RETURN ON ENERGY SERVICES

“We work with our clients to create healthy climates within organizations, teams and communities. Work environments, where people are engaged, creative and innovative, enabling their organizations to achieve sustainable success. As critical as it is for humans to change the way we “fuel” and renew energy to our physical world, it is also critical that we change the way we “fuel” our human interactions. To do so we must change the way we interact within our organizational environments and in our personal lives.”
Source: Harnessing Human Energy to Renew Positive Organizational Climate article by Maureen (Mo) McKenna

Thriving Culture

Leadership begins with mission, vision, values, and strategies

Healthy Climate

Focus on Wellness at Work to create an innovative & productive workplace.

Energizing Conversations

1:1, small group or the whole system. Create high-quality connections to strengthen relationships at all levels.

At Return On Energy, we are leaders in the strength-based approach to organizational change called Appreciative Inquiry. We believe that when you focus on what’s working you get the energy to fix what’s not. We customize our services to meet the unique needs of all our clients.

Why engage Return on Energy?

We have helped organizations create thriving cultures and healthy work climates, for more than twenty years.
We can help you create a psychologically safe work environment, where people are accountable & motivated.
We will work with you to strengthen your leadership, teaming, and communications skills.
We can promise you that your organization will be more positively energized.
We commit to developing the competencies and skills within your organization.

Contact us to learn more about how we can help your leaders and employees thrive and your organization to flourish and grow.

“Leaders who can create psychological safety AND hold their employees accountable for excellence are the highest performing.”

~Harvard Professor, Dr. Amy Edmondson

Creating a Healthy & Innovative Workplace

Consult, Design, Facilitate, Assess, Train & Coach

“One way to generate energy is by framing reality in a new and positive way, people open their minds to seeing new connections between ideas, people or situations. When they suddenly see connections that previously eluded them, they are said to have a flash of insight.”

~Tojo Thatchenkery

Much has been written in recent years about the lack of employee engagement. Organizations study and publish reports telling us that employees are disengaged and that the resulting loss of productivity is costing organizations millions of dollars annually.

Here’s a thought – maybe employees are not disengaged, maybe they’re exhausted?

At Return on Energy, we encourage clients to reframe employee engagement as a mystery to be embraced versus a problem to be solved.

What if we were to study this issue from the other side? What would it look like when all employees say they are engaged?

This perspective begins a whole new conversation and begins to get your Return on Energy. It is a deeper, more meaningful and inclusive conversation that is rich in dialogue, deep listening, and shared understanding.

“I realized during your session that I have been avoiding conversations focused on problem identification and areas of improvement with my staff because I have gone into a state of protection, and fear that such conversations will suck me totally dry. However, if I was to re-direct the questions towards what is going well such as we did last week, my energy levels will increase.”

~Director of Student Services, Ontario University

Leading in Disruptive Times

Creating a passionate mission, compelling vision, core values, and strong beliefs.

“We look at the world through a lens, which we call VUCA, which stands for “Volatile, Unstable, Complex, and Ambiguous.” So you can say, “It’s a very tough world”, or you can say, “It’s a world that’s changing fast, and we can help consumers navigate through it.” … The digital revolution, the shift in consumer spending, all this suggests that companies have to reinvent the way they do business.”

~Keith Weed, Unilever Chief Marketing and Communication Officer

Leading in disruptive times is all about knowing how to navigate in a VUCA world. At ROE, we place an emphasis on helping clients learn through experience, beginning by discovering what’s working, leverage their strengths and the strengths of those they work with, to address these disruptive challenges and opportunities.

We believe that deep learning occurs with direct experience and reflection. We use the Center for Creative Leadership 70:20:10 model for all our engagements. Their research shows that 10% of learning is done in a formal setting, 20% of learning is through social interaction, reflection and 70% of learning is embedded on the job.

We tap into the rich resources of The Center for Positive Organizations (CPO) to design our leadership and teaming interventions. CPO uses scientific evidence to enhance thriving work cultures, interpersonal flourishing, positive emotions and energizing networks. At ROE, we help clients generate positive human energy through our AMPs (appreciative micro-practices). In complex systems, micro-practices can create macro changes.

We draw upon the CPO four strategies for extraordinary performance for Positive Leaders:

Positive Climate – enabling positive emotions to enhance performance;
Positive Relationships – exploring what creates energizers who create and support vitality in others;
Positive Communications – discovering how to energize conversations at work.
Positive Meaning – discovering how work connects to personal passion and/or creates a sense of community.

“The most important factor in predicting the effectiveness of your leaders is a metric you’ve never thought to measure. Find a way to leverage it, and you’ll increase team performance by a factor of four. That factor is positive human energy to fuel your work.”

~Professor Kim Cameron,

Center for Positive Organizations, ,University of Michigan

Strategic Convening through Conversations Worth Having

Engagement at the Whole, at the Department, Team, and Individual Levels.

“Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those of others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture?” ~David Bohm

At Return on Energy, we help clients develop the skills and behaviours to fully and authentically, participate in energizing conversations@work. We help them to use the energy of conflict to fuel positive collaborations. We begin by helping individuals PAUSE before engaging in conversations or meetings.

P – what is the purpose of the conversation?

A – what can I appreciate about the situation, the person/people involved?

U – begin by trying to understand the opinion of the other, before trying to be understood. Test your assumptions.

S –seek to calm yourself and bring when possible, bring a positive emotional state to the meeting

E – engage with positive energy

We offer both public and customized workshop series on Conversations @ work with topics such as: energizing coaching, energizing meetings, energizing conflict, energizing feedback.

We are recognized as Canadian leaders in the field of Appreciative Inquiry and the art of designing and facilitating strategic convening summits.

Strategic convening is all about moving from a traditional hierarchical structure to a networked structure requires new ways of engagement. Moving from small, expert teams creating the plan in isolation to inviting all to be part of the discovery, design and implementation process. It is about the power of the collective mindsets vs expert mindsets.

Experts believe this collective approach has led to a 10 fold increase in productivity at meetings and conventions, leveraging the power of strategic convening by engaging and drawing on the power of everyone in the room.

We have consulted, educated, co-designed and facilitated more than 100 strategic convening events with groups of fifty to one thousand. Often this involves designing whole system interviews and focus groups that inform the major event. We believe in building the capacity of our clients by providing education in all of our consulting.

We have worked with:

Corporations to develop employee engagement to support their rebranding strategy
Canada’s largest hospital system to develop palliative care strategies
School boards to engage their whole system to create “Service Qualities”
Province-wide, engaging >30 Communities to develop Community Employment Action Plans for adults with developmental disabilities.

Strategic convening can work in any environment.

“Maureen McKenna provides the seeds of inspiration as she facilities groups using the Appreciative Inquiry Framework. She began by consulting with us to determine our goals. Using her facilitation experience allows her to create a common ground and direction for participants. She empowers people! We have found that she effectively adjusts her approach according to the flow, dynamics, and creativity of the group. Our challenge was to bring together diverse community members to develop ideas and goals for future working groups. It was a terrific meeting and worthwhile.” ~Gary Crawford, Councillor, Ward 36, Scarborough Southwest

Ready to explore how you can elevate your business and increase your Return on Energy?

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