Empower your employees to live meaningful lives.

We Are Business Culture Catalysts

Welcome to Appletree

Every person, including you, should be able to pursue and live a meaningful life. We often think this is limited to our personal lives, but this should also apply to our work lives. A work environment where employees feel restricted or discouraged can foster an uninspiring atmosphere that lacks productivity, creativity and innovation.

Appletree exists because there is a growing need for thriving work environments – environments where employees feel heard, engaged and empowered. The work environment should be a place where employees can express their talents, learn new skills and thrive in the right roles.

Our Services

We offer customers four services which are tailored to their unique business culture requirements.

Learning Experiences

Our sessions are not an average training session! Through our learning experiences, discover how to shift fresh, relevant content from information to experience as we help you align our material with your unique context and values.

Executive Coaching

As a manager, you require positive support, enabling you to lead both others and yourself. Our executive coaching will empower you to release the potential of the teams you lead and increase their performance.

Culture Strategy

We believe that good culture is good business. From culture surveys to strategic consulting, our culture strategy solutions will help you build the kind of company culture that will see your team grow and thrive.

Engaging Keynotes

Large or small, every organisation needs inspiration to grow and thrive. Our engaging talks and keynotes will equip your teams with helpful insights in order to shift perspective or motivate change.

Why Appletree?

We are passionate about inspiring organisations to engage with their work environment and not focus primarily on the financial benefits. We want to bring purpose, belonging, value and perspective to your teams

We help leaders

  • become effective instead of feared
  • understand the link between culture and performance
  • create an environment that people want to work in
  • find new words and tools to improve the work atmosphere
  • set a positive atmosphere and temperature

We help employees

  • become engaged instead of disconnected
  • understand that they contribute to a bigger picture in their roles
  • support an environment that inspires productivity
  • embrace these words and tools as individuals and as teams
  • catch the vision and mission set by their leaders

Partner Projects

The Daring Way

The Daring Way™ is an experiential methodology based on research by Dr. Brené Brown. Led by Appletree’s Liesel Scott, teams explore topics such as vulnerability, courage, shame and worthiness.

The Sett

The Sett is a unique, collaborative and agile workspace based in Umhlanga, Durban. The purpose of this workspace is to build a diverse community of people who co-work, connect and create within an inspired multipurpose space.

Story Sessions

Story Sessions is a live event that brings people together to share stories of intent and purpose. Their goal is to enable listeners to become intentional about living out their authentic selves in their own story.

Xperience

Xperience goes beyond traditional team building by crafting unique and impactful experiences that have a strategic objective: igniting individual potential and building strong corporate communities.

OUR VALUES

We’re PATHFINDERS

We leave beaten tracks and forge new paths. We clear away the old and progressively move ahead, creating new frameworks for growth and development of potential.

OUR VALUES

We’re PATHFINDERS

We leave beaten tracks and forge new paths. We clear away the old and progressively move ahead, creating new frameworks for growth and development of potential.

We’re COURAGEOUS

We are fearless in stepping out of comfort zones. We show up when it matters most, choosing activity over apathy in shaping the culture around us.

We’re COURAGEOUS

We are fearless in stepping out of comfort zones. We show up when it matters most, choosing activity over apathy in the shaping the culture around us.

We’re INTENTIONAL

We don’t prepare to live. We deliberately live life now. We are intentional about living a significant story, believing that our story prepares the way for other stories to follow.

We’re INTENTIONAL

We don’t prepare to live. We deliberately live life now. We are intentional about living a significant story, believing that our story prepares the way for other stories to follow.

Some of our clients

Our Tribe

Liesel Scott

Travis Gale

Célia Senekal

Carey-Lee Gale

Deb Mun-Gavin

Abonga Nkwelo

Sarah Shuttleworth

Jana Niehaus

Bianca Rohan

Testimonials

We, the Learning & Development team here at RCL FOODS,  have partnered with Appletree for a number of years now to help us deliver world class L&D solutions and related interventions. We find them highly effective in doing so with some of their key strengths being; the customisation of solutions to meet our specific business requirements; an unmatched highly interactive & engaging facilitation style; and the use of the latest learning techniques and methodology.

Charmaine BoshoffGroup Learning and Development Manager, RCL Foods

Appletree is a one of kind organization, their leaders Travis and Liesel are not just amazing experienced facilitators but just all round awesome people. They truly bring themselves to their sessions with a lot of heart , empathy and humility , and they genuinely want to make a difference and see your employees grow.

Melisa Hadenham HR Director – Beiersdorf

Sarah has a real grasp of our business and what makes Derivco great. This has helped Appletree customise a program that suits our unique needs. Each of the sessions facilitated are authentic in how they are run and include real and relevant examples that assist our leaders in processing and internalising their learnings.

 

Lara BoucherHR Business Partner, Derivco

Appletree is a business focused on creating tailored learning experiences that connect our people to the business vision. Travis and the team are passionately committed to making a difference in the world of people development. They have a team of experienced facilitators that bring the power of story to their sessions. Appletree is a business with ‘heart’!

Kirsty RowleyPeople Executive, MRP Money

Blog

Thula Time

For most of us, the lives we currently lead are frantic and busy. We are faced with activity and information overload almost ALL the time.

Diversity (and its silent enemy, Shame)

When I was around the age of 8 or 9, I experienced shame. There was one thing about my dad that made me feel really uncomfortable and self-conscious. All my friends’ dads had a full crop of hair while my dad was bald.

Family vs. High Performing Sports Team

Many organisations use the term ‘family environment’ to depict the employee experience. These environments at their core value people and create warm and inclusive environments. They also look after their employees, include accessible and transparent leadership and deal with mistakes made by individuals as a collective.

The Power of Story

The American novelist Ursula Le Guin said, “Words are events, they do things, change things. Words transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it.” I think this is most true when we use words to tell stories. Stories are events. Stories do things and change things. Stories transform both the storyteller and those who are listening...

The Culture of Conversation

2017 proved to be a significant year for me and my involvement in rugby. In preparing for my wedding my wife gave me two options, lose weight your way or lose weight my way. I didn’t bother trying to find out what her way was...

Bring the Mountains Home

This past festive season, I had the privilege of spending some time in the Drakensberg Mountains. The majestic peaks seem to absorb the fast-paced nature of everyday life.

Belonging

On the 5th November, I had the enormous privilege of running the New York marathon together with my husband, David. I must confess upfront, that I definitely do not regard myself as a runner. What captivates me is the idea of participating in a big global race in a city as exciting as NYC and this provides the motivation required to put the training in!

Communication eats culture for breakfast

Peter Drucker coined the term ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’, suggesting that brilliant execution is more important than a brilliant strategy. In the same way, I believe that good culture has, at its core, healthy communication.

Time to move on from ‘Old School Leadership’

We most certainly have a heightened awareness that old school leadership negatively impacts on our culture, chases away our talent and overall limits the potential of our organisations.

Humanise your approach

We approach colleagues with our requests, suppliers with our briefs, managers with our answers, friends with our stories, spouses with our needs and plans and even tellers with our shopping baskets.