Champions Framework
Champions is built on a simple but powerful belief: the world thrives when people act for the good of others.
Humanity is not a soft extra; it is a performance multiplier. When trust, empathy, resilience, accountability and moral courage are present, people, teams and systems are able to thrive. When humanity is absent, relationships weaken, cultures deteriorate and systems fail.
We call this humanity-focused leadership.
Five Step Champions Process
Team Transformation Enables Organizational Thriving
The Champions program is designed to activate individual and team transformation. This is a key first step to initiate organizational or community transformation.
1. Prepare
One-to-one conversations with every participant, meaning the program is shaped to the organization’s needs, not delivered as a standardized template.
The organization’s real conditions, pressures, and relationship dynamics are understood before the first session. Participant profiles are established.
2. Discover
The program begins with self-awareness, not as a concept, but a lived experience through the program.
Champions uses its model of the Four Stages of Humanity to give participants a framework for seeing where they are and where the program will take them.
Stories of Humanity make transformation feel real and possible, bringing perspective.
3. Develop
Participants build the capacity to be honest with each other, through difficult conversations, through conflict approached with curiosity, through the kind of trust that forms when people stop managing their image and start showing up as themselves.
4. Commit
Participants develop internal confidence: having built relational capacity, they deepen their own internal foundation - values, responsibility, understanding the kind of leader they choose to be.
5. Deliver
Participants share their own Champion Stories to their cohorts: their experiences, insights, values, and commitment to the future.
Senior leaders and teams encounter each other as people, not roles. The commitment made is public, witnessed by peers.
Evidence
Burnout is reducing
Several burnout levers are already shifting
- Less isolation / more peer support
- Healthier emotional regulation
- Reduced daily friction / stress
Motivation is up
Especially among long-tenured staff who were previously depleted. We are hearing:
- Renewed hope
- Greater willingness to collaborate
- Applying tools at work and home
- Going out of the way for patients
Champions is different
Champions is different
"This felt fundamentally different.
"Champions shifted how people think about one another - and you can see it.
"There’s more reflection, more connection."
-- Marsha Liu, CEO, Union Health Service
Changed the trajectory
Champions is different
"I feel Champions has completely changed the trajectory of UHS, in the best possible way."
-- Karah Fogg, Director of Medical Management
Changed how I show up
“Champions didn’t just help me think differently. It changed how I show up — in conversations, in relationships, and in the choices I make every day.” Student participant
Taking it home
A striking theme across the testimonials is that Champions does not stay at work. People do not just lead differently — they live differently, staying calmer with family, avoiding arguments and interrupting old stress patterns.