On the surface, some of the so called 21st Century leadership discourse for a more humane leadership embrace many of the right themes like: curiosity, connection, wonder, humility, and even joy. These are certainly vital attributes in the shift toward more human-centred organisations.
However, despite gestures toward the “human,” often those narratives still operate largely within a familiar corporate paradigm.
What’s missing is depth.
We stay away from asking what did you actually feel? What were the hard conversations? Who felt unseen? Was there silence? Conflict? Mourning? Repair?
Without naming the emotional and spiritual dimensions of real human encounters: grief, fear, awe, vulnerability we remain in a safe zone of performative warmth rather than embodied humanity.
Leadership often wrestles with complexity, repair, and loss... Hubert Joly, Parker J. Palmer, just to name a few, call for spiritual depth in leadership, not just inspiration, but interior transformation.
Another red flag, I am often suspicious of, when I hear calling corporate advisory boards “communities.” It may feel aspirational, and even inspiring at first site, but community is not forged by annual retreats, affinity, or shared language, it is created in shared stakes, accountability, in mutual care, and sometimes even rupture. In “these communities” who holds power and how is it shared? Who gets to define what leadership means? What answers emerge? What truths are uncomfortable? What does support look like?
In 2025, we are seeing a rise in organisations engaging in true participatory practices, such as co-leadership models, community governance, and trauma-informed leadership cultures. These efforts require rigorous self-examination and dismantling of entrenched hierarchies, not just affirming “courage” or “clarity.”
Framing culture as “a catalyst for thriving, purpose-driven workplaces” subtly reinforces the instrumentalisation of humanity: connection and joy not as ends in themselves, but as tools for performance.
This is “people-first” logic in service of productivity.
Can we move beyond that, toward cultures of belonging, justice, and wholeness, even at the cost of efficiency? Do we allow heart, or spirit, or soul into the room?
Otherwise, we risk turning care into currency.
Joy into a product.
Culture into a pitch.
Humanity in a mere brand.
This is all part of a necessary journey, but the real work is deeper, slower, and more uncomfortable than current language allows.
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