How Inclusive Leadership Turns Empathy & Agency into Results.

WCS Managing Director Jon-Paul Vicari shares how empathy has shaped his approach to inclusive leadership.

2026 requires the promise of hope at a time when we need it more from leaders than ever.

I’m Jon-Paul Vicari (he/him), Managing Director at We Create Space. I’ve been leading people for as long as I can remember, not because I set out to be a leader, but because I’ve always been drawn to helping people feel seen, capable, and able to do their best work. That’s what led me to We Create Space in 2021 as a participant in the “Who Am I?” queer leadership training programme. Over the course of those two days, I discovered things about myself and my leadership that to this day have made a career altering difference.

Formally, I’ve led teams since my teens from school clubs to running my first retail store at 20. Over the past two decades, I’ve worked across retail, HR tech, recruitment marketing, employer branding, talent acquisition, and DEI, partnering with hundreds of organisations across sectors, sizes, and geographies. My leadership style is rooted in empathy not as a “nice to have,” but as a performance strategy. I’ve seen, repeatedly, when people feel psychologically safe, trusted, and supported, results follow. Strong performance isn’t created through pressure alone; it’s built through clarity, confidence, and cultures where people can think, challenge, and contribute fully.

That belief is shaped not just by my career but through my lived experience. As a queer, brown man, I’ve navigated systems that weren’t designed with me in mind. I’ve lived with mental health challenges, transitioned industries multiple times, and recently moved countries. Each experience sharpened my understanding of what it means to lead with humanity in environments that are complex, uncertain, and demanding.

Those experiences have taught me that inclusion isn’t theoretical; it shows up in everyday decisions, behaviours, and moments of leadership under pressure. Some days I’ve been wildly successful and others I’ve failed multiple times, which is not something I like to admit but it’s the truth and leadership requires hard truths.

Over the past few years at We Create Space, I’ve had the privilege of working closely with leaders navigating rapid change, rising expectations, and increasing ambiguity. One thing has become consistently clear: organisations that invest in inclusive leadership don’t just build better cultures they make better decisions, retain stronger talent, and outperform when it matters most.

This year, our work is centred on upskilling leaders to perform well in the realities they’re actually facing: leading diverse teams, competing priorities, and the need to move faster without losing people along the way. If inclusion is going to deliver real business impact, it has to live in everyday leadership behaviour, not strategy decks.

With that in mind, here’s two things I’m currently working on to level up my own leadership practice.

1. Coaching with empathy and clarity

Empathy doesn’t mean avoiding difficult conversations. I have done this before and let me tell you, avoidance is not an effective strategy. As a leader I’m practising pairing care with precision, setting clear expectations, giving timely feedback, and naming what’s really happening, even when it’s uncomfortable. Coaching requires understanding how your team learns best. The best coaches and leaders adapt to their people, they don’t expect everyone to adapt to them. You can’t reach that level of understanding without empathy, self awareness, connection, and talking to your people about the wholeness of their life.

Use statements like:

“I want to be clear about what success looks like here, because I care about setting you up to do your best work.”

“I want to share something while it’s still useful, not later when it’s harder to act on.”

“Something isn’t landing as intended, and it’s important we look at it together.”

“How do you learn best when something’s challenging?”

“What support from me would make this feel more achievable for you right now?”

Psychological safety isn’t created by silence; it’s built when people trust that honesty will be met with respect. When clarity increases, so does confidence, alignment, and performance.

2. Letting go to build agency

As much as I am a proponent for empathy, there are ways it has produced shortcomings in my leadership. Most often this has shown up as giving too much support, when what people really needed was agency. As leaders it can be tempting to hold tightly to our sense of control, especially in moments of uncertainty. Despite good intentions, this fear of letting go of control can ultimately stifle and erode trust between managers and their teams. I’m deliberately working to create more space for others to own decision making, experiment and lead in their own way.

That means trusting capability, not just managing emotions and risk. When people feel trusted, their engagement deepens, learning accelerates, and teams move faster without burning out. One way I’m doing this now is empowering a team member to pilot working a 4 day week, allowing them to navigate managing their schedule and tasks to see if it’s viable for them and their working style, as well as the needs of our business.

Use statements like:

“I trust your judgement on this, you don’t need my permission, we just need to be in alignment with the goals”

“What decision feels right to you based on what you know right now?”

“What would you do if I wasn’t in the room?”

“Let’s agree on the results, review what’s working, and adjust together.”

“I’m noticing a blocker, do you want help removing it or space to work through it?”

These are the same skills we focus on with the leaders we work with because when self-awareness, connection, and agency are built into leadership practice, results aren’t a happy accident, they’re a predictable outcome.

In Conclusion:

At We Create Space, we operate in a continuous cycle: listening deeply to leaders and organisations, learning from lived experience and data, translating those insights into practical frameworks and behaviours, and supporting leaders to put them into action. This is our Creating Space methodology in action. What we see working and what we see fail feeds directly back into how we design programmes, coach leaders, and support culture change at scale.

The same way I’m challenging my own habits and assumptions, We Create Space is challenging leaders to build the skills, confidence, and psychological safety needed to lead well in complexity. This process of reflecting on my own leadership, testing new behaviours, learning where I get it wrong, and adjusting in real time isn’t separate from the work we do with our clients.

It is the work.

2026 is going to ask more of us and I’m boldly asking you to join me in giving more. More courage, more care, more clarity, and more hope. This may be the most important promise leaders can make to their people and their organisations.

Jon-Paul Vicari (he/him)

Jon-Paul is Managing Director at We Create Space. He is a queer Lebanese man living with depression who understands the complexities of holding multiple identities. He has volunteered with HIV/AIDS NGOs, organized community events for LGBTQ+ youths, created DEI programming, advised on inclusive products and services, supported LGBTQ+ political candidates, and worked on recruiting diverse talent. Additionally, Jon-Paul is a strong advocate for mental health and well-being, neurodiversity, self-empowerment, and culture change. He is passionate about community building and activism, and has spoken about these topics at various events.

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