The Relationship Evolution Method for Measurable Organizational Change
When leaders learn how to be in a real relationship with their people, everything downstream changes
15+
Strategic long term partnerships with government agencies throughout British Columbia
300+
Organizations and communities transformed
25+
Years of relational practice
200+
Keynotes and presentations, both locally and internationally
Leaders come to us when they realize their workplace and community cultures have descended into:
- Toxic communication cycles
- Unresolved conflicts
- HR complaints
- Harassment cases
- High turnover
- Insubordination
In many communities the impacts of oppression and trauma have impacted people’s capacity and willingness to communicate and cooperate effectively together. No training program can teach someone how to respond to these complexities.
Training and workshops produce self-reported change, which is always more generous than what the people around them would report. That’s because change can’t be imposed. Real behaviour change is experiential and it happens in relationship with others who are changing too.
In any organization trying to bring about positive measurable change while also managing complexity, the greatest need is trusted ongoing support that helps leadership strengthen communication and collaboration, and build organizational capacity over time.
"We don't make organizations feel better about themselves. We make them really better, for everyone."
Denise Findlay
Change is relational
Our work goes beneath strategy and policy to strengthen the relational conditions that make change possible.
- Trust
- Accountability
- Courageous communication
- Conflict navigation
- Pattern recognition
- Alignment
- The capacity to collaborate across difference
The consulting model where an outsider arrives with the answers has never worked in this terrain. We come in as partners and walk alongside your leadership, looking for what’s happening beneath the surface and what’s getting in the way. From there we build the relationships and the systems that make change hold.
The 5 Pillars of the Relationship Evolution Method
Large Group Process and Transformation
Systems are inherently wise when all voices can be heard and explored.
Once people become more aware of existing patterns, change tends to follow on its own.
Relationship Research
People need to feel emotionally and psychologically safe.
Real relationships take intention and time. Trust can’t be fast-tracked.
Professional Coaching
Coaching looks forward.
The focus is on deepening what someone is learning about themselves and helping them take real steps forward towards realising their potential.
Indigenous and Contemplative Education
Wisdom traditions have been teaching people how to stay in relationship through difficulty for thousands of years.
That knowledge builds our ability to communicate and work across differences.
Lived Experience
Everyone in the room brings a history and a worldview that shapes what they see and what they think is possible.
The work goes better when all of it is in play.
What to expect from the relationship evolution in the first year
Nine concrete steps, organized into four phases, each one grounded in a pillar of the method.
PHASE 1. Understanding the System
1. Assessment
2. Relationship Building
3. Interviews
4. Summarization of Themes
Before anything changes, we listen. We assess where the organization is starting from, build relationships with the people we’ll work alongside, conduct one-on-one interviews to surface what isn’t said in group settings, and summarize what we hear into themes people recognize as accurate.
PHASE 2. Building Trust Together
5. Group Work
With themes on the table, we bring people together. Facilitated large-group process gives the organization space to work through what’s really going on as a group, in real time, building a culture that values every voice.
PHASE 3. Coaching for Change
6. Executive Coaching
7. Systems Coaching
Change that lasts happens at both the individual and systems level. Executive coaching helps leaders turn insight into action and systems coaching applies that same forward-looking lens to how the organization works as a whole.
PHASE 4. Deepening Capacity
Leadership Education
Skill Development and Practice
The four phases are built around a first year, but sometimes partnerships continue past that because the work opens up as trust builds. Sometimes organizations can’t get a twelve-month contract through their approval process quickly, so month-to-month lets them begin while the longer agreement gets sorted.
Every organization holds two sets of relationships
INSIDE YOUR organization
- Organizational Systems Coaching and Group Facilitation
BETWEEN YOUR organization AND THE COMMUNITY
- Strategic Partnerships and Project-Specific Engagements
The relationships that decide whether your organization holds together under pressure
We work directly with leadership teams and the employees they lead, as one connected system. Lasting culture change happens when senior leaders, managers, and staff build the same relational skills together, supported by facilitated dialogue and honest reflection.
We bring specialized training in Process Psychology and Large Group Transformation Facilitation, a background in attachment psychology and trauma-informed approaches, and certification in Organization Relationship Systems Coaching.
The 4 areas we work:
Preventing Leadership Splitting
We strengthen managers as relational bridges between staff and senior leadership, so concerns are resolved at the right level instead of flowing upward unaddressed.
Communication & Collaboration
We replace indirect, siloed communication with direct, courageous dialogue to build trust and shared ownership across every level of the organization.
Conflict Navigation
We build leaders’ capacity to address tension directly and in the moment, with compassion and accountability, rather than avoiding or escalating it.
Reducing Communication Toxins
We interrupt patterns of blame, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling and replace them with psychological safety and relational trust.
Nothing here is delivered to your people. It’s built with them. By the end, your managers are running the conversations we started.
What Changes?
For Leaders:
- Stronger capacity to communicate and collaborate across difference
- Practical tools for working relationally
- Increased confidence navigating conflict and tension in diverse groups
- A model they can carry back into their own teams
For Organizations:
- Healthier workplace culture, with relationship-building embedded in how work gets done
- More effective cross-functional and cross-difference collaboration
- Leaders equipped to bring together and align diverse stakeholders
- A living example because we model what we teach
Ready to Ignite a Relational Revolution in Your organization?
The relationships that decide whether the community trusts what you build
We partner with organizations whose work is done in relationship with a community. For more than twenty years that has meant health authorities, Nations, non-profits, government agencies and private sector organizations across Canada.
Everything you deliver reaches people through the quality of those relationships.
A community that trusts you will tell you early what is not working and will keep the work moving when you are not in the room. Where people have learned to be wary of you, they comply on paper, disengage in practice, and give you the version of events they think you want, which is how organizations end up delivering programs nobody uses and only finding out years later.
The 5 areas we work:
Community Engagement
We build the conditions for honest conversation between your organization and the people you serve, so what you hear is what is really happening.
Strategy Development
We work with leadership to set direction that the community recognises as theirs.
Curriculum Design and Implementation
We design learning your people will use, grounded in the relationships and the context it is built for.
Culture Transformation
We change how an organization communicates internally so that change holds when we leave.
Community Healing Initiatives
We support communities carrying the impacts of harm to rebuild the relationships that make collective wellbeing possible.
The objective is to build capability that remains within the organization long after the engagement is complete.
What Changes?
For your organization:
- Decisions that hold, because the people affected helped shape them
- Programs that get used rather than launched
- Early warning when something is going wrong, while it’s still small
- Staff who stop absorbing the community's frustration on your behalf
For the community you serve:
- A relationship where telling the truth is worth the effort
- Visible evidence that what they said changed what you did
- Their own knowledge and history treated as expertise rather than consultation input
You already know ticking boxes isn't inclusion. Let's talk about what's really going on.
Our multidisciplinary team brings expertise across three complementary areas
Dr. Denise Findlay
- Indigenous leadership
- Governance advisory services
- Executive coaching
- Strategic planning
- Leadership development
Shanelle Bath
- Organizational development
- Attachment-informed practice
- Trauma-informed approaches
- Organizational wellness
Angie Brinoni
- Change management
- Conflict transformation
- Restorative organizational processes
- Communication systems
- Implementation support
Our team brings practical lived experience helping leaders hold growth and accountability together with everything the community is asking of them.
We don't collect the cheque and move on
Your relationship with us works the same way as the ones we're helping you build
Priorities change as trust develops inside an organization, so a fixed list of deliverables rarely survives contact with the work. A retainer directs support where it is most needed and replaces multiple scopes of work, contract amendments and approval processes with a single agreement and a predictable monthly investment.
You reserve our capacity for the year and we point it at whatever the organization needs most that month.
Quarterly reviews
Every three months we run a strategic review to confirm the work is doing what it was brought in to do. In it we:
- Reflect on progress and accomplishments
- Identify emerging organizational priorities
- Confirm priorities for the upcoming quarter
- Adjust the scope of work and activate additional supports
How we measure it
We measure baseline conditions before the work begins and compare them against results afterward, which gives an evidence-based picture of the change that has taken place. Regular check-ins track progress against goals throughout, so problems get caught early enough to change course.
Choose the length of our relationship
The deepest change happens in organizations that give the work a full year and longer.
Every partnership is built for the organization it belongs to, so the work starts with a visioning session and a written proposal. From there we agree whether a retainer or a payment schedule makes sense for us both and once agreed we draft the contract.
We only take on 4 of these projects each year. The work asks for a level of presence that cannot be spread across many organizations at once, and an organization part way through it needs us fully available.
The real work is in the space between people
Questions leaders ask
What happens if the partnership isn't working?
Either of us can say so, and the quarterly review is where it gets said out loud. We have ended partnerships that stopped working and we would rather do that than take a fee for something that has stopped producing anything. Nothing about the agreement obliges you to stay in a relationship that isn’t serving the organization.
How long does an engagement run?
The four phases are built around a first year, but sometimes partnerships continue past that because the work opens up as trust builds. Sometimes organizations can’t get a twelve-month contract through their approval process quickly, so month-to-month lets them begin while the longer agreement gets sorted.
We need the internal work first. Can the community piece come later?
Yes, and it happens often. Internal work usually surfaces something about the community relationship, and community work almost always turns up something internal. The quarterly review is where the scope changes.
Do you only work with Indigenous organizations?
No. We work with health authorities, non-profits, government agencies, private sector organizations and Nations across Canada and beyond. The method came out of Indigenous and contemplative traditions and it applies wherever people have to work together across differences.
What happens between the quarterly reviews?
Coaching sessions, group facilitation, interviews, leadership education, or whatever the current phase calls for. The reviews are where direction gets confirmed for the coming quarter.
Can this be delivered remotely?
Yes. We run full partnerships online with organizations outside our travel range, and the coaching, leadership education and group process all work well that way. Where we can be in the building with people we will be, because the assessment phase gets richer when we are, but we build the mix around where your people are and what suits your organization best.