Measuring What Matters: Inside Sanitarium’s Emotional Culture Reset

Last week, inside our Elephant Rider Community, we hosted an inspiring Elephant Rider Showcase featuring Chelsea Lang (Certified Consultant in Training) and Danii Garrett (Emotional Culture Practitioner).

In this brave and deeply human conversation, Chelsea and Danii walked us through the Reset & Elevate programme they designed, delivered, and refined over the past year — a bold emotional culture transformation at Sanitarium that has achieved extraordinary outcomes.

They shared how they brought The Emotional Culture Deck to life at scale, from designing the programme to rolling it out across teams, navigating challenges, and learning from every step along the way.

What unfolded is a story of courage, data, and deep human connection. One that shows how The Emotional Culture Deck can turn conversation into measurable change.

It was timely reminder that when culture work gets hard, it’s often because we’ve forgotten one simple truth: every transformation begins with emotion. 

That’s the insight that guided Chelsea Lang and Danii Garrett as they led Sanitarium’s Reset & Elevate Programme, a bold, year-long initiative designed to rebuild trust, connection, and pride across the organisation after a period of fatigue and change.

Want to Watch the Full Conversation?

These highlights capture just a glimpse of the powerful 60-minute Elephant Rider Showcase conversation with Chelsea Lang and Danii Garrett.

Join our Elephant Rider Community by enrolling in one of our ECD Specialist Courses to unlock the full replay and learn directly from courageous leaders who are using The Emotional Culture Deck and our growing library of Emotional Leadership tools to flip workplaces around the world.

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Top Highlights from Elephant Rider Showcase with Chelsea & Danii

1. The “Why” Behind Reset & Elevate

Chelsea and Danii began by explaining that Reset & Elevate was more than another leadership initiative; it was a rebuild of trust and connection after a period of fatigue and restructuring.

2. The Emotional Culture Deck at the Core

The ECD became the foundation for meaningful leadership conversations.

Leaders started by mapping how they wanted their people to feel, and then worked backwards to the habits and behaviours that would make those feelings real.

“The ECD gave us a language for things we all feel but rarely say out loud.”

3. The Results That Turned Heads

The numbers spoke volumes, proving emotional culture can be measured:

• 85% improvement in recognising others’ emotions

• 70% increase in psychological safety and care from managers

• 65% boost in self-awareness

• 50% increase in employee voice

“It’s not fluffy. We can show the data. Emotional culture is measurable, and it matters.”

4. Leadership Vulnerability Changed Everything

A turning point came when senior leaders began naming emotions openly in meetings instead of avoiding them.

“The moment a leader says, ‘I feel anxious,’ it gives permission for everyone else to be human too.”

• They found that vulnerability among leaders was the key turning point — once leaders opened up, their teams followed.

• Many leaders had never been invited to talk about their emotions at work before; this simple act has shifted relationships

“When leaders start naming emotions, not fixing them, just naming them. That’s when trust starts to rebuild.”

5. Data + Stories = Momentum

They showed leaders that data builds credibility but stories build belief. Both are essential for sustained change..especially when using The ECD inside organisations.

“The head gets the numbers, but the heart remembers the story.”

6. Rituals That Last Beyond Workshops

Sustainability is coming from building tiny emotional culture rituals. The most powerful outcomes came from embedding emotional check-ins and rituals into daily meetings.

• Starting meetings with one-word emotional check-ins

• Regularly revisiting desired team feelings

• Embedding emotional reflection into leadership 1:1s

• Teams that revisited their “desired feelings” regularly saw the most progress.

• Chelsea and Danii also built leadership reflection tools to help teams self-assess their emotional culture over time.

“We didn’t just run workshops. We built habits.”

7. Courage, Curiosity & Partnership

Chelsea and Danii shared their honest reflections, including moments of doubt and learning. They spoke about how co-facilitation gave them the courage to keep showing up and growing together.

• Chelsea and Danii reflected on their own discomfort and learning curve as facilitators.

• They learned to trust the process, not over-engineer conversations, and let people’s emotions lead the way.

• They also highlighted the importance of co-facilitation and partnership playing to each other’s strengths.

“Some days were messy, some were magic. But every time, people took a step closer to each other.”

8. Unspoken Conversations in Action

As part of their journey, Chelsea and Danii partnered with R&E and Professor Michael Parke (Wharton School) to deliver one of the first Unspoken Conversations Workshops, a live pilot contributing to our ongoing scientific research on affect labelling at work.

The workshop invited Sanitarium team members to name & share their unpleasant white card emotions associated with concerns or challenges they have at work that often go unspoken in teams that quietly shape culture.

Through that session, leaders began turning silence into dialogue and creating language for what had been hard to express—another pivotal moment in rebuilding trust and deepening understanding across their teams.

🔚 9. Their Message to Fellow Elephant Riders

They ended with a powerful invitation to everyone in our community:

“You don’t need a perfect plan. You just need the courage to start the first conversation.”

Start free. See for yourself why The Emotional Culture Deck is changing how people and teams master their emotions. Our free PDF version is a simple, no-obligation way to cut and care.

Download here now →

The Deck, the whole Deck and nothing but the Deck. Our free Emotional Culture Deck PDF version includes everything you’d get in the physical Deck. All the cards. All the emotions. All the simplicity. All you need to bring it to life is a printer and a pair of scissors. Download. Print out. Cut up & Play now.