When Krisrian Colegate first picked up The Emotional Culture Deck, he wasn’t joining a culture initiative he was starting one.

As General Manager at a 17-site manufacturing and construction business, Christian has spent the past two years quietly embedding emotional culture into the everyday fabric of his organisation. From toolbox talks and safety rituals to leadership development and change management, he’s led one of the most powerful and sustained ECD journeys we’ve seen.

In this video, you’ll hear highlights from Kristian's story of how he used The ECD in a male-dominated industry, and what’s shifted across leadership, performance, and safety. 

Before we even dive into Kristian’s story, here’s what changed:

• 🔻 40% reduction in lost time injuries

• 🔺 Higher team engagement where leaders talk about emotion

• 🔻 Lower turnover in branches using The ECD

• 🔺 Improved safety reporting

• 📊 Emotional culture now tracked across 360s, retention, and leadership assessmen

  ...

Let’s be honest. Most organisational values don’t work.

They’re often written in boardrooms, crafted from generic words, and disconnected from how people actually feel at work. Too often, values are cognitive and conceptual. Designed from the head, not the heart. And when that happens, they fail to move people. They become wallpaper.

At R&E, we’ve always believed that emotions sit at the heart of performance, connection, and culture. So we decided to flip the traditional model on its head.

Instead of starting with values and hoping people behave in ways that bring them to life, we begin with how we want people to feel.

That’s where the Emotional Values Design method was born.

Why Emotions First? 

We created this method because we saw a missing link: the emotional thread that connects employee experience and stakeholder experience. If you want people to feel something when they engage with your organisation, your people have to feel it first.

Inspired by leaders like Mel Howe a...

A new study from Nigeria’s Benson Idahosa University shows that leaders who stay emotionally connected during crises build trust, ease anxiety, and help people move forward together.

The Big Idea: Emotion is Contagious

Emotions ripple through organisations. Leaders don’t just manage plans, they shape the emotional climate. Calm, care, and confidence spread just as easily as fear, frustration, or doubt.

“Leaders who stay emotionally connected are better equipped to manage their own feelings and influence the emotional tone of their teams and stakeholders.” — Achilike & Nwaoboli, 2024 

5 Key Emotional Insights for Connected Leadership

1. Stakeholders feel deeply during crises, and those emotions shape outcomes

In a crisis, people feel first and think second. Stakeholders often experience fear, uncertainty, or frustration. If these feelings are ignored, trust can break down. If they’re acknowledged, trust deepens.

“Unresolved emotions can lead to conflicts, complicating the o...

We Have Emotions but Can’t Show Them!

This article is based on the paper “We Have Emotions but Can’t Show Them! Authoritarian Leadership, Emotion Suppression Climate, and Team Performance” published in Human Relations (Chiang, Chen, Liu, Akutsu & Wang, 2021).

What happens to a team’s emotions when the boss rules with control, demands obedience, and leaves no room for challenge? The study, conducted across 227 work teams in three large Japanese organisations, shows that authoritarian leadership doesn’t just affect individuals it reshapes the emotional climate of the entire team.

The big idea

The more emotion suppression authoritarian leaders exercises, the stronger the team climate of emotion suppression, the higher the level of team emotional exhaustion, and the lower the team performance.

How authoritarian leadership works

Authoritarian leaders use authority to control, discipline, and make all decisions themselves. This style creates what researchers call an “emotion suppre...

What does it take to create an unforgettable customer experience? 

For BurgerFuel, it wasn’t just about great food—it was about how customers feel the moment they step into a store. Leading this transformation was ECD Practitioner Mel Howell, who designed and delivered the largest-ever hybrid project for the Customer Experience & Emotional Culture Deck in the world.

In 2020, Mel launched a game-changing customer and employee experience programme across 50+ BurgerFuel stores in New Zealand. Her approach blended The Emotional Culture Deck with the Customer Experience Deck, helping store leaders design unique in-store cultures that drive customer engagement, employee satisfaction, and business success. 

The Challenge: Creating Consistent Yet Unique Customer Experiences 

Post-COVID, BurgerFuel recognised that customer experience would be the key differentiator in a competitive hospitality market. But how do you create a customer experience that feels authentic, not scripted? And how do...

A couple of weeks ago, we had the honour of sitting down with Dr James Gross as part of our Emotions At Work Learning Series. For those who may not know, Dr Gross is one of the most recognised and influential emotion scientists of our time. His work has shaped how people across psychology, leadership, education and culture understand and work with emotions.

It was one of those conversations that lingers long after it ends. We left feeling grateful, curious, and more convinced than ever that emotional work is the real work. Below are some of the ideas that stood out most, and why they matter for anyone who wants to lead, relate or build culture with intention.

Who is Professor James Gross?

Dr Gross is a professor at Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Psychophysiology Lab. He’s most widely known for developing the Process Model of Emotion Regulation. This framework breaks down the different ways we can regulate our emotions. Not just by controlling our reactions, but b...

Why it’s time to flip the script on how we lead change, and how to start.

When most organisations face change, they respond with strategy.
Plans. Timelines. Frameworks. Comms packs.

But very few ask the more human questions:

• How do we want our people to feel during this change?

• What emotions might get in the way?

• How can we shape the emotional culture so change sticks?

We’ve been taught that leading change is about logic, planning, and managing resistance.
But change doesn’t start in the mind. It starts in the heart.

Here’s the truth

Emotions Matter More Than Models.
You can’t lead change if you ignore emotion. 

It’s not a soft skill. It’s the essential skill.

We built the Emotional Change Strategy Course because we saw a gap.
Leaders everywhere were asking how to make change less painful, more honest, and more human.

They didn’t need another model.
They needed the language and tools to lead emotionally. Not just tactically.

What the Course Teaches You

This ...

Welcome back to Emotions Science Simplified, where we take emotion science research and demystify it, making it simple and easy to understand.

This time, we’re diving into a fascinating study by Michael Pinus, Yajun Cao, Eran Halperin, Alin Coman, James J. Gross, and Amit Goldenberg on how emotion regulation contagion can help reduce negative emotions in intergroup conflicts. The research explores how training some individuals to regulate their emotions can lead to emotional change in an entire group. Even among those who didn’t receive the training!

The Big Idea: What Is Emotion Regulation Contagion?

Emotion regulation contagion occurs when emotion regulation strategies, such as cognitive reappraisal, spread from individuals who were trained to use the strategy to others who weren’t. Cognitive reappraisal involves reinterpreting negative situations to reduce emotional responses.

In this study, researchers tested how teaching reappraisal to 40% of group members in small groups coul...

How one team used The ECD to lead people through change, and what it means for every leader.

When organisations face big change, the default response is usually strategic.

Plans. Timelines. Communications frameworks.

But one bold team in a major New Zealand government agency tried something different.

They made emotion the centre of their change strategy. Not a side note.

In partnership with riders&elephants and Professor Michael Parke from Wharton Business School, this team used The Emotional Culture Deck Change Programme to support a team within a 4,000-person organisation through a high-stakes consultation.

The results speak for themselves:

•  +7.3% increase in engagement
• +10.3% stronger emotional support from leaders
• +20.7% improvement in emotional awareness
• 94% of employees felt their leader promoted wellbeing
• 0 reports of burnout

They didn’t follow a traditional change playbook. They flipped it.

This white paper tells the story, and why emotional culture is now ess...

We now have 10 official Local Elephant Rider Chapters in cities across the globe, and it’s all thanks to the generosity and leadership of our incredible Chapter Leads, who host in-person meetups to help keep our global community feeling close, connected and inspired.

When you complete one of our ECD Specialist Courses, you become a Certified Practitioner and officially earn the title of Elephant Rider. You keep that title for life.

After your 90 days of course community access, even if you choose not to become a paid member, you’re still an Elephant Rider — and you’re always welcome at any of our local Chapter Meetups. These gatherings are a place to come together, swap stories, share learnings, reflect on emotions at work, and simply stay connected.

Here’s a look at our Q1 2025 Local Chapter Meetups and the amazing people who made them happen:

•  WELLINGTON, New Zealand – hosted by Andrea Hancox & Kristin Murray (Mar 18)
• NELSON-TASMAN, New Zealand– hosted by Cathie Gould (Mar 17)
...