Leadership as an Act of Beauty
What Italian piazzas, Venetian wells, and biophilic schools teach us about presence and design
A water connecting hole in Venice - picture taken in Venice during my trip
I recently returned from a trip through Northern Italy—a place that never fails to stir something deep in the senses. We traveled through the Venice area, and what I encountered there has stayed with me—not just as a visitor, but as someone who thinks constantly about how we lead, what we build, and how space shapes behavior.
Italy doesn’t whisper beauty. It lives it. Everywhere.
Even the smallest places—a cappuccino placed with care, a shadow on a stone wall, a faded fresco on the corner of an alley—feels like an act of generosity. Not just beauty for beauty’s sake, but beauty as a way of life. A kind of aesthetic intelligence that engages the senses and reminds us we’re alive.
This resonated with me personally, as during my doctoral research I also explored the field of organizational aesthetics: how the spaces we work and learn in affect how we relate, think, and create. But on this trip, that inquiry shifted from theory to touch. Sight. Breath. Sound. It became visceral.
And it brought forward a question I’ve been sitting with ever since:
What would it mean to lead like an architect of beauty—not just of systems, but of experience?
The Wells in the Little Piazzas
As we wandered through the labyrinth streets of Venice, I noticed something easy to miss but impossible to forget: in nearly every small piazza, there was a stone well at the center.
These wellheads—round, carved, weathered—were more than decorative. They were part of an ancient system: cisterns that collected and filtered rainwater beneath the stones. Each piazza was subtly sloped to guide water toward the center, where sand and time did their work. Often, you’d spot small circular openings in the paving stones—like the slot of a piggy bank—designed to let rainwater in. A subtle invitation to contribute to the collective. The well was where life was preserved—not dramatically, but steadily, drop by drop.
But what moved me most was this: they didn’t just build to survive. They built beautifully.
This was functional poetry: engineering with grace. The wellhead didn’t call attention to itself. And yet, it anchored everything.
And I began to wonder: Where is the well in your leadership? What subtle, central structure are you tending—not for display, but for renewal?
Too often, leadership is modeled like a fountain—projecting outward, always on. But when the moment comes to draw deeply, what do we return to? A well is something else. It doesn’t perform. It sustains.
Leadership as Sensory Architecture
That Venetian well became a symbol. A reminder that leadership is not just what we do—it’s what we shape.
Architecture is the design of space to hold life. Leadership is the design of experience to hold meaning.
And that design is not just operational—it’s sensory.
Great leaders shape:
Temporal space – how time is structured: rhythm, ritual, pause
Emotional space – how people feel: safe, seen, stretched, supported
Aesthetic space – what environments signal, invite, or inhibit
Beauty matters—not as luxury, but as intelligence. It engages attention. It creates atmosphere. It shows care.
A beautiful space says, you matter. A beautiful system says, this was designed with intention. A beautiful interaction says, you’re safe to bring your whole self here.
When leadership forgets beauty, it becomes mechanistic. When it honors beauty, it becomes human.
The Pattern of Threes: A Living Leadership Model
As we moved through Italy, another pattern emerged: threes.
In Da Vinci’s Ultima Cena, the apostles are grouped in threes—framing Christ in the center, creating a visual rhythm that guides our gaze to what matters. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the journey unfolds in three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso—descent, transformation, return. Even the governance of Venice itself was triadic:
The Doge: singular leadership and vision
The Council: collaborative culture and deliberation
The Great Council: the structural foundation of civic power
These weren’t just organizational tools—they were architectures of meaning. Balanced, relational, and complete.
That same triad shows up in leadership when we slow down enough to see it:
Vision — the breath, the purpose, the animating force
Culture — the movement, the emotional and relational flow
Structure — the form, the holding container that supports growth
When all three are present, leadership comes alive. When one is missing, something always collapses.
Vision without structure becomes chaos.
Structure without culture becomes control.
Culture without vision becomes drift.
Great art, great architecture, and great leadership all share this truth: They breathe. They move. They hold.
Just like those wells in the Venetian piazzas—placed at the center, functional, beautiful, and built to sustain and renew.
H-FARM: When Beauty Becomes the Teacher
Later in the trip, I visited H-FARM, an innovation campus and school near Treviso—and there, the theory became tactile again.
The campus is designed with biophilic principles: wood, open air, natural light, flowing lines, connection to the land. Everything about the space invites attention and grounding to the Earth.
It doesn’t perform. It doesn’t overwhelm. It holds.
I watched students walking between spaces with ease. Focused. Energized. The building wasn’t just housing learning—it was shaping it. The space was doing half the work: opening up the senses, sparking curiosity, softening edges.
At H-FARM, beauty is not an afterthought. It’s a pedagogical strategy. And it’s a model for leadership.
Because leadership, like architecture, teaches—whether we mean it to or not.
Final Thought
Italy doesn’t build just to last. It builds to touch.
That’s what makes it unforgettable. And maybe that’s what leadership could be, too.
Something that breathes like vision. That moves like culture. That holds like form.
Graceful. Grounded. And beautifully essential.
Just like a well in a little Venetian piazza.
Leadership Apothecary Practice: The Well Method
I return now to those little piazzas. To the stone wells at their center. To the sensational and ordinary beauty that holds everything together.
And I invite you to step into this practice:
The Well Method
A framework for sustainable, aesthetic, and intentional leadership
Use the well as the central metaphor—something quiet, life-giving, beautifully designed, and built to last. This makes it feel architectural, grounded in space and sensory memory.
The Well Method: A leadership framework for building space that sustains.
W – Where is the well? What have I built that holds trust, energy, wisdom?
E – Engage the senses How is my space—physical or emotional—affecting how people feel and show up?
L – Lead with the triad Am I aligned across vision (breath), culture (flow), and structure (form)?
L – Let beauty be the message Have I designed moments that reflect care, intention, and presence?
Because leadership is not just about what gets done. It’s about the world we build through our presence. And beauty, when integrated with function, becomes a kind of silent leadership—one that reminds people they are safe, seen, and part of something worth belonging to.