Feedback isn’t just information. It’s emotional work.

Paper: Feedback with feelings: the human complexity of expressing judgements about performance (Bearman et al., 2025) 

The core idea

We often talk about feedback as if it’s rational, neutral, and technical. This research shows that’s a myth.

Feedback is saturated with feeling. Not just how feedback is received, but how it is given, judged, remembered, and acted on. Emotions aren’t background noise. They're doing the work.

What the researchers studied

The authors observed real feedback moments in high-pressure medical settings (ICU and surgery). They watched. They listened. They traced what feelings did over time.

Not just what people said but:

• body language

• tone

• silences

• what lingered

• what people avoided later

This is called focused ethnography, grounded in modern emotion theory.

What they found (the big insights)

1. Judgement and emotion are inseparable

Performance judgements are felt, no...

A year-long journey of courage, practice, emotions & growth. 

Today we celebrate seven remarkable human-centred leaders who have completed the 12-month Emotional Culture Deck Certified Consultant Development Programme:

• Shae Beswick — Perth, Australia 
• Juliett Bohanna — England, UK 
• Cara Cunniff — United Kingdom
• Carey Davis-Munro — Surrey, England  
• Helen Melville — Perth, Australia 
• Kelly Walker — Tasmania, Australia 
• Hitomi Whitlock — Seattle, United States 

Each of them brought something unique. Each of them stretched themselves.

Each of them leaves with a deeper, deeper understanding of how emotional culture shapes performance, leadership and human connection.

Here are some of the insights from their journey, in their own words.

1. The Lessons That Changed Them

Shae Beswick – “Emotions are not the soft stuff. They’re a strategic driver of culture, performance and behaviour.” 

Cara Cunniff – “Once people have language for their emotional world, clarity, honesty an...

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 ...

Congratulations to Katherine Riddoch for becoming an official Expert ECD Leadership Consultant!

Reaching this latest milestone on your ECD Certified Pathway is no small feat, full of lessons and impact that ripple so much further than the leaders and teams you serve.

Katherine’s work with leaders is the kind of facilitation that shifts people into better conversations, and into new levels of awareness - emotional and rational! She’s using The Emotional Culture Deck as a lens for emotional insight, behavioural change, and culture-shaping leadership that inspires so many of us to do more than we thought was possible. 

Here are just a few gems from her recent reflections as she unlocked her latest ECD Certified Pathway badge:

- “I’ve shifted from facilitating the tool to facilitating awareness.”
- “Emotional leadership starts with awareness, not action.”
- “The quality of reflection determines the quality of insight.”

In one standout moment, she shared the story of a leadership participant ...

Over the past few months, Kate has quietly but powerfully led 12+ ECD Leadership Workshops across New Zealand, working with emerging leaders, senior management teams, and cross-functional leadership groups to help them lead themselves and others with more intention, empathy, and emotional literacy.

In her own words, she’s grown from “scripted and second-guessing” to confidently leading unscripted, emotionally rich leadership conversations using The Emotional Culture Decj.

“My role is to create the space and ask the questions.”

Whether she’s guiding a 1:1 or a full-room workshop, she’s creating space for people to pause, reflect, and find clarity and gently humanising the workplace one session at a time.

We feel proud & inspired by the way Kate is applying The ECD to shape emotional leadership conversations, and culture & change programmes.

It’s such a joy to watch and learn from her as she goes from strength to strength! Thank you Kate for everything you’re contributing to our...

Welcome to Emotions Science Simplified! This month, we’re looking at how the timing of emotional expression from leaders influences team performance.

Research Spotlight: Timing Is Everything: An Imprinting Framework for the Implications of Leader Emotional Expressions for Team Member Social Worth and Performance by Jacob S. Levitt,a,* Constantinos G. V. Coutifaris,b Paul I. Green, Jr.,b Sigal G. Barsadea,†

The big idea: 

Early emotional expressions (especially positive ones) shape how respected, safe, and motivated people feel. 

Emotional Expression Timing

What if the emotions leaders express early in a team’s journey could shape performance outcomes months down the track? New research suggests that not only do leader emotions influence team members’ motivation and success, but the timing of those emotions plays a crucial role in shaping respect, status, and performance.

A new study by Levitt, Coutifaris, Green, and Barsade (2024) explores how leaders' emotional expressions creat...

When Sanitarium opened its new state-of-the-art national distribution centre they faced more than just an operational shift. Two distinct teams were coming together for the first time with different habits, relationships, and expectations.

They saw a unique opportunity: not just to manage the transition, but to reset how the team connects, communicates, and leads.

So they launched Reset & Elevate. A bold, human-centred culture programme designed by Chelsea Lang and Dani Garrett, Elephant Riders inside Sanitarium. Their goal: bring people together, rebuild trust, and lay the foundation for a team culture where everyone feels respected, supported, and proud to belong.

The results were extraordinary.

The Emotional & Cultural Shifts

Chelsea and Danii embedded The Emotional Culture Deck into the programme helping leaders and team members have more honest conversations, build emotional literacy, and set a clear tone for how the team wants to work together.

Over the course of the prog...

Inside the 6-Week Emotional Culture Pilot Programme

We recently wrapped up an Emotional Culture pilot programme that shows real, tangible results of a brand-new team crafting their emotional culture…fast!

When this leader returned from parental leave early this year, she inherited a brand-new team spread across three continents. The team had:

• Zero shared history – members came from three different predecessor groups.

• Tight delivery deadlines – first programmes for AMET, APAC & LATAM due in eight weeks.

• Lean head count – each person owned the workload of ~3 peers in North America teams.

• No face-to-face cadence – 11-hour time-zone swing made quick trust-building hard.

Rather than run a standard “ways-of-working” session, Susannah chose The Emotional Culture Deck to surface the feelings that would fuel the mission (Connected, Rebellious, Valued & Seen) and those that could stall it (Paralysed, Overwhelmed, Incapable).

The Goal: Prove that one immersive emotional ...

Exploring Emotion Science. Numbers v Narratives. 

Most emotion research at work falls into two camps. One counts emotions. The other listens to stories. And according to Stephen Fineman, only one of these truly captures the messy, human reality of how we feel at work.

In his paper “Appreciating Emotion at Work: Paradigm Tensions,” Fineman critiques the over-simplification of emotion in organisational science. He makes a passionate case for moving beyond tidy surveys and into the rich, political, uncomfortable truth of workplace emotion.

Two Ways to Study Emotion at Work

Fineman defines a key tension:

• Essentialist approach: Emotions are seen as internal states inside individuals. Researchers try to measure them like any other variable through surveys, tests, and scores. This is where emotional intelligence and positive psychology usually sit.

• Interpretivist approach: Emotions are shaped by the world around us, our culture, relationships, language, and power dynamics. Resea

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