DI was sitting in my boss's office on a Friday afternoon, listening to him speak, and I noticed he had the windows open. It was a beautiful day outside, and there was sunlight streaming in and hitting the gorgeous turn-of-the-century oil paintings he had hung around his office. I found myself thinking about a tree I had passed on my commute to the office that morning. I was thinking about how tall and proud that tree was as I listened to my supervisor enumerate all the things I had done wrong over the past week, listening to him tell me how I wasn't good enough, how I hadn't accomplished enough, how my work was subpar, despite not having the resources or the backing to accomplish the work. I thought about this tree, how deep the roots must be... as my supervisor went on to tell me how he agreed with a coworker who said that my 20 years of work experience wasn't as good as an undergraduate degree... and I thought about this powerful tree with the sturdy trunk and wondered how fast I had to drive my car into it so I never had to go to work in an environment like that again.

Thankfully, it didn’t come to that - I had a strong enough support system and was out of that job soon after that conversation.

However, that experience made me ask the questions: How do we ensure we don’t lose anyone to miserable, toxic work environments? How do we ensure that trees remain trees and don’t become exit strategies? How might we, instead, create employment environments where people grow and thrive like that tree?

We do all that through being human-centric. We answer those questions with a by combining four methods: Positive Intelligence + Human-Centered Design + Neuroscience + Choreographed Conversation to create psychologically safe workplaces where people feel energized and generate more time for what they love because they are joyful in their work.