This week marked a significant moment in our journey at riders&elephants – we delivered the first-ever ECD Emotional Leadership Course! Congratulations to these 12 amazing individuals who are now the first ECD Emotional Leadership Practitioners in the world, equipped with the tools and knowledge to establish healthy emotional cultures and create more emotionally aware leaders and teams.

This course is just the beginning. It's one of three new ECD Courses we’ve designed that will soon be available as both online and on-demand learning experiences as well as in-person learning experiences, exclusively delivered by our global network of ECD Certified Consultants – officially trained and recognised by riders&elephants.

Reflecting on our journey to this point, we launched our ECD Online Masterclass Course four years ago. This has been our sole official ECD offering, and the only pathway to becoming Certified. But now, we're on the cusp of something groundbreaking.

We’re excited to expand...

A big welcome to our latest cohort of ECD Certified Consultant Course participants! Over the past two weeks, these inspiring individuals have begun their journey to becoming global emotional culture leaders.

• Sarah Dena – England
• Claire McKie – Australia
• Safura Atan – Malaysia
• Rita Prates – Portugal
• Nike Lawal – England
• Siobhan Barnes – Hong Kong
• Robyn Mather – United States
•  Marie-Claire Mclachlan – South Africa
• Amie Myrick – United States
• Sonali Kumarakulasinghe – England
• Daniel Corsen – Curaçao
• Silvina Layani – Switzerland

Yesterday, we completed their ECD Consultant Intensives, the first part of three over their nine-month journey to become ECD Certified Consultants. Over these past two weeks, these inspiring humans have dived deep into our core ECD Frameworks, Emotional Culture Crafting, Emotional Leadership Development, Emotional Change Strategy, Emotional Values Design, and experienced first hand how vast the ECD universe is, discovering that it’s so much more th...

We recently had the pleasure of hosting Professor Donald E. Gibson for our Emotions@Work Learning Series. As the new Dean of Saint Mary's School of Economics and Business Administration and formerly the Dean of O'Malley School of Business at Manhattan College, Professor Gibson brought a wealth of knowledge about workplace emotions, conflict management, and mentoring.

This event was a rare opportunity to learn from Professor Gibson's deep knowledge of emotions at work. He shared some great insights on how emotions like anger can be both helpful and harmful, giving us useful guidance for building healthier emotional cultures in our organisations. We dove into emotional contagion, measuring emotion, expressing authentic vs. strategic emotions and more.

Conversation Highlights:

When is Anger Helpful?

Anger can be a powerful emotion, especially in an organisation where the culture allows for open expression. If people feel they can express some level of anger, it can be more function...

Seriously scientific! We're at an inflexion point in the evolution of our community (and business). People who do serious science are seriously interested in our sanely simple game. So we're now bringing even more serious and comprehensive science to it.

On the surface, our game might not seem serious or even scientific. Even calling it a 'game' might lead people to believe that it's not serious. We're serious about it. We have over a thousand ECD Practitioners and Consultants around the planet who are serious about it. The impact of the tools and methodologies we use is serious. Now, other people who do serious science are also serious about what we're doing.

We feel ecstatic, proud, and humble to say we're partnering and collaborating with Michael Parke, Assistant Professor at Wharton Business School, to officially study the impact of affect labelling and The ECD at work. We kicked off our first pilot study earlier this month. We feel optimistic that this is just the first of num...

We're excited to invite you to our new Emotional Leadership Development Course, specifically designed to help leaders like you harness the power of emotions to shape relationships, lead with empathy, and drive effective change.

• Date & Time: June 19, 2024 | 9:30 AM - 3:30 PM
• Location: Wellington, New Zealand
• Fee: 999 NZD (Early Bird Offer: 699 NZD)
• Click here to secure your spot now – Only 12 spots available >

Why this Course is a Game-Changer: In today’s fast-paced and complex business environment, the ability to lead with emotion is more critical than ever. We're thrilled to introduce our brand-new Emotional Leadership Development Course, designed to transform the way leaders understand and harness the power of emotions to foster a more dynamic and responsive workplace.

Why Emotional Leadership Matters: Every organisation has an emotional culture, even if it's one of suppression. This reminds us that emotional culture in leadership goes beyond just understanding one's feelin...

Yesterday in Wellington, these 14 inspiring individuals came together to learn how to lead with emotion during times of change. 

The emotional side of change is so often underestimated, overlooked, or ignored altogether. We obsess over models of change when we should focus on the emotions our people experience through change. But emotions matter more than models. Or, another way to put it is that models don’t work unless you understand and help shape the emotions of the people in them.

Thank you to these remarkable leaders for embracing this journey and helping reshape how we approach and lead people through change in the workplace!

How can I attend this Course?

Our ECD Certified Consultants will be delivering these in-person around the world in the future. We'll also Click here to learn more about the Workshop. Our global team of independent ECD Certified Consultants are trained and certified to bring The Emotional Culture Deck into your organisation and teams. They're endorsed by rid...

We're super excited to share some extraordinary news – it has just hit a massive milestone within our Elephant Rider Community. She’s officially become a Master Elephant Rider, and that’s a big deal around here! 

For the past three years, Denise has been all-in, leading over 65 ECD Workshops, heaps of ECD Meetups, and countless one-on-one ECD sessions. Her commitment and dedication to The ECD have impacted the lives of so many and helped teams and leaders unlock what they’re truly capable of.

Denise joins the ranks of a very small group of Master Elephant Riders: Lotty Roberts, Kayleigh Woodings, and Steve Hargreaves who have all cemented their places as global emotional culture leaders.

When she looks back on her ECD journey, she’s quick to share some simple but profound advice,

"Just get started. Start playing and experimenting... Practice, practice, practice. I keep a deck, in each of my bags... Get comfortable with taking a leap and hacking the deck in different ways."

One ...

Hello, everyone! We're thrilled to announce something we've been working on that we believe will make it easier for more people to revolutionise the way they approach emotional culture in workplaces: the launch of our ECD Digital Download Tools.

Why We Created These ECD Tools for Download

In today's fast-paced world, the way we work is evolving rapidly, and so is the way we interact with each other. Over the past two years, we've seen the need for tools that make it easier for individuals and teams to navigate the emotional aspects of work life. That's why we created our ECD Digital Tools Collections.

Introducing the Collections:

You can buy just one tool if that’s all you need, or get a bundle if you want a set that works well together. Bundles are cheaper than buying the tools separately:

• ECD Culture Crafting Collection: Dive into the heart of your team’s culture with resources designed for emotional culture exploration and stronger team and employee connections.
• ECD Leadersh...

Update from Jeremy originally posted in our Elephant Rider Community here >

How Our Community Shapes the Future of Emotional Culture

Hi everyone, I've got some exciting news to share! We're teaming up with Professor Michael Parke from Wharton for a special research project, and we're inviting you to be a part of it. We’ve been in discussion together since he came into our Community earlier this year to share his research on voicing negative emotions at work (see more here if you missed it)

What's this research all about? We're researching the impact of our ECD workshops (specifically affect labelling) on employees, their leaders and their teams.

Here's the scoop: To make this study happen, we need to work together as Elephant Riders to run a series of workshops over the next four months. We're aiming for a minimum of 100 participants across all workshops, whether that comes from many small teams or a few larger ones. This flexibility means whether you're working with a single team ...

Written by and originally posted by Leo Castillo on LinkedIn >

In the last year, I’ve spent a lot of time and effort levelling up my mastery of emotional intelligence, partly because of my own personal experience, the certifications I’ve been building, and the work we do at Fearless Inc.

After working extensively on myself, leaders, teams, and organizations, I’ve come up with five insights where we can make emotional intelligence actionable, leading to what I call emotional engagement. Although a few are personal, this is really looking at how to create emotional engagement in the corporate world. 

I share these insights from my journey with the hope that you can also be emotionally engaged and make EQ actionable for you, too. Without further ado, here is what I've learned in this journey. 

Insight # 1 : Emotions are Strategic

When I discuss emotional intelligence with leaders I sometimes hear groans along the lines of “yeah I guess that’s important too”., They grudgingly agree ...