Hi , On-Balance Issue 181: The Leadership Pivot That’s Taking Us Backwards

Hello there and welcome back to On Balance, my fortnightly round-up of news, views and research around the issue of diversity, equity and inclusion.

The Leadership Pivot That’s Taking Us Backwards

I’m just back from a trip to New York, where I met with a number of our clients, largely in financial services. In this year of DEI rollbacks, I was curious to see how it was playing out.

I already knew that there was growing caution around using the language of DEI, and that many organisations are now looking for alternative ways to discuss their efforts to boost diversity, especially in senior roles. What I hadn’t expected, though, was how much the language of leadership itself seems to be shifting.

The message I picked up was that maybe we’ve given too much weight to the empathy piece, and it’s time to get back to straight talking. The ideas from the book Radical Candor, once a tech-bro favourite and which I thought had quietly slipped off the radar, came up more than once.

There seemed to be an emerging association of inclusive leadership with softness and a sense that, having over-indexed on empathy over the last few years, there is a need to course-correct. A US colleague reminded me that in the States, the language of business never strays far from results and performance, and I think that is part of it. But what intrigues me is what appears to be a bifurcation of leadership into “soft” (inclusive, empathetic) and “hard” (directive, agentic, focused). To me, that is a false polarity and potentially a damaging one.

We should acknowledge how we got here. In some places, the work around inclusion became tangled up with identity politics, language policing and what some saw as performative signalling about the “right” behaviours. But reducing inclusive leadership to that misses the point entirely. This work was never about being politically correct; it is about creating environments where more people can do their best thinking and perform at their best.

I can see that when strategy is drifting and performance is under pressure, getting tougher, stripping back the “soft stuff” and becoming more directive can feel like the only responsible move. For leaders trying to get a grip on results, spelling out expectations and making individuals clearly accountable can seem like the fastest way forward. The problem is that this impulse is not being driven by clarity about the behaviours that actually drive performance. It is being driven by pressure, by the instinct to move fast, to fall in line, to appear decisive. Projecting toughness is not the same as delivering results.

The irony here is hard to miss. The more we rely on pressure and control, the more we erode the very conditions people need in order to perform. As space to reflect disappears, so does the opportunity to listen, to challenge, and to surface ideas that could meaningfully improve outcomes. By demanding accountability, we often remove the conditions in which people can actually account for their actions.

This pivot towards “tougher” leadership feels not only regressive but risky. It dismisses what we have learned about what leadership looks like under complexity. It sidelines the psychological safety people need in order to speak up, take risks, and learn from failure. It also ignores what we know about the costs of cultures where challenge is absent.

There is a reason the Challenger and Columbia disasters are still referenced in conversations about organisational culture. In both cases, protocols were followed. The teams were highly trained. The goals were clear. But concerns went unvoiced, data was ignored, and the systems designed to protect against failure failed, not because of a lack of rules or competence but because the culture suppressed dissent. Those events were catastrophic, but the underlying dynamic—fear overriding insight—shows up in far more ordinary ways across organisations every day.

This is why inclusive leadership must have a place in every organisation. Not because it is kinder or more forgiving, but because it works. It creates the conditions where people are more likely to contribute, to take ownership, to think critically, and ultimately to deliver better results.

Empathy, in this context, is not about being nice. It is about being effective. It is a tool that helps leaders understand motivation, reach those who are not like them, and avoid leading by default. In a world of speed and complexity, that is not optional; it is strategic. If you want real accountability and strong execution, this is how you get it.

The issue is not whether leadership has been too “nice” or needs to get “tougher.” It is the ongoing failure to balance inclusion with clarity, empathy with direction, challenge with support. It is the leap to new behaviours without first understanding why previous approaches did not work.

The hard truth is that performance does not come from pressure alone, even if it creates the illusion of control. It comes from people who are engaged, thinking, and confident enough to challenge what does not make sense. That kind of culture does not emerge by accident. It is built deliberately by leaders who value challenge, welcome curiosity, and understand that listening is not a weakness.

None of that is soft. It is just serious leadership.