Are You Trying To Create a Resilient Leadership Culture That Welcomes Change?

Our bold approach to leader development creates change.

For many leaders it’s not about knowing the business. They know the business– it’s about how they manage themselves and how they get the best from the people that work for them. Even when they are under tremendous pressure.

Our work explores complex real-world issues and are meant to simulate that real-world response which can strengthen an individuals critical thinking, problem-solving, and conflict-resolution skills. Each program is comprised of experiential exercises, deliberate at-work practice, and social learning that allows for discussion, awareness and change in perspective.

The result: Leaders who can manage themselves and get the best from the people who work for them… even when they are under tremendous pressure.

NEW PROGRAMS: Refinery Select is a carefully selected set of programs that have been some of our most requested. These programs contain the best of Refinery’s experiential design and results that are in our customized programs, but at a price point that may be more accessible to clients.

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New Programs

A Better Approach to Development

Leadership Is Not Just Cognitive, It Is Physical As Well

Just as you can’t learn to play hockey by reading a book, leaders can’t develop their leadership skills by understanding only concepts and theories. They need to experience new skills viscerally in order to feel their impact and begin the process of learning how to apply them.

Our Approach Works

We have delivered results for our clients for more than 20 years, which has resulted in creating stronger cultures across multiple business lines and levels of leadership. We are a well-oiled machine of people and have the infrastructure and resources to get you where you need to go. Just ask any of our long-term clients.

Real Results

Just ask any of our long-standing clients why they continue to work with Refinery. Our work is transformative, born out of a combination of academic research, adult learning theory, behavioural psychology and our own real experiences from our lives. The result: Leaders who can manage themselves and get the best from the people who work for them.

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How We Are Different

An Approach that Gets Results

Our programs keep going where traditional or classroom development stop. Understanding the theory is not enough. Without behavioural shifts a leader will fail to make real change. We add an experience that enables leaders to look at how they are showing up and practice behavioural shifts that are necessary for them and their team’s success.

Who We Work With

We work with clients who are tired of investing in training programs that don’t provide lasting results. They need a partner who can transform their people into leaders who inspire and motivate others and, at the same time maintain a core level of self-awareness and deep understanding of the world they work in.

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Work We’ve Done

International Mining
Company

Leadership Development

Mining

Fortune 500 Resource
Company

Frontline Leadership Development

Energy

Canadian Communications
Company

Leadership Development

Telecommunications

Travel Technology
Company

Strategic Planning

Technology

Where We Shine

Leader Development

We know that when leaders understand themselves, they begin to understand others. We constantly dig, poke, play, challenge people to think differently about themselves and their environment. The results? More agile, resilient, caring leaders who get the best out of their people.

Team Alignment

Getting alignment on a team is more than doing a ropes course, sitting around a campfire or taking personality assessments. Getting true alignment on a team requires facing the truths about what is standing in the way of trust and productive conflict. That is where real alignment begins.

Strategic Planning

Let’s be honest. Most strategic plans are beautiful on paper but lack any real substance. Our unique, sometimes controversial approach to strategic planning begins with focusing on your Desired Future State first, then understanding where you are at today, and what’s standing in your way of where you want to go. Our strategic planning process always begins with Team Alignment to ensure that you’ve got the right voices contributing to the future of your organization.

Inclusive Leadership

Creating a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion has to go beyond basic workshops on unconscious bias, identity awareness and inclusivity. Our ground-breaking work helps Leaders to understand their role in creating cultures of change within their organizations.

Executive Coaching

Our certified executive coaches help leaders to learn new ways of communicating, behaving, and understanding their team members and the world that is influenced by them. Whether a leader engages in a 6, 9 or 12-month program, they will experience an immediate difference in their work and personal lives.

Our Calgary Team

Rhonda Gorman, VP, Client Leadership

Rhonda brings a breadth and depth of corporate experience across sectors such as energy, technology, communication and education. She is known for building and nurturing long-standing client relationships. Rhonda brings a deep understanding of people and the impact that great leadership has on business results and partners with her clients to ensure their desired outcomes are met.

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Catherine Burdette, Consultant, Executive Coach

Prior to becoming a coach, Catherine spent over 20 years in the workplace having held senior roles in management and leadership. An accomplished facilitator and executive coach since 2009, she is highly knowledgeable in the fields of emotional intelligence, resilience, and mindfulness as pathways to transformational, sustainable change and impact. As a trusted partner to leaders and organizations around the globe, she enjoys working with diverse populations in profit, non-profit and government entities.

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Franc Godri, Consultant, Executive Coach

Franc Godri is a certified executive coach with 30+ years of military and corporate leadership experience. During his military career, Franc was an officer, pilot, and a member of one of Canada’s Arms Inspection Teams. Corporately, he worked at the senior executive levels in the investment and technology industries.

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Melody Taylor, Executive & Leadership Consultant

Melody brings twenty years of experience in management consulting and leadership roles. Her approach is informed by work as a business leader, engineer, management consultant, self-driven learner and committed team partner. Her approach is integrative, helping to translate big picture needs into day-to-day, practical behavioural practices. While Vancouver based, Melody has deep roots in Calgary.

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Client Experience

The Challenge
This Calgary-based management team recently experienced a number of organizational changes, including a new CEO. While the team members were all dedicated to the projection of fast growth for the company, some issues around trust and communication needed to be addressed. The members of the team came from diverse backgrounds, experiences and tenure with the company, and there was a tendency for people to work toward consensus to get decisions made rather than taking risk or questioning the status quo. The team was tasked to deliver a new strategy and were scheduled to meet with their Board to present a bold plan, so it was imperative they showed up as united team.

Our client sponsor who had previous experience with Refinery brought us in based on our reputation for delivering transformative work where the organization could see immediate results.

Our Approach
After a Discovery process and collaboration with our client, we created a two-day immersive session that would take these leaders beyond the cognitive aspect of learning by incorporating real-time experiences, group reflection, and practice, all in a safe and trusting environment. This enabled them to immediately make the connections back to their roles and apply learnings.

A peek into the session:
Our senior consultants set the stage by creating a sense of calm in a psychologically safe environment that allowed for what would be some ‘uncomfortable conversations’.

The CEO’s opening comments set the tone on enterprise thinking, that the organization will be so much better if we work together. The team understood this is a new chapter

We then gained alignment on the behaviours of a high-performance team, then allowed the participants to assess themselves as a team in order to prove the “why” of the session. We put the concepts of high-performance teams into action with an experience that moved people outside their comfort zones and had them thinking about teaming from a different perspective. From this, they started to notice the behaviours of “teaming” – what works, what doesn’t work? What are our instinctual behaviours that get in the way of teaming? What do we need to be more intentional about?

We then dove into recognizing ourselves in relation to others i.e. strengths, priorities, motivational values and histories that impact our lens of the world. We also explored how a deeper understanding of self and sharing aspects of ourselves impact trust and relationships.

The session’s objectives were achieved, and leaders walked away with:

Clarity around what it takes to be a high-performing team and an awareness of where the team sees itself
Increased self-awareness about “go to behaviours” and their impacts
Deeper understanding of each of the team members and what matters most to them
Clarity on what gets in our way of trust and collaboration: unconscious bias
Increased trust and ability to communicate more effectively with each other; openness to diverse perspectives
Personal commitment and clarity on what the next steps are moving forward
An exploration of the value of diverse perspectives and how to enable healthy conflict on teams, and
Personal and team accountability for building a high-performing team

The Results
We heard from our sponsor and leaders in the session that there was a great balance of content, theory, and space to make it impactful.

What’s next: We will be coming back for end- of -year planning and revisiting trust & conflict, what’s working, not working, how they are practicing and working on the shift to commitment and how that leads to accountability and results.

When asked what was most impactful:
‘Deeper understanding of individuals in the team and what makes them ticks. Early bonding of team and development of right team norms at early stage of team formation.’