Building Cultures of Care

Many of us spend most of our waking hours at work—yet conversations about care, culture, and emotional well-being often remain on the sidelines. In our July 2025 session, we explored how the workplace, too, can be a safe space—where teams thrive not just through performance, but through connection, reflection, and shared growth.

We asked ourselves: What makes a team feel healthy? What are some of the tools or rituals you've used? What practices could you add to your team to improve in this aspect but haven't tried it yet? These questions opened up stories and rituals—from reading together to reverse mentoring to mapping tasks around team energy—all small gestures that quietly shape culture.

One metaphor guided our discussion: a forest. A healthy team, like a forest, needs different conditions to thrive—sunlight, soil, birds, and microorganisms became stand-ins for empathetic leadership, space to reflection, feedback, and learning. Participants from across geographies reflected on what these ideas look like in their own contexts—recognizing that what feels nurturing in one culture may signal overreach in another.

This session reminded us that team culture is deeply contextual and always evolving. It doesn’t come from one policy or moment, but from the small, intentional ways we keep showing care—for ourselves and each other—day by day. The rituals we create and maintain together and small, tactical moments of care can make a big difference.

‍

*main image: Manisha Choudhary, from Quicksand, in conversation with ChatGPT

‍