More Human. More Possible.
Building organizations that work better together
—because they work for humans.
The average person spends 80,000 to 90,000 hours at work in their lifetime. This immense investment of time means that how we treat each other at work, and how we are treated impacts our quality of life at home and work as well as our performance at work. Creating an intentionally human work culture improves work and societal outcomes.
At Cultivating Leadership, we partner with organizations to reimagine what work can be and make this a reality. This organisation-wide approach is designed to shift organisational DNA toward being more human; where people have more meaning in their work, where they are deeply engaged and truly care about the organizations’ purpose, their work and each other.
Our approach draws on two main bodies of work:
- Research from colleagues in Human Work: Five Leadership Mindsets for Humanizing the Workplace. We offer strategies, leadership development, and facilitation to create workplaces where connection, meaning, and growth are the norm—not the exception.
- The body of work of Dr Heidi Brooks, Yale University, on Everyday Leadership; the everyday micro-moments of impact that shape our lived experiences. This includes interpersonal and group dynamics.
Let’s change the way we think about work—to be more human and regenerative, less extractive and hostile—for the sake of our individual, societal, and organizational success.
How Cultivating Leadership can help
Humanizing workplaces begins with mindset shifts rather than checklists:
- Learning and growth: Fostering a culture where everyone has the opportunity to grow and realize their potential.
- Everyone is a leader: Empowering leadership at all levels, beyond formal roles.
- Belonging: Creating connections within teams and aligning with organizational purpose.
- Love and care: Building workplaces grounded in empathy, authenticity, and human connection.
- Human systems: Designing interconnected human systems and ways of doing things that enable good things to happen rather than stop bad things from happening.
By fostering these, we help organizations fulfil the social pillar of the Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) framework by creating cultures where people are valued and supported. Prioritizing human connection and growth doesn’t just improve employee well-being—it positions your organization to meet broader societal expectations for responsible and sustainable practices.
A human workplace fosters:
- Deeper connection and understanding;
- Stronger belonging and devolved leadership;
- Greater purpose alignment and meaning;
- Enhanced empathy and self-awareness;
- An environment of continual learning and growth;
- An organizational community that can discuss and address process blocks to all of the above, enabling group alignment with purpose and intention.
Organizations experience:
- Higher engagement and retention: People feel empowered and valued, reducing turnover and fostering a committed workforce.
- Enhanced productivity and profitability: Teams produce higher-value outputs, collaborate more effectively, and contribute to stronger financial performance.
- Long-term sustainability: Human-centric systems enhance your organization’s ability to navigate change, maintain steady growth, and remain competitive over time.
The impact extends beyond the workplace, with engaged employees contributing to stronger communities.
Amanda Bayliss, Manager – People Team“Cultivating Leadership’s workshops challenged our leaders to think differently and act boldly. The results have been transformative—not just for our leaders but for the organization as a whole.”
Our work with clients can include some or all of these interventions, depending on your organizations current familiarity with human work cultures:
- Bespoke consulting on organizational culture – we have a team of experienced faculty who work with organizations committed to creating more human workplaces
- Human work assessment – an organizational assessment that provides leadership with a baseline for current performance upon which future progress can be measured.
- Executive leadership sessions – to build a collective understanding of what it would mean to humanise their workplace and of the unique business case for their organization.
- Whole system plenaries – all staff sessions to create a set of leadership principles that guide “how we are with each other”.
- Monthly mentoring of champion groups – to create the work programme and support the experimentation to walk the talk of these principles at the organization, team and individual level. This group is cross-functional, made up of individuals wanting to grow their leadership. It is supported by a sponsor from the leadership team.
- Leadership development support – for leaders needing support to walk the talk of the human work mindsets. This can be leadership development programs for teams of leaders or individual coaching.
- Interpersonal and group dynamics facilitation – learn to use interpersonal communication skills to influence and lead the building of more effective, and rewarding relationships AND learn about group dynamics and your role in groups by observing and exploring conscious and unconscious assumptions, behaviors and feelings.
Imagine walking through your organization and hearing every team member describe their purpose and how their work contributes to it.
Ready to make this a reality?
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