The best work vibes emerge when three things are true:
- You align with the purpose — it feels personal
- Your role is a genuine platform for growth
- The people are awesome to work with
So let’s talk about people.
“Awesome” is not universal. It’s personal.
Some high-performance cultures run on competitive intensity. Accountability is individual. Decisions are made at the top, optimized for speed, and people execute. For people energized by strong directives, pressure, leaderboards and financial reward, that environment can feel electric.
Other high-performance cultures run on cooperative elevation. Leaders not only to deliver results, but expand the capability of those around them. Development is a strategic lever. Responsibility is shared. Sponsorship is intentional. Performance is amplified through collective strength. For people energized by growth, collaboration, and shared wins, that environment can feel equally powerful.
Both produce outcomes.
Both are disciplined.
Both can win.
But they feel different inside. Culture is not neutral. It produces predictable behaviors. And those behaviors either excite and expand you — or shrink you.
When I was working on my master’s in anthropology, I studied power structures in tribes — specifically how men and women shared leadership, what made those systems effective, and how that might apply to a corporate environment. After a year, my advisor suggested I leave academia to study a real tribe at work.
So I looked for strong female leadership in companies. Lotus Development topped the list of best places for women to work. I navigated my way to the CHRO, who placed me in a temporary role supporting Irene Greif — the first woman to earn a PhD in Computer Science from MIT and a pioneer in collaborative technology who was leading the Lotus research lab. It was a team of brainiacs recruited from the most admired brands including Pixar, and inventing technology for corporate storytelling and knowledge management.
I expected to observe brilliance. I did not expect to be included in it.
Though I was filling in as an assistant, the team invited me into their discussions, debates, and brainstorming sessions. I shared parables from tribal legends — including one about the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is knowing. Wisdom is knowledge in action. What’s the point of knowing if you don’t do something with it?
They listened. They treated my insights and ideas as worthy of consideration. And that experience illustrated what “awesome” meant to me: intellectual curiosity and creativity without hierarchy or pretense.
Soon after I joined the company full time in Alliances. The pattern continued. Senior leaders took me under their wing. They gave me opportunity and visibility. In one leadership session, when it was time to present to the CEO, the most senior member of our group turned to me and said, “Everyone here knows me. They don’t know you yet — and they should. Will you present?”
That wasn’t performative empowerment. It was sponsorship.
On another occasion, after I transitioned to a new leader, he called me into his office and told me we had an embarrassing problem: I was earning less than half of what my peers were making. He doubled my salary.
That wasn’t a perk. It was principle.
Time and again, my colleagues treated me with deep respect, trust, and belief in my potential. That kind of belief changes you. It raises your ceiling.
For me, “awesome people” are those who practice mutual elevation. They include you. They challenge you. They expect you to rise — and help you do it.
But that is my definition. Yours might be different.
The point is not that every workplace should act like Lotus did. The point is that culture is what happens in moments that matter:
- Who gets invited into the room.
- Who gets opportunities.
- Who gets feedback.
- Who gets rewarded.
- Who gets believed in and how.
Those signals accumulate. And you feel them.
If you are an individual, define what “awesome” means to you. Not abstractly, but behaviorally. What do the best people you’ve worked with actually do? Make a list. That clarity becomes a compass.
If you are designing culture, understand this: you don’t get awesome by accident. You get it by deciding what behaviors earn belonging, modeling them visibly, rewarding them consistently, and refusing to tolerate the opposite — even when the person is talented.
Purpose gives work meaning.
Platform gives it momentum.
People determine whether the experience expands you — or diminishes you.
When all three align, you know it.
