325 people have now told us how emotional culture work landed for them. This is the read on whether the picture is shifting as the dataset grows. Behind every data point is a human being.
Mostly, it held. Across 15 improvement measures, the overall picture has barely moved since July, and that is what I would expect when 56 new voices join 269 existing ones. The more useful question is whether the newer voices tell a different story to the earlier ones. For most measures they do not.
Loneliness. 77% of the newest responses report improvement, against 64% in the earlier group. It is the clearest shift in the dataset, and still borderline at this sample size. Loneliness is also the second-lowest measure overall, so there is room to move.
Up: managing my own emotions, confidence talking with the team about their emotions, understanding my own emotions. Down: raising tough issues (79% in the newest responses against 86% earlier). None of these clears the bar for certainty with only 56 new responses.
Trust, empathy, relationship quality, enthusiasm, understanding other people's emotions, sharing difficult emotions, burnout, and all three satisfaction headlines. Differences are within what chance alone would produce.
Each bar shows the percentage of respondents reporting any improvement (scoring 3, 4 or 5) in that period. Read left to right to see the trajectory. "Newest vs earlier" compares the 56 responses since July with the 255 or so before. The label shows whether that gap is big enough to trust.
| Measure | Jan to Mar 2026 | Apr to Jun 2026 | Jul to Sep 2026 | Newest vs earlier | Whole dataset, last report to now | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Individual measures | ||||||
| Understanding my own emotions at workn=311 | 88%n=89 | 88%n=165 | 93%n=57 | +5 pts | 88% to 89% | Leaning up |
| Confident to manage my difficult emotionsn=311 | 72%n=89 | 86%n=165 | 88%n=57 | +6 pts | 81% to 82% | Leaning up |
| Confident to share my difficult emotionsn=311 | 65%n=89 | 82%n=165 | 81%n=57 | +4 pts | 76% to 77% | Held |
| Understanding team members' emotionsn=311 | 89%n=89 | 94%n=165 | 91%n=57 | -1 pts | 92% to 92% | Held |
| Confident talking with team about their emotionsn=311 | 80%n=89 | 87%n=165 | 91%n=57 | +6 pts | 85% to 86% | Leaning up |
| Team measures | ||||||
| Expressing true feelings is welcomedn=311 | 75%n=89 | 86%n=165 | 79%n=57 | -3 pts | 82% to 81% | Held |
| Members can bring up problems and tough issuesn=250 | 75%n=28 | 87%n=165 | 79%n=57 | -7 pts | 86% to 84% | Leaning down |
| We trust each othern=311 | 75%n=89 | 83%n=165 | 82%n=57 | +2 pts | 80% to 81% | Held |
| Close or effective relationships with teamn=311 | 81%n=89 | 79%n=165 | 84%n=57 | +4 pts | 80% to 81% | Held |
| Strong sense of connection with teamn=311 | 79%n=89 | 86%n=165 | 79%n=57 | -4 pts | 83% to 82% | Held |
| Team treats each other with care and respectn=311 | 76%n=89 | 84%n=165 | 84%n=57 | +2 pts | 82% to 82% | Held |
| Feelings of loneliness at workn=311 | 58%n=89 | 67%n=165 | 77%n=57 | +13 pts | 64% to 66% | Moved up |
| Outcome measures | ||||||
| Hopeful or enthusiastic about workn=321 | 87%n=99 | 78%n=165 | 82%n=57 | +1 pts | 82% to 82% | Held |
| Speak up with recommendations about problemsn=313 | 86%n=91 | 79%n=165 | 77%n=57 | -5 pts | 82% to 81% | Held |
| Feel burned out from workn=321 | 66%n=99 | 51%n=165 | 61%n=57 | +4 pts | 57% to 57% | Held |
The earliest responses (January to March) were the lowest on most of the individual and team measures. Managing my own difficult emotions sat at 72% and sharing them at 65%, rising to 86% and 82% in the April to June group, then holding through the summer. I would be careful about calling that progress in the work itself. Those early responses came from a smaller, earlier set of rooms, and different engagement lengths are not comparable.
Burnout is the one measure that wobbles without a clear direction: 66%, then 51%, then 61%. I feel that is worth watching each month rather than explaining away. It is the heaviest outcome and the one practitioners tell us takes longest to shift.
Satisfaction stays very high. 99% of respondents score the work 3 or higher on how satisfied they are, but with a ceiling that close there is very little room to see movement.
What this measures. The platform does not measure the individual emotions that surface in deck work. It measures what moves because of the emotional culture conversations practitioners are creating. The conversations are the work, the data is the evidence of what they shift.
Not a benchmark. This is a self-reported improvement scale and every respondent starts from a different place. Different engagement lengths are not comparable, so please do not hold your own results against the overall dataset. Different numbers mean different humans at a different moment, not better or worse work.
Method. F18 questions 1 to 15, top-3-box (% scoring 3, 4 or 5 on a scale from 1, gotten worse, to 5, improved very much). Loneliness and burnout are worded so that improvement still means the situation got better. Periods are calendar quarters by response date. "Moved" means the gap between newest and earlier is beyond what chance would usually produce, "Leaning" means it might be real but we cannot tell yet, "Held" means no meaningful gap. No group smaller than three is shown and no individual is identifiable. Satisfaction headlines are omitted from the table and sit in the story entry. Allied Solutions responses are a subset of this total. The Wharton studies are a separate evidence base. Raising tough issues has fewer early answers (n=28 in Jan to Mar) because it was added to the survey after launch. Jul to Sep includes one response from 1 to 3 Jul.