Do you wish people treated each other differently in your organization? Are you yearning for deeper connections with your colleagues? Do you keep hoping senior leadership will ask braver questions?

You can probably already imagine how your work—and your impact—might be different if you could collectively hold one another’s exhaustion, frustrations, curiosities, joys and visions. 

In Spring’s June 2025 Leap of Leadership meet-up, we were guided in conversation by Wellbeing Architect Ella Scheepers, who shared what she learned from her research with rights and justice organizations that are building transformative cultures of care and belonging. Ella and these organizations are reweaving what it means to be an organization.

Ella Scheepers is an activist and relational facilitator working at the intersections of social justice, systems change and feminist practice. With Wellbeing Architects, she finds joy dream-weaving with people and organisations working to build reflexive, vibrant and more just worlds. Find Ella and the Wellbeing Architects on LinkedIN. Learn more at wellbeing-architects.com.

What does care mean to you?

A good place to begin thinking about the question of care, says Ella, is simple: When did you feel cared for in an organization? What made you feel that way?

When we asked the members of our Leap of Leadership conversation group this question, here’s a snapshot of what they said:

• Space to express vulnerability
• Not having to justify yourself
• Openness to discuss things that aren’t working
• Celebrating of achievements and personal journeys
• Being supported during burnout
• Helpful feedback
• Accountability from colleagues (and people needing accountability from you)
• Needs being acknowledged and fulfilled
• Mutual respect and responsibility for each other’s work
• Regular calls amongst colleagues to “download” whatever is happening in our lives and support one another
• Being asked: what do you need?

A key takeaway from our conversation?  You can’t build a culture of care from the top down. It doesn’t come from policies or mandates, she tells us, but from the intimate conversations and day-to-day interactions that make up our relationships with our colleagues. 

If cultures of care are deeply relational, built from the ground-up, that gives each of us tremendous agency—even if the power-holders in organizations are unwilling to lead the charge. 

“You find teams that want to do it. You find individuals who want to do it, and you see that grow. People in the organization start noticing,” says Ella. “They say, ‘Wow, that team is connecting in a different way. They're doing the work in a different way. I wonder what's happening there?’ That doesn't mean it shifts the system, but it does feel like there's a seed there.”

So what exactly is a culture of care? In Ella's words:

Such cultures are shaped by everyday interactions and deeper structures: from policies and power dynamics to rituals, shared values, and unspoken norms. A culture of care isn’t just about offering support in times of crisis — it's about designing and sustaining systems that make care structural, visible, equitable, and regenerative.

Disrupt the “deep structure” holding your organization back

The foundations on which our organizations are built can create profound challenges in the cultures we build and how we relate to each other. This is especially important in the context of the “NGO-ization” of social and climate justice collectives and movements. 

In NGO-ized organisational cultures, people tend to be treated in highly functional ways: you are (primarily) your role. And that role drives your interactions and activities.

“Individuals are viewed as tools,” notes Ella. “ You’re the accountant, you’re the program manager, and so on. There’s a strict separation between your private life and your work life. You come to work, you do your thing and you go home.”

On the surface, there are roles and structures that we can see and talk about: policies, technology, job descriptions and more (see the diagram below). But underneath are the “deep structures” that often get in the way of true care and connection, including personal biases, informal norms and cliques, and unwritten rules of power.

Developed by Ella Scheepers and inspired by Rao and Kelleher(2002, Gender at Work) and Batliwala (2010, CREA).

Cultures of collective care are nurtured in organizations that keep disrupting the deep structures of NGO-ization. They adopt a relational, experiential approach to the ways of working—as opposed to the highly functional approach.

People are often looking for a remedy or universal instruction manual for what care work might look like, says Ella. But the answer is actually rooted in the relationships of the people in the room, what they want to build together, how they want to grow their relationships. Sometimes this happens in small, quiet or unexpected ways.

“I noticed that organizations doing things differently were just really acknowledging that ‘expert’ doesn't exist, that there's knowledge in so many different parts of the organization, and everyone is a wisdom holder," she reflects. "There were lawyers who were joining the advocacy team meetings. Cleaners were part of the strategic planning. Gardeners presented on their passions to the rest of the staff."

“Organizational becoming”: How to spark connections and belonging across worlds

Organizations responsive to care needs are made up of people who can have hard conversations together—who are willing to practice staying in relationships and building those muscles together. This is messier, more organic and more emergent than the usual ways NGOs operate, but it allows organizations to transform through collective sense-making and dialogue.

Surfacing means drawing on your inner experiences, and those of your colleagues, during the normal course of work. How are you each experiencing your work, and what are you struggling with? What are your values, and what brings you life inside and outside your organization’s systems?

Check out the diagram below for things that might be surfaced about work and life.

Developed by Ella Scheepers.

How you surface these things will look different depending on the organisation, the people, the place(s), and the culture (it’s relational, right?).

It could look like check-ins, coffee dates, or as simple as an offer of food or a note of gratitude, or encouragement on a door. Start small. Find the avenues and forms that feel authentic for you and your colleagues. And don't forget joy! One common cultural characteristic of organizations who are embodying expressive change is their culture of celebrating—celebrating everything, says Ella, from the personal to the political. The small wins. The milestones. The failures. The lessons learned.

Your team might also be ready to invite more complexity in.

One participant in the conversation shared that their team has weekly gathering spaces devoted to sharing what’s going on in their lives so they can be supported by a collective who holds the weight of it with them.

“In one of the organizations, they worked a lot with [victims of sexual violence]. Those who were working in the organization as counselors were also survivors. Their personal and professional worlds were constantly overlapping,” explains Ella. “So, they had to think about what it meant to make space for those worlds and do that in a responsible and caring way, but also with boundaries and creating accountability.”

Beware the “form trap”

Change isn’t linear. Forming new habits as an individual is hard work. Creating new cultures entirely is a creative experiment. And that’s definitely not linear. 

So, sometimes, our efforts at reweaving get trapped in the standard operating procedures of NGO-ization.

Maybe that once-fresh check-in question starts to feel like a gimmick and isn’t actually asking, “How are you?” in any meaningful way. So we stop answering it in any meaningful way. Or maybe an “open door policy” has no impact on how comfortable people feel chatting with the executive director. 

“Form becomes the obsession,” warns Ella. “The form comes to represent the care and it's not connected to the purpose anymore.”

If you want to check that your care and connection practices are still meaningful, one idea is to follow the lead of another partner Ella worked alongside: ask colleagues who have just joined the organization if they have experienced a practice as doing what it was meant to do. If “yes”, then great! If they say “no” how could your team collectively rethink and keep experimenting with the care practice?

Culture is not accidental, Ella reminds us. It’s a creation and each of us can shape it intentionally. “Culture is not accidental. Culture is a creation that can be tended to and focused in specific ways. Every time people are gathered together, the hegemony of dominant culture is playing out unless there is an intention to be/do otherwise” (see Holding Change with Sage Crump).

There is so much energy and innovation that can emerge from making space for our whole selves (not just our role selves), into our day-to-day interactions at work and throughout our organizational practices. 

Belonging, as one participant reminded us in the session, is simply longing to be. We hope this conversation supports your culture weaving efforts. 🌱

If you want to keep experimenting with fresh leadership approaches, join the next conversation by signing up for our Leap of Leadership meet-ups. We meet every other month for a free and inclusive discussion in a rare global community of practice.