Heart, head and hands are three intelligences everyone has. Together they make up leadership, and every job draws on them in its own proportions.
The three centers, the order in which you practice them, the three batteries and the three books.
Discover the modelYour Heart Head Hands profile, on your own online or with your leadership team, and your two priority shifts.
Take my profileWhat each of the 1,923 jobs in ROME, the French national job classification, asks of the heart, the head and the hands, and what AI will change.
Look up my jobThere are thousands of books on leadership. We read them, we agree with what they say, and we never manage to apply them. We call this wishful leadership: you state it, and hope it happens. Here again, it is the whole gap between intention and action.
The Heart Head Hands model works differently. We all have a heart, a head and hands: the three centers of leadership. There is no framework to learn before you start, which is what makes it usable from the very first session, at every level of the organization. François Durnez first set it out in L'Essence du leadership, written in 2014.
Welcome what I feel, name the emotion, identify the need it signals. Build connection, truly listen, create the safety that makes demanding conversations possible.
Clarify what I really want, my success criteria, my level of commitment. Set a clear direction and link every decision back to the why.
Listen to the body's signals, energy and tension, which often know before we do. Act, and show through action what words promise.
In a working relationship, you start with the heart. You welcome, then you think, then you act. That is what Heart, Head, Hands means, and it is the order in which the model is practiced at work.
The model can also be read the other way, when it comes to working through a difficult emotion. That path is explored in advanced training and in the card games.
A leader's health and their team's are not side issues to performance. The model gives a simple language to discuss them within the leadership team, before the batteries run empty.
The quality of relationships, what nourishes and what wears you down.
Clarity, cognitive load, the ability to decide without fog.
Energy, sleep, movement. The capacity to implement and carry out actions.
A simple approach to cultural transformation, showing that human fulfillment lies at the heart of business success. Built from an analysis of the origins of the greatest leaders and paired with a series of exercises, it shifts the paradigm: from constraints to developing all of a company's human resources. The book in which the Heart Head Hands model was first set out. (In French.)
Why another book on kindness at work? Because, in a world of permanent change, kindness and excellence are not opposites: they are two sides of the same coin, and it is by combining them that the people of a company come together toward real, lasting performance. "Fair," because kindness is too often confused with complacency. Practical keys and postures, accessible here and now. (In French.)
Like our brains, organizations often tap only ten to twenty percent of their culture. This guide invites you to build your own cultural compass: emotional and relational intelligence, profiles and team dynamics, Heart Head Hands leadership aligned with your values. The hands-on follow-up to La performance intrinsèque, with prompts for reflection and practical exercises. (In French.)
The 3 Centers profile takes fifteen minutes online, in the members' area. There you will also find the other profiles and self-assessments from the Resources page, DISC, emotional intelligence and the three batteries, each with a downloadable report. Access is free; just sign up.
The leadership retreat works on your own real situations, not on case studies. Everyone leaves with their Heart Head Hands profile and their two priority shifts. The model then becomes part of the team ritual, where it is one of the fifteen tools of the TOTEM System, the one that develops embodied leadership in every team.
The three Centers, outward face: welcome, clarify, act. These are the cards from Game 1, Ritual, the ones laid on the table during the retreat.
Two of the fifteen Leadership cards, and the card for the path of emotion: it is born in the body, named by the head, transformed in the heart. The Heart Head Hands profile, individual and team, is taken online in the members' area.
Heart Head Hands leadership is not just for executives. Every job draws on all three centers, in its own proportions: the heart for emotion and relationships, the head for direction and method, the hands for skill and presence.
We read all 1,923 jobs in ROME, the job classification of France Travail, the French public employment service, through this lens, based on their skills, soft skills and working conditions. For each one, the profile shows what it asks of each center, the leadership to cultivate, and what artificial intelligence will change by 2040.
In September 2026, OpenAI presented GPT-6 Astra as the start of “the AGI era”, artificial general intelligence. That general intelligence is the intelligence of the head. A job also calls for EQ, emotional and relational intelligence, and BQ, bodily and physical intelligence. Every month, the Humans & AI barometer scores AI on the three centers, against an average human scored at 100.
The more a job combines all three centers, the longer it takes AI to take over half of its tasks: around 2030 for head-only jobs, around 2036 for those combining two or three centers. Heart Head Hands leadership becomes a lasting advantage, because it trains exactly what AI cannot yet do: bring heart, head and hands together at the same moment.
It always starts with the assessment, and every step is scoped with you. The effort shown is for a full engagement.
Tap a step to expand it.