No, the course challenge is optional but highly recommended. While it’s not required to complete the course, the challenge is designed to help you put what you’ve learned into practice and deepen your understanding of the tools. By participating, you’ll have the opportunity to apply the strategies in real-world scenarios—first for yourself and then in a 1:1 session with a leader or colleague. This hands-on experience is invaluable in reinforcing the course concepts and building confidence in your ability.
Most stakeholder engagement is performative.
Traditional stakeholder engagement is broken. You invite. You report. You move on. But stakeholders are humans. And humans feel.
This course is for people who want to do it differently. Who want to build trust. Co-create value. And make stakeholder experience feel radically more human.
Available as a 5-week Online Cohort, Start Anytime Online, or In-Person course.
*30-Day Money Back Guarantee.
Explore Your Format Options →Your stakeholders are human. And the way they feel matters.
Real relationships aren’t built through data, reports, or KPIs. They’re built through emotion. And yet most stakeholder strategies leave emotion out of the picture entirely. This course flips the script.
You’ll learn how to design emotionally connected stakeholder experiences that build trust, deepen partnerships, and unlock long-term value.
Whether your stakeholders are customers, clients, partners, funders, or internal teams. This course gives you the tools to engage with them in a more human, more impactful way.
Choose Your Format
Same tools. Same certification. Three different ways to learn. Whichever format you choose, you’ll work toward the same certified badge and unlock your Emotional Stakeholder Certification Pathway.
Cohort Course
Structured, social, and guided.
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5-week group-based course
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Weekly live coaching calls with peers
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90-day access to community + course materials
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Best for those who thrive with structure and support
Start Anytime
Flexible, self-led, and instant.
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Begin anytime, go at your own pace
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90-day full access to online community and all materials
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Includes full toolkit and video lessons
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Best for flexible, independent learning
In-Person Course
Immersive, hands-on, human.
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Attend a live, in-room session
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Delivered by a Certified Partner
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Best for team-based or local delivery
Public and in-house formats (subject to availability)
Join the Waitlist – Cohort Format Only
Be the first to know when the next Emotional Stakeholder Engagement Cohort opens.
Next Course Cohort:
June 8 - July 15, 2026
The Cohort format runs as a 5-week guided experience with a small group of learners. You’ll join live weekly calls with our experienced Mentors and move through the course together.
As a waitlist member, you’ll get:
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Early Access – Enrol before the public
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Early Bird Bonuses – Time-sensitive perks and tools to help you hit the ground running
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Limited space – You’ll choose before the doors open.
Cohort runs once a year. Limited to 30 people per group.
Not keen to wait? Want to get started sooner?
You don’t have to wait for the next cohort. You can start the same course today with our flexible Start Anytime format. No course calls, no deadlines, just learning on your schedule.
Same toolkit. Same certification. Learn your way.
Click here to start immediately →Connect. Reflect. Learn Together.
If you join the 5-week Cohort format, you’ll be guided through the course in real time with a small group of peers supported by experienced ECD Certified Mentors.
What the Live Course Calls Include:
- Five Weekly live calls for support, reflection, and connection
- Space to practice using the tools in real time — not just think about them
- Insights from other leaders learning alongside you
➕ Bonus Graduation Call – Reflect on your journey, share what shifted, and reconnect with your cohort 90 days after the course begins
Why it Matters: Live calls keep you accountable, supported, and connected. These are camera-on calls where you don’t just learn the content. You learn with others, reflect in real time, and leave each week feeling clearer and more confident in how you lead change.
Join the Cohort Waitlist →
Why Emotion in Stakeholder Engagement?
Most stakeholder engagement strategies focus on mapping influence, managing risks, and ticking consultation boxes.
But stakeholders aren’t data points. They’re people. And people feel.
They feel left out. Frustrated. Hopeful. Distrustful. Inspired.
If we don’t design for how stakeholders feel, we lose trust, connection, and impact. Even with the best intentions.
This course flips the script.
You’ll learn to lead stakeholder engagement that’s emotionally clear, human-centred, and grounded in trust. Not just process.
Choose your learning format →
Design Relationships, Not Just Reports.
This course will teach you how to:
- Design relationships instead of managing them
- Map your stakeholder journeys through an emotional lens
- Flip transactional interactions into moments of meaning
- Facilitate simple, powerful activities using The Emotional Culture Deck
- The emotional drivers of partnerships
- Connect employee and customer experience for deeper alignment
- Run meaningful, emotion-based conversations with stakeholders
- Co-create emotion-led values and partnerships with your stakeholders
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Use emotional insights to shape real-world action
Is this you?
- You only engage stakeholders when something’s gone wrong
- You’re stuck in transactional check-ins and surface-level surveys
- You focus on customers or partners. But not the emotions of the people serving them
- You know what your stakeholders think. But not how they feel
- You avoid emotion because it feels too “soft” for strategy
- You want to rehumanise engagement, but don’t know where to start
If any of that sounds familiar, this course is for you.
Enrol now →
This course is for you if you want to:
- Learn how to use emotional insight to build partnerships based on values, trust, and co-created purpose.
- Shift stakeholder engagement from transactional to transformational
- Design moments that make people feel seen, valued and connected
- Strengthen trust and alignment in your partnerships
- Connect internal culture with external experience
- Lead with empathy, clarity and intention
Included in your Course Access
Whichever format you choose, here’s what’s included with your enrolment:
ECD Stakehodler Tools
Access to the ECD Stakeholder Digital Toolkit with all the tools from the course that will guide your learning and implementation of everything you learn and are trained to deliver.
90-Day All Access Community Pass
Continue and expand your learning with ongoing support from our global community of practitioners. Join learning and connection events to expand and deepen your ECD practice and impact, learn from experienced practitioners applying what they've learned in our courses in organisations across the world.
Earn Your ECD Certified Stakeholder Badge.
On completion, receive your Emotional Stakeholder Practitioner Certificate + badge
What You'll Walk Away With
- A Practical Toolkit: Get hands-on with 6 powerful tools and canvases designed to embed emotion into stakeholder experiences — from mapping emotions to co-creating values.
- Stakeholder Confidence: Learn how to engage stakeholders with empathy, emotional clarity, and creativity — even in high-stakes or resistant environments.
- Real Conversations: Walk away ready to start honest, human conversations with the people you serve. The kind that build trust, not tension.
Whether you’re working with funders, customers, partners, or community groups...stakeholders are humans. And too often, we focus on what they need without considering how the people who serve them feel.
This course helps you close that gap. You’ll learn to lead stakeholder and customer experience from the inside out. Using emotional clarity to build trust, alignment, and shared purpose.
Enrol here →
Who This Is For:
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Leaders, changemakers, and facilitators who work with customers, partners, funders, or teams
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People in roles like CX, service design, transformation, stakeholder relations, or community engagement
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Anyone ready to rehumanise the way we work and build relationships that are grounded in trust, not just tasks
How real teams are using emotion to build trust with stakeholders
This course isn’t just theory. Here’s how real teams and leaders are using ECD tools to shift stakeholder experience:
- At a university → Building connection from the inside out
A senior leadership team at a university used these tools to strengthen how they engage internal stakeholders across their student support system. The team oversees 43 full-time staff and over 300 student staff, supporting more than 10,000 students living on campus. By mapping the emotions their teams were experiencing during periods of high stress and change, they re-aligned leadership behaviours and communication to create a more emotionally connected, trust-based environment — from the inside out. - In a government agency → Rebuilding trust through emotion
A programme manager used the Human-Centred Partnership Canvas and stakeholder workshop format to rebuild trust after a disruptive period of change. By creating space for stakeholders to express how the changes had made them feel — not just what they thought — they rehumanised the relationship, aligned values, and laid the foundation for deeper, more collaborative partnerships. - In a global e-commerce organisation → Co-creating culture with stakeholder touchpoints
A Learning & Development leader used EX&CX Design Map to co-create the emotional culture for a newly formed team responsible for delivering to external stakeholders. As the team came together, they explored how they wanted to feel and how they didn’t — not just internally, but in how they showed up in partner and customer relationships. The result was a shared emotional contract that shaped how they led, served, and collaborated across stakeholder touchpoints.
“We’ve never talked to stakeholders like this before — it unlocked a level of honesty and trust we hadn’t seen.”Enrol here →
This Isn’t Just About Stakeholders
This course is about culture.
The kind of culture that leaves people feeling heard, seen, and valued – not just served.
And when you get that right, it changes everything: engagement, retention, trust, outcomes.
Real Feedback From Real People
“I thought it would be soft – it turned out to be the most strategic.”
“This course made me rethink how I approach every stakeholder conversation. I feel more confident and more human in how I show up.”
"There is no other course like this. It’s opened up a completely new lens on stakeholder engagement for me.”
"This is a game changer for stakeholder and relationship management."
What people said surprised them about the course:
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How emotional the experience feels (even in strategic roles)
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How flexible the tools are — adaptable to almost any relationship or setting
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How powerful it feels to bring emotion into spaces that usually avoid it (e.g. government, finance, operations)
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That it’s not overwhelming – comprehensive but digestible
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That it changes how they see and talk about leadership, values, and connection
Course Curriculum
Intro & Welcome
Start with a simple, powerful check-in activity using The Emotional Culture Deck. You’ll also get a detailed Course & Community Tour and be introduced to the philosophy behind emotional stakeholder engagement.
Part 1: Design Emotion-Led Stakeholder Relationships
Learn how to identify the emotions that shape your stakeholder relationships. Use The ECD to build a Stakeholder Relationship Canvas and set a clear emotional intention for your work.
Part 2: Connect Employee & Customer Experience
Explore the link between EX and CX. Learn how internal team emotions influence external stakeholder experiences. Use tools like the ECD Emotion Values Design Canvas and the EX/CX Design Map.
Part 3: Build Human-Centred Partnerships
Design partnerships that thrive on trust, emotional connection. Use the Partnership Canvas to co-create alignment, build rituals, and navigate tension with intention.
Section 4: Reflect
& Review
Pause to review your learning and plan your next steps. Run a Quarterly Retro or Stakeholder Check-In to assess what’s working and define how you want to evolve.
Post-Course Challenge
The learning continues with an optional challenge. Apply your tools in a real setting by completing two tasks: a self-mastery exercise and a 1:1 session with a stakeholder or partner.
Choose your format. Same outcome.
Different experience.
No matter which path you take, you’ll get the same certified toolkit, practitioner badge, and access to the global community.
This is about how you want to learn.
Your online learning experience
Cohort-Based Learning
You'll progress through the course alongside a group of like-minded peers, allowing you to learn from others and share your own experiences. Each week, you will complete new lessons and activities. We provide recommended learning each week as we guide you step by step through the course. And if you can't complete the recommended learning each week, don't worry; you have the option to complete the course at your own pace, too.
Self-paced Learning
Both our cohort and start anytime course offers flexibility with self-paced, online learning, so you can work through the lessons and activities at your own speed. Each module is designed to be practical and engaging, allowing you to apply the concepts in real time. You’ll have access to all course materials throughout the course, with the option to revisit key content whenever you need.
Practical Learning
You’ll have the opportunity to practice and experiment with what you’ve learned through a two-part challenge post-course. Designed to nudge you to complete one of the tools from the course for yourself and reflect on your learning. Then to go out and lead a 1:1 session with a leader or colleague to help them understand and apply the tool for themselves.
Earn Your Emotional Stakeholder
Practitioner Badge
You’ll receive:
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A digital certificate and badge to recognise your learning
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Practical tools and credibility to lead emotional change in your team or organisation
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A place on the Emotional Stakeholder Certification Pathway. With the option to progress toward Consultant or Master-level recognition
Whether you’re just getting started or adding emotional depth to your existing leadership, coaching or consulting toolkit, this badge marks a powerful next step.
Explore our ECD Certification Pathway →
Access to our global
community & continuous learning
No matter how you take the course, online or in person, you’ll get 90 days of access to our global community and continued learning support.
Here's what that looks like:
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Online learners (Cohort & Start Anytime) get access to all course materials, video lessons, downloadable tools, and community events
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In-person learners get access to all digital resources, including leadership tools, downloadable materials, and invitations to live community events and webinars.
You’ll also be able to: Revisit tools, join live learning sessions, and connect with other emotionally connected leaders.
After 90 days, you can choose to stay connected as a paid member. This unlocks continued access to the full ECD Toolkit and supports your ongoing ECD Certification Pathway.
Explore Community Access →
You're never Alone
You’ll be supported by an incredible global community of leaders, coaches, and facilitators who care about emotion at work. They show up generously and help each other grow.
Have more Questions?
All your most common questions are below: timing, access, live vs self-paced, what’s included, certification, toolkits, cards, and more. Also, check out the Course Syllabus here, or message our team at [email protected]
