Human Core 7 started with a question: what does it actually take to be a whole person at work?
Dr. Sumona De Graaf, founder and CEO of idealis advisory, is an industrial-organizational psychologist by training. She spent her career on the inside of large companies working with leaders at every level as a consultant, a CHRO, and an executive coach.
Over time, she noticed a pattern: the way people show up at work, their leadership, their engagement, and their performance, is not separate from who they are outside of work, their values, what matters to them, and whether those needs are being met.
In 2023, Sumona left her role as CHRO of a Fortune 500 company to found idealis on the principle that high humanity and high performance are interdependent, and who a person is at work is inextricably linked to who they are at their core.
When Sumona started idealis, she went looking for an assessment that could measure the whole person in their current context. She couldn't find one.
"I probably studied all the psychometric assessments that exist in the world. Something I noticed as an applied practitioner in the workplace, whether it's CHRO or head of talent — we kept using the same assessments that have existed from 20-plus years ago. And many of those were validated in the 70s and 80s. The world has changed a lot.
I found myself looking for something better, deeper, more contextually relevant. Something I wish I had when I was coming into a new role, or I wish I could give to my team when I took on a new executive role, or I could give to a client when I was coaching them. To better understand who they are as people without boxing them in. That just didn't exist."
So she decided to design her own.
The framework was born
"I took out a piece of paper and a pen and started writing down — what makes a person a person? What motivates people? What moves people?"
Not the work version of a person, and not the personal version. The dimensions of human life that follow us everywhere, from home to the office and back.
"I drew upon leaders I've met with, parents I've talked to, educators I've spent time with. I thought about myself. I realized that so much about these assessments box people in.
They miss the fact that the nuance of humanity sits between the boxes."
In her own words, Human Core 7 is a humble attempt to capture our humanity in an assessment. The core of who we are and what makes us who we are. Seven dimensions tied to the experiences we have, the needs we carry, and the desires we hold as human beings at work and in the world.
Tested by the team
The framework took its final shape at an idealis off-site, where the team worked through a question that sounds simple until you try to answer it: what makes a person whole?
The conversation kept landing in the same place. Every adjacent framework the team knew about was measuring something narrower than what they were trying to understand. The result of those conversations emerged as seven distinct, interconnected dimensions: Physical, Social, Emotional, Mental, Financial, Moral, and Spiritual. A whole-person view of the human experience.
to capture our humanity in an assessment.
What the team didn’t expect to find
Over years of using the assessment at idealis with countless executives, teams, and organizations, the team noticed something they hadn't expected. The scores themselves weren't doing the work. It was the language the report provided that changes lives.
The report was helping to bring results to life by making people feel seen and understood in a way that most people crave and rarely find on their own. The value of Human Core 7, unlike most assessments on the market, is in the language it gives you to understand your own human experience, and the shared language it gives you to communicate that experience to the people around you.
"It allows us to measure who someone is at their core, without boxing them into 'who they are' and 'who they're going to be forever.' Rather, it's about helping someone understand what motivates them, what matters to them right now, which may not change, but likely will."
Why it matters now
After seeing the impact of Human Core 7 with clients in a business context, the team realized its usefulness for anyone curious about who they are at their core and willing to do the work of becoming more aligned with what actually matters to them.
"When people feel seen, understood, valued, and respected for who they are as people – and that cuts across every single person, from the garbage truck worker to the Wall Street trader – only then can they do the work of development."
That conviction is the whole reason Human Core 7 exists. It's built on the belief that awareness creates agency, that people can change, and that giving someone language for what's already true in their life creates the conditions to grow.
