You cannot stop the change coming. You can decide how you and your people want to feel walking through it.

Is this course for you?

Whether you lead change inside your own organisation, or you take it to the rooms you consult in, this course was built for you. One door, two welcomes.

The change gap

The restructure was announced. The plan was solid. The timelines were realistic. Six months on, nothing had shifted. Not because the plan was wrong. Because nobody asked how people felt about it. The resistance everyone braced for never showed up loud. It showed up quiet. People just stopped caring.

A restructure is rarely about the org chart. It is about what people stand to lose. Control over their day, the security of a role, the team they belong to, the future they pictured. We brace for the logistics and we skip the emotions, our own first, then everyone else's. We tell ourselves there is never a right time for that conversation. So we say nothing, and the silence becomes the damage.

And here is the part most people have backwards. You don't need psychological safety to have these conversations. Psychological safety is what they create. It's the outcome, not the entry price.

The one thing you get to decide

Here is what most change programmes miss. In a restructure, a merger, a transformation, the people living through it have almost no control over the change itself. Not the decision. Not the timing. Not the shape of it. And the emotional toll of that, and the way it ripples from person to person, is most of what makes change so hard.

But there is one thing they do get to decide. How they need to feel, and not feel, to come through it well. The emotions to reach for more often. The ones they don't want, but might feel from time to time anyway. That choice is theirs. It's the agency almost nobody thinks to hand people in the middle of change.

Most change models work the plan. But no plan works unless you understand and shape the emotions of the people living through it.

This is the core of our approach and methodology. We give people agency in a moment they might not have much of it. We create the conversation, at the moment everything else feels out of your hands, where a person and a team decide the emotions they want to lead themselves through this with. When someone shares that with their team, in a turbulent time, it creates connection. And connection, our research is showing, is what changes the whole experience of the change.

A minute inside the course. Why emotions matter more than the models of change.

Your five mentor-led calls are hosted by ECD Certified Consultants Katherine Riddoch and Kate Bacchus. Every cohort member gets all three bonus sessions, regardless of tier. Sessions run during the 90-day course window. Recordings stay inside the community for 180 days.

What graduates say

Hundreds of people have done this course, online and in person with our Certified Partners. Here are some of their reviews, in their own words. The internal leaders, and the consultants who take it to their clients.

Questions, answered

Wait, isn't this a 5-week course? ▾

It isn't only five weeks, and it isn't only 90 days. Your first 90 days are the online course, fully self-paced start to finish, with a suggested 5-week structure if you like one and five live Course Conversation Calls across the opening five weeks. The calls are optional and sit alongside the course rather than gate it. Then comes a further 90 days living it in the community, embedding the work in your real-world practice. 180 days in total, and you move through all of it at whatever pace works for you.

When does the course start, and can I join a later cohort? ▾

This cohort begins Tuesday 1 September, 2026. We run the Emotional Change Strategy Course as a cohort just once a year, so the next cohort after this one is a full year away. The cohort is where everything comes together: the community, the mentor support, the three bonus sessions, and 180 days of community access to learn alongside others and embed the work after the course ends.

If you would rather not wait, you can take the online course on its own at any time. The standalone course is fully self-paced and you get 90 days to move through all five parts. What it does not include is the cohort community, the mentor support, or the 90 days of community access afterwards. If that ongoing support matters to you, this September cohort is the one running in 2026.

What if I miss a live call? ▾

Calls are recorded and posted in the cohort room. You won't fall behind. Many graduates do the entire course without making a single live call, and still come away with the work landing in the way they actually lead change.

How long do I get access, and what if I'm already a member? ▾

Your place runs for 180 days from when the course officially begins: 90 days inside the course, then 90 days in our community. The lessons are self-paced, so there's no rush.

If you've taken a course with us before, or you're partway through a community trial, your access refreshes to a full 180 days from this course's start. It doesn't stack into extra years, but you never lose time, you always get a fresh 180.

And if you're already a paying community member, nothing changes for your membership. You keep the community exactly as you have it, and the course simply adds your 90 days of course access.

How does "bring a friend, free" work? ▾

If you enrol during the 48-hour window, you can bring one friend or colleague through the cohort with you, and their place is completely free. You enrol for yourself only, one place, one checkout. The moment you enrol, we email you everything you need, including a simple link to pass on. You forward that email to your friend, and they enrol themselves with it. Because they enrol in their own name, their own Emotional Culture Deck and Change Toolkit ship straight to their door, and their course and community access is set up directly for them. The only thing they pay is the shipping on their own kit, wherever they are in the world, even if they already own the deck. Why does it exist? Because learning this together is what makes it stick.

Does my friend also get a physical deck and toolkit? ▾

Yes. Your friend gets everything you get. The full course. The community. The bonus sessions. And their own physical Emotional Culture Deck and Change Toolkit shipped to their door, wherever they are in the world. The only thing they pay is the shipping on that kit. Your enrolment fully covers their course place and the kit itself.

Can I bring more than one friend, or enrol my whole team? ▾

The bring-a-friend offer covers one extra person free during the 48-hour window. For a few people, the simplest path is for each person to enrol with the EARLY249ECS code at US$249. For a larger group or a whole team, email team@ridersandelephants.com and we will sort you a team option that doesn't make finance scream.

Do all tiers get the bonus sessions? ▾

Yes. Every cohort member gets all three bonus sessions: two live Q&As with practitioners putting this into practice, plus one live session run by Jeremy and designed in partnership with Professor Michael Parke at the Wharton School. It doesn't matter which tier you enrolled on. Same room, same conversation, same recordings.

Who is this course for? ▾

Two kinds of people get the most from it. Internal leaders carrying their own people through a change: change managers, OD managers, HR leaders, and leaders steering a restructure, a merger or a transition. And external practitioners who take change to their clients: consultants, OD practitioners, facilitators and coaches who want a distinctive tool and a shared language they can use in any room. It also works far beyond work, on the changes we all live through.

Do I need to have done another course first, or know the deck? ▾

No prerequisite at all. You can arrive as an absolute beginner who has never touched the Emotional Culture Deck, or even heard of it, and this course is built for you. It's just as built for the most experienced people in our community: people who've used the deck and led culture and leadership conversations for years come and do this, and still find something new. So do seasoned change professionals, who take it and mash it into the methodology they already run day to day. From first-timer to expert, it meets you where you are. You'll see that range in the reviews.

I already own the Emotional Culture Deck. Should I still enrol? ▾

Yes. The deck is a tool. The course teaches you how to use it through change specifically: how to lead yourself through it first, how to hold the conversations people avoid, how to co-create the way forward with a team. Most graduates who already owned the deck say the course is what made them actually use it. And in the window, your friend gets their own deck shipped too, so bringing someone along still gives them the full kit.

What time zones are the live calls in? ▾

Every live call runs at 9:00am New Zealand time. To find your own local time, drop "9am NZT" into any time zone converter for your region. Your five Cohort Conversation Calls fall on the first five Thursdays of the cohort: 3, 10, 17 and 24 September, and 1 October 2026. Three live bonus sessions follow later in the cohort, around weeks 12, 20 and 24, on other weekdays but still at 9:00am NZ time.

Once you enrol and join the community, every one of these events appears in the course event space in your own local time, ready to add straight to your calendar. And every call is recorded and posted in the cohort room within 24 hours, so you never miss out.

Can I pay in my own currency? ▾

Yes. Prices on this page are shown in USD. At checkout you can choose the currency you'd like to pay in, using the currency selector at the top right of the store.

Is there a money-back guarantee? ▾

Yes. 30 days from your start date. If the course isn't what you needed, email us and we will refund you. No fuss.