Apurv Gupta, Michael Mantell, and I recently had a conversation exploring how compassion, culture, and systems come together to heal not only patients, but those who care for them. We discussed how loving organizations outperform others, how shared responsibility for well-being transforms outcomes, and why “when two hearts touch, that’s healing!” We learned about real hospitals already leading this movement, and how we can all open our thinking to see what truly connects us. Here are their inspiring messages for health care workers, leaders, and teams!

Michael R. Mantell, PhD

Culture doesn’t shift because someone issues a memo. It shifts when real people with all their quirks, doubts, and hopes, take responsibility for their emotional lives. I’ve seen this firsthand in one organization I worked with. The turning point wasn’t a new policy, but a single manager deciding to respond with curiosity instead of criticism. That choice rippled outward, and suddenly the team felt safer, more open, and more human.

That’s the heartbeat of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, the framework developed by Dr. Albert Ellis that’s guided my work for decades. REBT teaches a liberating truth: It’s not events that disturb us, but the beliefs we attach to them. In organizational life, those beliefs often sound like “I must be perfect,” “Mistakes are catastrophic,” or “If something goes wrong, someone must be blamed.” I’ve heard those exact phrases in boardrooms, whispered in hallways, and even muttered under someone’s breath before a presentation. These rigid, fear-based assumptions breed anxiety, defensiveness, and burnout.

Dr. Apurv Gupta’s model of “A Loving Organization” offers a powerful counter-narrative. It invites us to replace irrational corporate dogma with emotionally intelligent, reality-based thinking. Excellence doesn’t require perfection. Accountability doesn’t cancel out kindness. Mistakes aren’t moral failures; they’re moments to learn, recalibrate, and grow. This is REBT in action: unconditional acceptance of self, others, and life.

A loving organization is principled, not soft or permissive. It’s a system where people choose thoughtful, compassionate responses over knee-jerk reactivity. It values emotional literacy as deeply as technical expertise. Just as REBT equips individuals to challenge distorted thinking, Gupta’s framework empowers teams to question toxic norms and rewrite the emotional script of their workplace.

In my own work, I’ve long emphasized that mental health begins with self-awareness; the recognition that our emotions are shaped more by our thinking than by external circumstances. Gupta’s model scales that insight to the organizational level. It asks: How do we think together? How do we speak to one another? What meaning do we create in our shared mission? I often pose those questions in workshops, and the answers are never abstract. They’re stories about hallway conversations, Zoom calls, and the subtle ways tone and word choice shape trust.

The payoff is a kinder culture, and a more effective one. When people feel safe to be authentic, to stumble, and to stretch, performance rises. Emotional wellbeing and excellence aren’t opposites. They’re allies. I’ve seen teams hit record goals not because they were pushed harder, but because they felt freer to be themselves.

Ultimately, culture change begins with one person choosing to think clearly and respond humanely. Multiply that choice across a team, a department, and an entire organization and you get what Gupta envisions: a truly loving workplace, where emotional health and high performance walk hand in hand.

Apurv Gupta, MD, MPH

A Loving Organization begins with a simple premise: People thrive when the systems around them make it natural to feel safe, supported, connected, and purposeful. It is a principled, high-reliability model that brings emotional wisdom, clear thinking, and compassionate accountability into the daily architecture of work. In addition to helping individuals develop personal willpower or resilience, a Loving Organization designs the environment so that healthier beliefs, healthier interactions, and healthier outcomes emerge predictably across the whole system. It is a model that has emerged by observing Exemplar Loving Organizations.

This is why culture must shift. In many workplaces (especially in health care) fear quietly becomes the background operating system. Fear of blame, fear of imperfection, and fear of falling short. Over time, this produces burnout, loneliness, and disengagement, not because people are weak, but because the environment repeatedly activates distressing beliefs and reactive patterns. The need is not to push people harder, but to create systems that support them more intelligently.

Dr. Mantell’s REBT perspective aligns naturally with this. REBT teaches that suffering grows from distorted beliefs: “I must be perfect,” “Errors define me,” “If something goes wrong, someone must be at fault.” A Loving Organization complements REBT by ensuring those beliefs are not reinforced by the culture, and by giving people structures that encourage curiosity, learning, and truth over fear.

The bridge between individual insight and organizational design is the INTEGRATE methodology. INTEGRATE’s nine subsystems (from Inspire (leadership), Nurture (team interactions), and Trust (transparency and technology) to Regulate (psychological safety and conflict navigation)) embed emotional clarity into the workflows, relationships, norms, and decision-making processes of the organization. REBT strengthens the inner world; INTEGRATE strengthens the outer world so both can align.

This dynamic is visible in the case of Elena, a mid-level health care administrator whose perfectionistic belief (“I must never make mistakes, or I am unworthy”) was intensified by a culture that discouraged open discussion of errors. REBT-based coaching helped her challenge her all-or-nothing thinking. But the deeper transformation came when her organization recognized that Elena’s distress reflected a systems issue, not merely a personal one. By applying INTEGRATE’s Regulate, Nurture, and Guide pillars, they shifted their error-response process from quiet punishment to learning and psychological safety. One person’s cognitive shift became a catalyst for organizational renewal.

This is the true power of a Loving Organization: It helps individuals think more clearly and feel more grounded, and it redesigns the system so those healthier patterns multiply. The result is measurable: reductions in burnout, stronger teamwork, fewer safety events, higher-quality outcomes, better patient experience, and improved financial performance.

When emotional wellbeing and system design reinforce one another, both people and organizations flourish!

Apurv Gupta is a physician coach. Michael Mantell is a psychologist. Kim Downey is a physician advocate and physical therapist.