About Know Your Needs
What do people actually
need to feel fulfilled?
We help organisations create environments where people can truly thrive — where emotional intelligence, care, and meaning are part of how work gets done, not something added on afterwards.
The Story
A different kind
of practice.
Know Your Needs was founded by Ottoline Hart, a humanistic and integrative psychotherapist whose path has blended philosophy, psychology, and lived experience across cultures and disciplines.
Ottoline's journey began at Oxford University, studying linguistics and Sanskrit — a deep inquiry into how humans communicate value and derive meaning, including reading ancient Indian spiritual texts in their original language.
Moving to Berlin in 2017, she embraced a different world: working in tech for three years, pursuing an MSc in Psychology, and later completing a specialist qualification in humanistic and integrative psychotherapy.
Over five years as a psychotherapist supporting hundreds of CEOs, employees, academics, and creatives, Ottoline began to recognise core patterns in how fulfilment, drive, and stress related to work — and the enormous potential of the workplace to shape individual and collective wellbeing.
The Approach
Person and culture. Both.
We are social creatures. Feeling appreciated goes a long way at work — especially in times of stress. Being seen and valued. Sometimes it's as simple as someone noticing that a colleague is struggling and checking in.
Social dynamics at work have enormous impacts on performance, identity, and long-term wellbeing. The individual and the system shaping them cannot be treated separately.
Our work connects people's inner worlds with the outer systems they inhabit — bringing together clinical depth with tools that are immediately applicable in real organisations.
When core human needs — purpose, belonging, growth — are genuinely met at work, people don't just perform better. They feel alive in what they do, and connected to the people they do it with.
Meet the experts obsessed with building businesses
Your business deserves more than advice —
|it needs a team that’s been there.
Why Prioritising Mental Health Makes Business Sense
Return on every £1 invested in mental health interventions
working days are lost every year to depression and anxiety
Employees who feel their mental health is supported are more likely to be engaged at work.