Yesterday we received this email...

We didn’t design The ECD for families or kids. But we feel grateful and proud that so many people share stories like this with us about their experiences using the game with their kids.

By Lotty Roberts & Steve Hargreaves

Before considering how to manage expectations, it's essential to clarify why you should emphasise expectation management upfront:

As a facilitator or consultant who may use the ECD as part of your practice, there are key benefits for paying attention to and being transparent with the client on expectations – these are:

• The opportunity for ongoing business with a leader or team is optimised if you manage client expectations well (and maybe even exceed them).
• The leader is more likely to recommend you and provide testimonials on you and your offering, which is the best marketing you can have. Think 'Delighted', 'Connected', 'Inspired' and 'Supported clients.
• Not setting expectations can trigger 'disappointed', 'confused', disheartened, undesired feelings is not good for your potential for ongoing engagement with that leader or client or recommending you to others (see points above).
• The ECD is a highly versatile tool you can use in...

Here’s what Jeremy discussed in his conversation with Lauren Parsons on her ThriveTV Show: 

• The back story to The Emotional Culture Deck 
• The benefits of embracing emotions at work
• Why people want to talk about emotions but don’t know how
• The upside of articulating unpleasant emotions 
• Using The ECD to connect your people and teams
• Emotional leadership
• The realness of emotional contagion and how it impacts our teams

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...

Thanks to everyone around the world who shared images of them using our games this month. These bright spots all contribute to helping others realise the power of beautifully simple games to flip the conversations we're having. Many small steps help us take giant strides towards humanising the workplace!

Twice a year, we bring New Zealand based Elephant Riders (and guests) together for an evening of learning, inspiration and connection.

Check out some of what we learned from our inspiring speakers in our April Gatherings.

Thanks so much to our incredible April panellists; Tamara Buckland, Head of People – Sharesies, Eva Perrone, Innovation Manager – KPMG; Jakub Jurkiewicz, Agile Coach – Agile Coaching Lab, Melanie Howell, People & Transformation – BurgerFuel, Professor Sarah Leberman – Massey University, and Elizabeth McNaughton, Co-founder – Hummingly.

Looking forward to seeing more New Zealand Elephant Riders and guests at our next Elephant Rider Gatherings at the end of 2021. 

– By Jeremy Dean, Founder and Master Gamemaker at R&E.

Emotion plays a huge part in how people make decisions and how they feel about the situations that affect them.

People want to be heard, they want to feel, they want to be understood, they want to bring their full selves to their work (and life).

They want to express themselves.

But right now, they can’t – because:

They haven’t had permission;

They haven’t had mechanisms;

Their emotions are seen as weakness.

So much is being left unsaid because people aren't given permission to be open and vulnerable.

And because of that, so much human potential and opportunity is being stifled or going untapped.

To reverse that, R&E believe we need to create a conversation renaissance.

We need to encourage people to speak up and to share their emotions openly and honestly.

Our research shows that organisations and individuals should be looking at harnessing emotions to their strategic advantage.

...