This is a celebration of an extraordinary achievement!

This week marks a momentous occasion as we honour the incredible Jim Dryburgh, who has officially unlocked his Specialist Elephant Rider Badge. Joining a select group of remarkable individuals, Jim has surpassed an impressive milestone, facilitating over 25 Emotional Culture Deck Workshops.

Jim, your contribution to our ECD Universe has been immense. Your journey has been nothing short of awe-inspiring, and it fills our hearts with joy and pride to witness your remarkable growth. The impact you've made reaches far and wide, touching countless individuals and teams and reminding us all of the power of meaningful human connection at work.

You continue to prove that people of all backgrounds and experiences want to express themselves at work (and school). They just don't have the tools and the labels to express themselves meaningfully. And after everything you've achieved, it strangely feels like you've just found your groove. But...

Today, our community officially reached 1,000 Elephant Riders. That means 1000 people have completed The Emotional Culture Deck Masterclass. 

We now have ECD Practitioners & ECD Certified Consultants in 36 countries around the globe . 

It's humbling to say you'll find Elephant Riders in: New Zealand, Australia, England, Canada, United States, Singapore, Switzerland, Columbia, Oman, UAE, Germany, Romania, Ireland, Netherlands, Croatia, Papua New Guinea, Scotland, India, South Africa, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland, Norway, Malaysia, Mauritius, Hungary, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Spain, Italy, Jordan, South Korea, France, Ghana, Hong Kong, and Philippines.

The ECD is so much more than a deck of cards. 

We've unexpectedly built a global community of the most human and empathetic leaders on the planet.

Thank you to every single one of our Elephant Riders for joining us on our mission to humanise the workplace.

All of you leapt into the unknown, faced your...

It was invigorating and #inspiring being part of the world’s first #ElephantRider Chapter Meetup last night.

The Auckland event was the first ever Chapter Meetup to be run independently from riders&elephants and without Jeremy Dean's direct involvement (but with his endorsement and support ). It was a real privilege to co-host with the fabulous Jo van der Walle, and a massive shout out to Jakub Jurkiewicz for crafting such powerful World Cafe conversation starters .

Thank you to everyone for generously sharing their stories, tools, tips and suggestions .

I’m looking forward to our next event, and encourage Elephant Riders in other locations around the globe to #connect with your ECD #community and facilitate your own  #emotionalculturedeck Chapter Meetup!

– Erika Barden

Click here to join an Elephant Rider Chapter Meetup near you >

Erika Barden is a trusted Agile advisor to Executive and Senior Leadership teams across New Zealand. As Head of Transformation for Fr@nk Innovation & Transformation, Erika works across multiple sectors and loves how the ECD enables safe, powerful conversations which are relevant to everyone in every industry.

In a nutshell, Erika is passionate about people and positive work environments, and is really looking forward to being able to facilitate some face-to-face ECD workshops soon!

A (non-creepy) follower of Jeremy and his work for a number of years, Erika became an Elephant Rider during the Covid lockdown last October.

She has since facilitated a dozen Emotional Culture Deck workshops which have all been remote – other than the session she ran with her kids around their kitchen table.

Watch the video below to learn about how Erika uses The ECD to help create positive work environments.

“Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason, mastery demands all of a person.” – Albert Einstein

Lotty Roberts achieved her goal of becoming the world's first Master Elephant Rider last week after completing an almost three-year journey with The Emotional Culture Deck and riders&elephants.

I first met Lotty when she flew up to Auckland to attend our ECD Masterclass in Auckland on 9th May 2019. As of today, she has conducted over 65 ECD workshops with teams internationally. 

It is simply amazing how much dedication and strength Lotty has put into her work using The ECD.

The change you have inspired with the ECD is profound. 

It may never be possible for you to truly understand the breadth and depth of your impact helping people find the words to express themselves at work, at home, at school and with the people they care deeply about. It's beyond measurable. Yet I know that doesn't...

There's a myth that work and emotions don't mix. That we need to check them at the door. Lots of leaders suppress feelings or avoid expressing them. We're gonna flip workplace conversations and show you how embracing emotions as a leader will change the way you lead.

There is no one way to exercise leadership. But emotion is critical. Because emotion helps you understand who you are working with. It also helps you build relationships with your people based on who they are – not who you are. 

Emotional leadership involves:

• Awareness of the importance of emotions – both yours and our peoples' – acknowledging the impact of them on the individual and collective impact they have on the team. Using that emotional awareness and understanding to positively shape the culture of the team – deliberately and intentionally.
• Understanding your people, where they are emotionally and being able to help them manage the unpleasant...

This is one of the biggest and most transformational stories we've heard from an organisation using our games to change the way they engage their employees to change the way they create experiences for their customers!

We sat down with Melanie Howell, from BurgerFuel to learn more about how she's using both The Emotional Culture Deck and The Customer Experience Deck to redesign both the employee experience and customer experience of over 50 Burgerfule stores around New Zealand.

Tune into ECDTV!

Introducing ECDTV. New ways. New ideas. New answers. New perspectives. 

The ECD has grown into a tiny universe. With hundreds of thousands of users around the world.

ECDTV is our way of sharing this universe and the inspiring people at the heart of it. ECDTV will help us offer viewpoints from members of our ECD communities.

We'll create content on why and how to use the ECD which we hope will give people the confidence and courage to also take up and use the ECD to humanise the workplaces they serve. 

Elephant Rider Insights – ECDTV Series.

The first series on ECDTV is called Elephant Rider Insights. Our second episode with Sally Duxfiled is now live on ECDTV here.

We visited Sally Duxfield - Experiential Architect at her off-the-grid, Arete Leadership Village to learn more about how she crafts profound and meaningful experiences to help develop leaders and teams.

Sally designed Arete with a vision to combine a Carbon...

Welcome to Episode one of Elephant Rider Insights.

We sat down with Pro Elephant Rider, Suzanna Rangi, from TLC to learn more about her as a leader and her experiences using The Emotional Culture Deck to humanise the workplaces she serves.

Suzanna has facilitated over 20 plus ECD workshops and got such a diverse range of experiences to share with us.

What are these Elephant Rider Insights videos?

We've sat down with five other inspiring Emotional Culture Deck Leaders. We asked them all to share their insights into the work they do with The Emotional Culture Deck.

Each of these inspired leaders is an official Elephant Rider. They have completed our ECD Masterclass Course, taken The ECD into the world, and started humanising workplaces.

Over the next few months, we'll be sharing a short video of each of these leaders insights with their world and The ECD.

Thank you, Tash Pieterse, Melanie Howell, Lotty Roberts, Suzanna Rangi, Sally Duxfiled, and Adam Lynch, for taking a...

Congratulations to Mat Kearney who has officially reached Specialist Elephant Rider Status.

Mat just joined a tiny and elite bunch of people in the world at our second most experienced Emotional Culture Deck Facilitator level alongside @lottyroberts and @stevehargreaves.

I'm incredibly proud and humbled by this achievement because Mat attended the very first every Emotional Culture Deck Masterclasses back in 2018. Since then he's gone on to use The ECD to have a real impact on numerous leaders, community groups he's part of and organisations around New Zealand.

On his journey to becoming our latest Specialist Elephant Rider, he's run over 25 Emotional Culture Deck workshops and numerous 1:2:1 ECD sessions and various Meetups. He's also been on a mission to help fellow leaders learn how to use The Emotional Culture to create more human and empathetic workplace cultures.

We asked Mat what it means to him to become a Specialist Elephant Rider: