The article that sparked a global movement is now behind a paywall. So we wrote our own.

Every workplace has an emotional culture

It's the unspoken norms about which emotions are encouraged, tolerated, or suppressed. It shapes how people show up, how they collaborate, and how they perform under pressure.

Most organisations focus on cognitive culture — values, beliefs, and ways of working. But emotional culture is just as powerful. It's what people feel when they're at work, and it influences everything from engagement to innovation to wellbeing.

The problem? Most leaders don't know how to see it, name it, or shape it.

Where this work began

In 2016, Sigal Barsade and Olivia O'Neill published "Manage Your Emotional Culture" in the Harvard Business Review. It was a landmark piece — the first time emotional culture had been named and framed as something leaders could actively design.

That article sparked everything we do at riders&elephants.

We originally designed The Emotional...