Leading from the Inside Out: Reggio Emilia and the Practice of Inner & Cultural Leadership
- Louise Sommer
- Dec 2
- 5 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Like I wrote in my earlier blog about encountering the Reggio Emilia method, I still remember my first morning walking through the small cobblestoned streets of Florence. The air was warm, carrying the scent of espresso and freshly baked pastry.
Inside the school, the children’s artwork shone like stained glass; light, texture, movement. Every surface spoke. Every corner felt alive.
I came to learn that, in these classrooms, leadership wasn’t a word on a whiteboard; it was something breathing in the atmosphere. The teachers weren’t instructing from above. They were in conversation with curiosity itself.
Years down the track, I came to realise that my time with the Reggio Emilia method taught me that leadership, when lived fully, is not about control but about culture: A living dialogue between people, ideas, and place.
The Studio Within
In the Reggio Emilia method, a classroom is called atelier meaning studios of becoming. That phrase stayed with me long after I left Italy. But it was this experience that made me began to see leadership, too, as a studio and understand leaderships as an inner space where observation and imagination meet.
In my own practice as an educational psychologist and designer, I’ve learned that presence is not passive. It’s a form of deep attention, and what Antonio Damasio describes as the feeling of what happens. Presence regulates our nervous system, and through that, it regulates our teams.
When leaders cultivate this kind of attention, they become attuned to the subtle languages of human systems; The pauses, the tone shifts, the patterns beneath performance. These are the hundred languages of children that Loris Malaguzzi spoke of, but expressed in adults as empathy, humour, silence, creativity, gesture.
My own studio is filled with sketches, notes, stories, and cultural adventures. It’s not tidy, but it’s honest. And that honesty becomes guidance. Human leadership begins when we can witness our own learning with compassion. And perhaps now you can see where the inspiration for my own business name came from.
Belonging Before Mastery
Reggio Emilia was born from community trauma and hope. After the Second World War, Italian parents wanted schools that would teach children to think freely and to belong without obedience. That social reconstruction still feels radical today.
Edgar Schein’s research later confirmed what these Italian educators had intuited: culture eats strategy for breakfast. Belonging precedes mastery. People risk creativity only where they feel seen.
When I work with leaders, creatives, and entrepreneurs across cultures from Scandinavia to Australia, I see the same principle emerge. Where belonging is absent, performance becomes performance anxiety. Where it is present, innovation feels like play.
I have therefore come to realise that cultural leadership is not an HR initiative; it’s an atmosphere. It grows from shared narratives, open minds, and shared meals. Something we could call the everyday grammar of trust.
The Hundred Languages of Leadership
Each culture teaches its own rhythm of expression. In Denmark, silence often means reflection; in Australia, it can mean distance. In creative learning psychology, we call this relational literacy: the ability to read the hidden codes of connection. And it differs from culture to culture, country to country.
The Reggio Emilia method teaches us that language is always plural. So is leadership.We lead not only through words but through the spaces we create. Everthing from the lighting of a room, the pace of a conversation, to the order of a day. These sensory details communicate safety or threat long before we speak.
Daniel Goleman’s extensive work on emotional intelligence echoes this beautifully: awareness precedes empathy, and empathy precedes influence. Today I have come to believe that leadership begins in the nervous system, not in the strategy deck.
When Systems Tighten, Stay Human
I often think about those Italian teachers when I watch the rise of artificial intelligence in education. They were resisting automation long before we used the word.Their classrooms were laboratories of human presence.
We need that resistance again, I think. Not against technology itself, but against disconnection. AI can extend our cognition, but it cannot extend our compassion. The real task is to build learning cultures where tools serve curiosity, not replace it.
As Peter Senge wrote in The Fifth Discipline, “Learning organisations are where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire.” Reggio Emilia was one of the first places I saw that happening and not through a corporate language, not through rules or control, but in laughter, clay, and sunlight.
A Living Culture of Leadership
Each time I returned home from Florence, I realised a little more that the Reggio Emilia approach wasn’t necessarily about children, it was about humanity.
It showed me that leadership is a cultural craft where inner leadership is the craft of attention. Cultural leadership is the craft of belonging, and storytelling is the craft of memory.
When we weave those crafts together, we create living cultures that are innovative, connected places that think, feel, and grow.
So much of adult leadership education still separates head from heart, analysis from aesthetics. Yet life keeps teaching us the opposite: that wisdom is embodied, relational, sensory.
The most effective and empowered leaders I meet are often those who still notice things: light on a wall, the tone of a silence, deep reflections, a calm nervous system, the small turning point in a colleague’s story. Imagine we understood that sensitivity is not fragility but intelligence in motion.
Closing Reflection
Reggio Emilia continues to remind me that creativity is not a luxury. It’s how societies heal, how leaders stay awake, and how communities remember themselves. And it keeps returning to my life, bringing new inspiration, new understanding, and new knowledge.
When we lead with creative intelligence, we don’t impose order; we cultivate life. And perhaps that’s what the world needs most: leaders who can hold the complexity of a hundred languages and still listen.
I would love to hear your reflections on this topic. Join the conversation on LinkedIn, where I share more insights and invite dialogue with educators, creatives, and leaders worldwide. Connect to LinkedIn here.
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Louise Sommer (MA, Educational Psychology) is the founder of Louise Sommer Studio. She specialises in creative intelligence, learning design, and leadership communication across cultures. Through her writing, consulting, and workshops, Louise helps educators and leaders build learning cultures that think, feel, and grow.
Louise Sommer Studio Blog is a free space for learning created for educators, leaders, and creatives exploring the intersection of psychology, culture, and creative intelligence.
Louise Sommer (cand.pæd.psyk.) er grundlægger af Louise Sommer Studio. Hun er specialiseret i kreativ intelligens, læringsdesign og ledelseskommunikation på tværs af kulturer. Gennem sit arbejde med undervisning, rådgivning og workshops hjælper Louise undervisere og ledere med at udvikle læringskulturer, der tænker, føler og vokser.
Louise Sommer Studio Blog er et frit rum for læring, skabt for undervisere, ledere og kreative, der udforsker samspillet mellem psykologi, kultur og kreativ intelligens.
