation required. Just better habits.

Name expertise out loud

In meetings, explicitly say who knows what. It signals value and invites contribution.

Reward sharing, not just outcomes

Notice when someone helps others learn, not just when they deliver results.

Slow down the loudest voices

Make space for unfinished thoughts. Some of the best insights arrive quietly.

The Real Lesson

Knowledge doesn’t grow when it’s guarded. It grows when it moves.

Inclusive leadership makes teams nicer to work in. It makes them smarter, faster, and far more resilient.

That’s how growth actually happens.

P.S.

If this resonates, the chapter on knowledge sharing in Inclusive Leadership Trends for 2025 goes much deeper, with concrete examples and leadership patterns you can steal shamelessly.

And I’m already building on this for the 2026 edition. If you’ve seen great (or terrible) knowledge-sharing cultures in action, I’d love to hear about them.

What helped people share? And what shut them down?

When Teams Feel Good, They Do Good

Last week we talked about stress and leadership. This week we’re flipping the spotlight: What happens when teams actually feel good at work?

Short answer? Work gets lighter. People get bolder. And leaders stop dragging culture uphill with their teeth.

Let’s talk about the power of engagement, the warm, messy, human kind.

Engagement Isn’t a Bonus. It’s the Backbone.

Here’s the thing most leaders underestimate: People don’t commit because they’re told to. They commit because something inside them says, “I matter here.”

When that signal lands? Everything shifts.

• People volunteer ideas instead of protecting them.

• They solve problems before you even see them.

• They nudge struggling teammates because they actually care.

• And they stick around because leaving would feel… off.

Engagement isn’t a mood. It’s infrastructure. And inclusive leadership is what builds it.

(This is one of the big themes I dig into in the upcoming Inclusive Leadership Trends for 2026. It’s the year we stop treating “engagement” like glitter and start treating it like plumbing.)

How Inclusive Leadership Lifts Performance

Let’s break down what actually moves the needle.

1. Fairness you can feel

Not the performative kind. Real fairness, where expectations are transparent, decisions make sense, and nobody has to play detective to understand how things work. Fairness creates stability. Stability creates focus. Focus creates great work.

2. Safety that opens doors

Teams speak up when leaders make curiosity the default setting. Not just “my door is open,” but:

• “Tell me what I’m missing.”

• “What’s the awkward thing nobody wants to say?”

• “How can I support you without solving it for you?”

Safety turns complaints into insights and hesitations into momentum.

3. Flexibility that respects differences

Gen Z wants growth and values purpose. Older generations value consistency and clarity. In between sits a whole soup of priorities. Inclusive leaders don’t treat this as a burden. They treat it as a user manual. The goal isn’t to please everyone, it’s to understand what helps them thrive.

Yes, Engagement Shows Up in Numbers

Here’s where the cute turns serious:

When people feel good, your metrics feel good.

• Customer experience improves because your team is actually present.

• Innovation cycles tighten because people share ideas earlier.

• Retention stabilizes because folks aren’t quietly job-shopping at lunchtime.

• Performance rises because stress is no longer clogging the system.

This isn’t magic. It’s mechanics.

What Leaders Can Do This Week (No Unicorn Dust Required)

You asked for concrete. Here’s concrete:

Hold one clarity conversation per person.

Ask: “What’s one part of your role you wish was clearer?” Then fix one thing. Not five. One.

Build one participation moment into your next meeting.

Pick someone who usually hangs back. Invite their view. Not to “include them,” but because their insight might be the missing puzzle piece.

Swap one assumption for one question.

Instead of “They’re disengaged,” try: “What barrier might be sitting in their way right now?” You’ll get better data and better decisions.

Small moves create big signals.

And the signal you want your team to hear is simple: “You matter here, and your work shapes this place.”

The Heart of It? Happy Teams Build Better Things.

If stress shuts people down, engagement opens them up. And when people open up, work gets smarter, kinder, and far more fun.

Leaders don’t need to manufacture motivation. They just need to create the conditions for it to land.

That’s the work of inclusive leadership. And it’s where performance actually begins.

P.S.

Two questions for you this week:

1. What’s one thing your leader did that made you feel genuinely engaged?

2. And what’s one gesture you’ve used that lifted your team’s energy?

Some of your answers will make it into the 2026 edition of Inclusive Leadership Trends. Let’s build this one together.

Stress Less, Achieve More: What Inclusive Leaders Need to Know

I’ve spent the past year studying how mental health and inclusive leadership shape performance. And one thing is clear:

Workplace stress isn’t an employee problem. It’s a leadership pattern, and leaders can fix it.

Back in January, I released my annual white paper, Inclusive Leadership Trends for 2025. As I start work on the 2026 edition (coming next month!), I’ve been reflecting on one chapter that sparked a lot of conversations:

“Stress Less, Achieve More.”

Here’s the heart of it.

Mental Health Is a Leadership Skill

Leaders who understand mental health, and model simple self-care, send a powerful message: “You’re allowed to take care of yourself here.”

This isn’t soft. It’s strategic.

Teams follow the tone you set. And when leaders reduce stigma, people ask for support early instead of burning out silently.

Psychological Safety Reduces Stress

Every leader says they want open communication. But inclusive leaders create it.

• They listen before they speak.

• They invite the quiet voices in.

• They treat feedback as a gift, not a threat.

When people feel safe raising concerns, stress drops, and performance rises.

Psychological safety isn’t a “nice to have.” It’s the engine behind trust, innovation, and retention.

Tech Makes Support More Accessible

Hybrid work changed how people access help.

Leaders who champion tools like mindfulness apps, digital therapy, peer support channels, and flexible check-ins aren’t just adopting tech, they’re removing barriers.

Accessibility is inclusion. And inclusion reduces stress.

What This Means for Leaders

You can transform team well-being with small, intentional actions:

• Adjust workloads with equity in mind.

• Clarify roles to reduce avoidable stress.

• Use tools that meet people where they are.

• Build habits of listening, checking in, and holding space.

When leaders care, teams dare. And that courage shows up in performance, creativity, and commitment.

Looking Ahead

My new white paper, Inclusive Leadership Trends for 2026, drops next month. It builds on these insights and digs into what leaders need now to navigate the next wave of change.

If you want to catch up before it lands, you can still download last year’s edition: Inclusive Leadership Trends for 2025

P.S. A question for you:

What’s one stress-reducing action you wish more leaders took? (I’ll include some of your answers in the upcoming 2026 edition!)