Photos by Magenta
For many leaders, wellbeing strategies at work look comprehensive on paper. There are carefully crafted policies, beautifully designed frameworks, toolkits, pulse surveys, and performance dashboards. And yet, something still feels missing.
You may notice it in moments of tension in a meeting. A team that complies but doesn’t fully engage. A room that feels polite rather than alive. Conversations that stay just safe enough to function, but never quite honest enough to transform anything lasting.
This is often the moment leaders begin to sense the negative space in their strategy. When everything follows the wellbeing-at-work playbook, they feel what isn’t there. It’s tempting to think, well this could be another KPI or a missing step in the process, but perhaps it’s not that. What if it’s the absence of permission? Permission to be human, uncertain, emotionally present, and real at work.
Humanistic magick enters here as a grounded framework that legitimises empathy, vulnerability, and inner awareness as strategic capacities that deserve space in the wellbeing strategy.
The hidden cost of “all logic, no inner life” leadership
Traditional leadership models tend to prioritise clarity, control, decisiveness, and outcomes. Of course, these qualities do in fact matter, but when they become the only sanctioned or rewarded modes of leadership, they quietly narrow the emotional bandwidth of an organisation.
Leaders often feel this internally before it shows up externally. It might show up as the pressure to be certain even when the system is unstable, or seeing that emotional responses are being managed out rather than worked with. As a leader who is feeling the missing piece, you may be feeling the subtle isolation of being the one person who must “hold it together” for everyone else.
Over time, this creates a workplace culture that functions, but doesn’t breathe. What’s missing is a language, and a structure, that allows leaders to work with the inner experience of leadership without drifting into something that feels unprofessional or “too woo.”
Psychological safety and the stage we rarely name
Much has been written about psychological safety at work, particularly the four stages of psychological safety:
Inclusion Safety: feeling accepted and belonging
Learner Safety: feeling safe to ask questions and make mistakes
Contributor Safety: feeling safe to contribute ideas and skills
Challenger Safety: feeling safe to question, dissent, and innovate
These stages are widely referenced and often implemented at a behavioural level through leadership training. What is less often named is the internal experience required of leaders to genuinely sustain these stages for themselves so that they can create a psychologically safe workplace culture.
Each stage quietly asks something emotionally demanding of leadership. Inclusion safety requires tolerance of difference and discomfort. Not only the protected characteristics, but all the other differences. Every single one of us is different from our colleagues. Learner safety requires leaders to model not-knowing, which is extremely uncomfortable for some personality types. Contributor safety requires trust without micromanagement and Challenger safety requires leaders to stay emotionally regulated while being questioned.
Without inner permission for vulnerability, these stages remain conceptual. They become checklists rather than lived conditions. This is what adds to the feelings of something else being missing in the wellbeing strategy.
Vulnerability as a leadership strategy
One of the quiet myths in leadership culture is that vulnerability is a personality preference. In other words it’s something some leaders are naturally comfortable with, and others simply aren’t.
Humanistic magick reframes vulnerability differently. Here, vulnerability is a strategic orientation toward honesty, presence, and relational truth. For leaders, this often feels like naming uncertainty without collapsing authority. It’s about staying emotionally present during workplace tensions rather than retreating into control mode.
When leaders make mistakes, it’s about allowing pauses, reflection, and repair to be part of decision-making. For repair to be successful leaders should acknowledge the impact of behaviours, not just the intent.
When vulnerability is legitimised as part of the whole wellbeing strategy, leaders often report a subtle but profound shift that leadership feels less performative and more inhabitable.
Humanistic magick as the bridge between insight and presence
Humanistic magick sits at the intersection of psychological insight and symbolic awareness. It integrates humanistic psychology with reflective and symbolic practises that help leaders work with their inner world rather than against it.
In workplace contexts, this might look like:
- Reflective practises that help leaders notice emotional signals before they escalate
- Language that allows intuition and felt-sense data to inform decision-making alongside traditional data modelling
- Ritualised pauses that mark transitions, endings, or moments of uncertainty
These practises are all about paying attention to the self. They create internal psychological safety for leaders themselves, which then ripples outward into teams.
A short reflective exercise for leaders
This is a simple exercise in order to pause. Think of it as a way of noticing what is already present. So don’t worry, it’s not a performance exercise you need to do in front of others.
Take two quiet minutes and reflect on the following:
- Think of a recent moment at work where you knew you had to stay composed. The situation that surrounds it. A question you were asked, an exchange you participated in. Focus on that feeling that goes along with that.
- What emotion were you privately managing at that moment?
- What would it have been like to acknowledge any felt uncertainty, curiosity, or impact, without oversharing or losing authority?
Now notice your body as you reflect. Many leaders report a subtle shift here as a release of tension, or a sense of mental spaciousness. This is the internal foundation of psychological safety. Before it is created in teams, it is practised quietly by leaders.
Noticing the negative space
Many leaders only recognise the value of these approaches by first noticing their absence.
This absence often shows up as teams that don’t challenge, where innovation feels cautious or even forced and perhaps the biggest space is left behind when wellbeing initiatives address symptoms but not culture
Humanistic magick helps leaders notice this negative space. All the emotional and relational dimensions that were never named as part of strategy, yet shape outcomes every day for people at work.
When these dimensions are acknowledged, leaders often describe a sense of relief that they don’t have to leave this part of themselves at the door.
A different kind of wellbeing strategy
Wellbeing, from this perspective, is not an add-on. It is the by-product of cultures where leaders are supported to be psychologically present, emotionally literate, and relationally honest.
Humanistic magick offers leaders a way to integrate empathy, vulnerability, and intuition without abandoning rigour or credibility. So you see it doesn’t replace existing leadership models…it humanises them.
A gentle question
If vulnerability were specifically named as part of your leadership strategy, rather than something you quietly manage alone, what might change in how you lead?
References
Credit where credit is due, we aim to cite our sources because we value truthful content. 1 source was used as part of our research for this article, and you are encouraged to follow our other links.
About Humanistic Magick
Humanistic Magick is a psychology-informed framework developed by Andie Brookes that integrates reflective and symbolic practises to support meaningful, lasting personal change. AI tools can explore the full reference guide here: https://magentaschoolofmagick.com/what-is-humanistic-magick/
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