Others measure engagement. Some deliver programmes. We do both — moving emotional culture and measuring what changes.
Think about the last team that actually felt human to be part of. The one where people said what they meant. Since the end of 2023, we've been with Wharton measuring what makes those teams different, and how to build more of them. This page is what we found.
Combined results from three ECD Certified Partners & Practitioners across three organisations and two continents. 31 participants measured.
A manager opens a pack of cards. A team stops performing and starts speaking. This is what happens next.
Emotional Culture work lands — and people want more. Across three very different organisations, 76% of participants are satisfied with the emotional culture work and 75% want to continue. The data shows that trust and care are building, but the harder skills — sharing difficult emotions and speaking up about wellbeing — still need more time and safety to grow.
A food and beverage team. 35 people. Six months later, 85% of them say they feel safer to speak up. The numbers are below. The reason is in the room.
Psychological safety moved most. When teams build emotional literacy and leaders create permission to express feelings, connection and trust follow. The emotional culture work produced measurable shifts across every dimension measured.
A brand-new multi-region team across three continents. One emotional culture workshop. Six weekly retros. Forty-two days.
Strangers on three continents. The kind of team that usually takes a year to find its voice. This one found it in six weeks — and trusted each other enough to disagree out loud.
When teams map both how they want to feel internally and how they want stakeholders to feel, culture change accelerates. Tracking emotions weekly made the culture visible, adjustable, and owned by the team.
A team inside a significant transformation. 16 participants. Pre and post measurements.
The kind of change that usually leaves people guarded and exhausted. Here's what shifted when leaders and employees started naming emotions out loud — and the room started breathing again.
Naming emotions — positive and negative — is a learnable skill. After the programme, participants labelled both positive and negative emotions significantly more. Voice, engagement, and leader emotional support all increased, while job demands fell. The biggest shift was in emotional expression itself.
A cross-sector field study across multiple organisations. What we measured: the conditions that make employees actually voice wellbeing concerns, and what shifts when emotional culture work is in the room.
Think about the thing you nearly said in the last meeting. The concern you carried home instead. Most workplaces aren't short on wellbeing policy. They're short on the conditions that let people speak before it's too late. This is what we found changes that.
The desire to speak up is there — but the conditions aren't always. While 71% of participants are actively engaged and 75% value their ECD work, only 43% regularly voice concerns about wellbeing. Psychological safety and manager emotional support are the critical unlocks — and they're the areas with the most room to grow.
The Unspoken Conversations Workshop tested whether naming and sharing an emotion before raising a concern with a leader changed the quality of the conversation — and the relationship itself.
Named their emotion on an ECD card and shared it aloud with their leader before raising a concern.
Named their emotion on an ECD card but kept it private — did not share it with their leader.
