The Power to Enrich Lives Through Work
Those who hold influence often discover they shape people more than they realise. This Cultivated Notes essay reflects on care, responsibility, and the quiet power leaders carry in shaping the emotional climate around them.
Why Leaders Have More Influence on People’s Lives Than They Think
In You Are Not the Target, Laura Archera Huxley makes a quiet but profound observation about influence.
Over time, those who hold influence tend to discover three things.
First, we have far more power than we realise to make people better or worse through the way we treat them.
Second, it is far more meaningful — and far more enjoyable — to make people feel good.
And third, when we help others feel good, we often feel better ourselves.
This is not sentimentality. It is responsibility.
Cultivated Notes are short visual companions to the work.
You can watch the note below, or read on to explore this idea.
Leadership is not only about direction, decisions, or outcomes. It is about the emotional and psychological climate we create around us, often without noticing.
Every interaction leaves a mark.
Every meeting, message, or moment either adds warmth or drains it away.
This note accompanies a short Cultivated Notes film on care, influence, and the often overlooked power we carry — not as targets of the world, but as shapers of it.
Book : You Are Not the Target, Laura Archera Huxley
