Become a Certified Emotional Leadership Development Practitioner

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Experience and learn practical research-informed strategies and tools for effective emotional leadership that you can implement straight away after this Emotional Leadership Certification Course.

Course Focus: Identify and build the emotions needed for organisational and team success.

Approach: Developing leaders and leadership teams

Benefits: Deepen leadership skills, enhance emotional intelligence, and enable thriving workplace cultures.

Why Emotional Leadership Development matters

Leadership is not only about vision, strategy and achieving goals. It is also about understanding ourselves, how our emotions influence others, and the impact this has on performance, decision making and collaboration.

Emotions are always present at work. However, the emotional side of leadership is often overlooked, underestimated, or entirely denied and suppressed. And cognitive knowledge and skills are simply not enough for successful leadership in today's complex and changing work environments. Effective leaders understand the importance of emotional drivers at work and how to intentionally support emotions that improve communication, team dynamics and performance.

Whether you are an emerging or established leader, leadership coach, facilitator or consultant, this course will help you lead (and support others to lead) in a more human, more effective way so that people and organisations can thrive. And you will have simple, powerful tools to help leaders and teams create connection, trust and psychological safety at work.

What to expect

In this course you will use the Emotional Culture Deck, a deck of cards which sparks meaningful, face-to-face conversations about what drives individual leaders and leadership teams.

You will also use carefully designed Canvases, Handbooks and Conversation Guides that help transform how people work together. You will learn, through experiencing a range of tools and resources, how this enables leaders and leadership teams to use a different lens to understand and shape culture, leading to emotional drivers being uncovered, surfacing what is unspoken, and building self-awareness, empathy and alignment.

You will also have the opportunity to share ideas and experiences with others who are experiencing similar opportunities and challenges, both during and after the course.

Photo credit: Riders & Elephants

Outline of the course

Part 1: Leading Self - Use tools for individuals to identify and reflect on personal leadership emotions and to explore their emotional drivers. Consider how to approach conflict and have courageous conversations using the ECD framework.

Part 2: Leading People - Learn how to identify and establish desired emotions for teams. Understand and apply principles of emotional contagion to positively influence leadership presence and team dynamics,

Part 3: Leading Teams - Develop skills to facilitate team workshops to define a team's emotional culture and to develop leadership behaviours that enable desired emotions.

Part 4: Reflect and Review - Consolidate key learning from the course and set future leadership goals to continue to build emotional leadership and your learning journey.

Part 5: Follow Up Group Coaching Call - Join a follow up group coaching call online via Zoom 8 weeks after the one day course to continue your learning.

What is included in this course

Full day experiential and participatory certification training course
Certificate in Emotional Leadership Development from Riders & Elephants
Emotional Culture Deck (physical card deck)
ECD Leadership Development Toolkit (physical resources and access to digital resources)
Post-course experiments to put learning into practice
60-minute group coaching call c. 8 weeks after the course to support your learning
Opportunity to have a free 90-day all access pass to the R&E Community, including access to the online version of the course during that time
50% discount on future Emotional Culture Deck purchases

Refreshments will be provided during the training day. Please note that lunch is not provided. The venue has a Bistro: "Lovely food, amazing value, and great service! ... Definitely recommend and would come again!" (review of Bistro from the venue's website) or you are welcome to bring your own lunch.

Workshop from an 18-month Team Culture programme delivered to a client by Sonali in 2024-25

Support to help you apply what you’ve learned

This isn’t a one-off learning experience. It’s the start of something deeper. You will have the tools and support to keep growing, experimenting, and embedding your work in human-centred leadership. Here's what is included post-training day:

1:1 or Group Coaching Call (8 Weeks Later)

A follow-up one hour group coaching session via Zoom to help you reflect, troubleshoot, and get unstuck. Bring your real-world experiences, challenges, and questions.

Post-Course Invitation to Implement your Learning

Keep the momentum going with guidance on how to experiement with the tools and approaches that you have learnt. You are invited to take small, powerful actions that suit your context, to deepen your learning and shift behaviours.

50% Discount on Future Decks

You get a substantial discount on all future purchases of physical Emotional Culture Decks to keep growing your toolkit from Riders & Elephants and via ECD Certified Partner and Consultant Sonali Kumarakulasinghe.

90-Day Community Access

After completing the R&E course feedback form, you will be part of our global community for 90 days with an all-access pass to a wealth of resources and conversations. Connect with other practitioners, join live calls, and get support when it matters most.

NEW! Revisit and deepen your learning

During the 90-day access period, you will have access to the online version of this course to revisit and deepen your learning.

Who should attend?

This course has been carefully designed for in-house leaders and external partners who are committed to enabling meaningful and sustainable shifts in workplace culture and leadership. It is particularly ideal for:

Senior leaders and Executives
Managers, Team Leaders and Project Leaders
Organisation Development and Change Management specialists
Human Resources and Learning and Development professionals
Leadership coaches, Facilitators and Consultants
and anyone interested in human-centred leadership at work

About Riders and Elephants

Riders and Elephants are the creators of the Emotional Culture Deck, developed by the Founder, Jeremy Dean. The Deck is used by over 500,000 people in 70+ countries and by some of the biggest (and smallest) organisations around the world.

This Emotional Leadership Development Certification Course is one of four specialist courses using the Emotional Culture Deck from Riders and Elephants (R&E), delivered by R&E and their ECD Certified Partners and Consultants.

Meet your facilitator: Sonali Kumarakulasinghe

Sonali is an ECD Certified Partner and Consultant based in Cambridge, U.K. She has delivered 60+ workshops and group sessions, and many coaching sessions, using the Emotional Culture Deck since 2022.

This has included supporting teams and organisations with 3-18 month culture programmes, working with leaders and managers to develop emotional leadership and agility, and delivering Emotional Culture Deck workshops to support teams to make faster progress on specific challenges.

In her courses and workshops, participants experience a range of tried and tested facilitation techniques that are designed for inclusion and engagement, which you can use and adapt in your own contexts when facilitating leadership development.

" ... one of the most impactful training sessions I have ever attended. Sonali is an inspirational trainer ..." [extract from recommendation on LinkedIn]

Creating Positive Change Together 2025 Conference participants, facilitated by Sonali for Apply Psychology. Photo credit: Clint Randall.

Sonali has delivered Emotional Culture workshops at national conferences including the International Association of Facilitators UK Conference (IAF UK, 2024 and 2025), the UK Association of Solution Focused Practitioners Conference (UKASFP, 2024), the Happy Workplaces Conference (2025), and at Agile on the Bench during the Agile Cambridge Conference (2024 and 2025).

Agile on the Bench at the Agile Cambridge Conference, October 2024. Photo credit: Emily Webber

Contact the host of ECD Emotional Leadership Development Certification Course - Cambridge