Official Emotional Change Strategy Certification Course
Become Emotional Culture Deck Change Practitioner, certified by Riders & Elephants
14 October, 9.30 - 17.00, Sofia Tech Park
Your change plan is ready. Are your people?
Most organisations prepare the strategy, timeline and communication. Far fewer equip their leaders to work with what people feel when change becomes real.
Build the internal capability to surface what is not being said, lead better conversations and turn emotional insight into action.
The Friction
The case has been made and people briefed. Questions have been answered.
Yet decisions are challenged again, concerns move into side conversations and teams return to old habits.
The instinct is to communicate more. But people may already understand the plan. What remains unspoken is what the change means for them.
This is the work beneath the work. When these concerns have nowhere useful to go, they surface as resistance, withdrawal, conflict and quiet compliance.
COMMUNICATION CREATES CLARITY. WORKING WITH EMOTIONS CREATES OWNERSHIP.
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The Gap
What people do not say still shapes what they do.
People may understand the plan and still be asking themselves:
What am I losing?
Will I still be valued?
Can I succeed in the new way of working?
Do I have any real influence here?
Can I trust the people leading this?
Is it safe to say what I actually think?
When these questions have no good place to go, they do not disappear. They turn into resistance, silence, conflict, delay, and agreement that never becomes real commitment.
Every change creates an emotional response. Few organisations know how to work with it.
There is usually a project plan, a communication schedule and a timeline. There is rarely anything planned for what happens inside people once the change actually starts.
This gap does not show while everything is calm. It becomes clear the moment people have to actually change how they work, give something up, or take on something new. At that point, what people feel has to go somewhere. It shows up in how much they trust their leaders, how fast decisions get made, and how much of the plan actually happens once real people have to carry it out.
Build the capability to lead change through emotion.
Outside consultants cannot be there for the moments that decide if a change will last.
Change is not a single event anymore. It shows up constantly: new technology, restructuring, shifting priorities, new leadership, changing expectations.
People experience all of this in team meetings, one-to-one conversations and everyday decisions, not only in a launch presentation.
That is why this capability needs to live inside your organisation, in leaders, HR, L&D and change professionals who can use the Emotional Culture Deck to:
The goal is not to make everyone feel positive or remove all resistance. It is to make the emotional experience easier to name, discuss and consider in how the change is led.
The Certification
The ECD Emotional Change Strategy Practitioner Certification is a one-day, in-person course. It gives you a practical method for working with how people feel about change, not just a better way to explain the change to them.
You leave with steps you can use right away, in your next one-to-one conversation, your next team meeting, and the next change your organisation asks you to lead.
Completing the course gives you the Emotional Change Strategy Practitioner Certificate and badge, within the Riders and Elephants ECD Certified Pathway. This is a practitioner-level certification. It prepares you to use the method in your own work. It does not authorise you to train or certify other people.
Meet Your Guide
Lili Meseșan
Learn with someone who understands both systems and people.
Lili is a coach and facilitator deeply focused and specialising in what happens beneath the surface at work and how it affects the way people lead, relate, make decisions and respond to change.
She brings more than 25 years of experience in international organisations, including over 16 years at IBM across consulting, leadership, learning and culture transformation.
Lili helps leaders and teams turn emotional awareness into better conversations and more intentional ways of working. Her approach combines deep human understanding with the practical realities of organisational life.
She is an ICF Professional Certified Coach, Eastern Europe’s first Certified Emotional Culture Consultant and the Emotional Culture Deck Chapter Leader for Central and Eastern Europe. She is also the founder of neona.
The Learning Journey
Part 1: Leading Self Through Change. Understand your own reaction to change first, so you can lead from a steady place instead of an automatic one.
Part 2: Leading Others Through Change. Learn how to gobeneath the polite updates and surface what could derail change in individual conversations.
Part 3: Leading Teams Through Change. Help a team build shared trust and agree, together, how they want to move through the change.
Leave with a CLEAR PLAN for using this method in your actual role, not only in the room on the day.
Limited to 12 Senior Leaders, HR, L&D and Organisational Development professionals, Coaches and Consultants
Anyone responsible for the human side of change.
Early Mover by Oct 1, 2026
€550 before VAT (per person)
Standard Pass
€600 before VAT (per person)
The Power Duo
€1000 before VAT (for two people)
What is included
The learning doesn’t end when the day does. You’ll leave with practical tools and resources to put it into action immediately:
What you will be able to do
After the course, you will be able to:
You will leave knowing how to use the Emotional Culture Deck in real change conversations, not simply why emotions matter.
The Emotional Culture Deck
The Emotional Culture Deck is a practical, card-based facilitation tool that helps people express how they feel and how they want to feel at work. It provides a simple, shared language for structured conversations about workplace culture, leadership, performance, wellbeing and change.
The Deck can be used in one-to-one conversations, team meetings, leadership sessions and workshops. It is used by leaders, managers, HR and L&D professionals, coaches, facilitators and consultants. IBM, KPMG, Panasonic and Westpac already use it, and it comes with a way to measure what shifted.
More than 500,000 people in 70+ countries use the Emotional Culture Deck, across over 1,500 organisations worldwide.
Become ECD practitioner. Make change land.
The plan can move fast now. People choosing to commit to it does not happen on its own. It has to be built.
You have a plan for the change. Now build the way to work with how people actually feel about it.