The Empathy Deficit

We are experiencing a widening “empathy deficit” that damages individual mental health, drains organisational performance and erodes social cohesion. This has a disproportionate impact on women who feel burnt out, stretched, alone, undervalued, and lost in their identity; who struggle with their inner critic, trauma, or a sense of not fitting in; who perceive their Otherness as a liability or with a lens of victimhood; who experience the overwhelming emotional burden of caregiving responsibilities. At work, the empathy deficit is reflected in cultural silos, difficulty with change and inclusion initiatives; lack of psychological safety impacting performance and retention; failed collaborative approaches, limited creativity and innovation; increasing disconnect and polarisaton; low employee engagement and market reputation. Jackie’s approach has a dual‑domain impact – By empowering for self‑empathy first, Jackie rebuilds the individual capacity that research shows is a prerequisite for sustainable empathy across all life domains.

Jackie believes that self-empathy allows space to be empathetic for others, as the ultimate leadership capability. Jackie’s facilitation, coaching, professional services and speaking opportunities are all directed at different elements of the empathy deficit and creating empathetic leadership.

From Performance to Cohesion: Facilitation for Executives, Boards and Teams

  • Creates space for building trust alignment, deep dialogue and perspective taking

  • Models empathy in decision making at the highest levels

  • Builds empathy as core leadership capabilities that can be cascaded

  • Helps organisations embed empathy, transform culture, facilitate cohesion and improve performance

Conversations by Design: Individual Coaching and Womens’ Groups

  • Creates space for self reflection and focus on individual challenges

  • Teaches empathetic listening and storytelling and authentic leadership narratives

  • Supports difficult, deliberate conversations, work and life transitions

Strategy, Governance, Advisory:

  • Aligns, purpose, values, risk and delivery

  • Develops literacy on psycho-social risk and inclusion

  • Reveals areas for improvement across, ESG, DEO, data, compliance

  • Establishes practices for inclusion, wellbeing of staff and the reputation and resilience of the enterprise

  • Co- designs and embeds empathy centred strategies, policies, approaches

  • Increases engagement, retention, improves culture and performance

Mediation by Design

  • Provides structured empathy to transform disputes and conflict into constructive energy

  • Redesigns systems to prevent recurrence, facilitating inclusion and agency

Workshops and Keynotes

  • Reframes empathy as a measurable leadership capability

  • Provides a common narrative and approach

  • Signals leadership commitment to workplace safety, inclusion and wellbeing

Each offering is a piece of the empathy capability puzzle. Together, they form a system that reduces risk, builds trust, and drives performance.

Read Jackie’s White Paper on the Business Case and Strategic Imperative for Empathy: Driving Individual and Organisational Flow Through Design Thinking.