There is no shortage of help for teams that want to improve performance or culture. There is less help for teams that want to ask more searching or higher-level questions that sit beyond key performance indicators.

Normally left to the leader, now organisations are recognising the value of developing a shared vision and resilient culture by tapping into opinion diversity through group facilitation.

Does your team have space to listen?

Organisational and Team Spiritual Direction

Spiritual direction for teams, leadership groups, boards, community projects and organisations. Shared listening and discernment to help groups attend to where God is at work.

Organisational spiritual direction is a facilitated process of shared attention and discernment for groups who sense that there is more happening in their work, and in their life together, than ordinary processes are reaching.

If your team is carrying an important question, navigating a difficult transition, or wants to know how to listen for, and incorporate God's influence and direction – this might be the kind of process you're looking for.

Does any of this sound familiar?

This work is most useful when a team or group is:

facing a question or decision that strategy alone hasn't resolved
going through change, loss, or an uncertain transition
sensing drift from your original purpose or calling
carrying a tension that ordinary processes struggle to resolve
wanting to listen together – more slowly, more honestly – for what is actually being asked of you now
looking for a way of working together that has more depth, and more room for what you believe

You don't need to be a faith-based organisation to engage in this work. You do need to believe that there is something worth attending to that matters beyond the surface.

Slow down
Attend
Listen Together

Organisational spiritual direction treats a team – its common life, its decisions, its pressures, its relationships – the way individual spiritual direction treats a person. Instead of one person bringing their life, a team brings its life together.

The aim is to create a space in which a group can slow down, attend to what is happening spiritually, and become clearer about wise and faithful next steps, discerned through listening to the Spirit, and the challenges they might involve.

Depending on what your team needs, our facilitation and accompaniment might look like:

a guided session around a question or decision
a process of communal discernment through a significant change
a half-day, full-day or multi-day retreat combining reflection, conversation, and listening
support for a team moving through a threshold, a new direction or innovation, a loss, a significant transition
ongoing accompaniment across a series of gatherings
help forming heartful culture, rhythm, rituals and a shared way of working

Sessions can vary in length to suit your pattern. They can be in person or online, at your location or elsewhere. Most people start with a conversation to explore what would actually be useful.

What this isn't

This is not team coaching, organisational development, or a leadership training programme, although it shares some of the same methodologies.

It is not a strategy process, though it can include one.
It is not therapy or a crisis intervention.
It is not individual spiritual direction in a group – we offer that elsewhere.

The people shift that's hard to name but easy to recognise once it's happened.

Teams that take this kind of journey tend to experience something that is hard to name but easy to recognise once it has happened: a deeper alignment that isn't just agreement on objectives, but a shared sense of what you are for and what is being asked of you. This can look like greater focus and confidence.

That shift tends to move a team from being transactional to being genuinely transformational or mission-oriented. It brings greater resilience in turbulence and a rootedness that holds when the pressure is on. Third-party or customer ratings of mission-oriented employees are higher.

It changes the individuals in the team – not just their roles or outputs, but their sense of what this work is actually about.

What this has looked like in practice

A faith based community was moving through a significant moment of reimagining: who they were, what they were called, and how they were going to connect more effectively with people in the city they hadn't yet been able to reach. They had energy and intention, but the questions were bigger than any single conversation had been able to hold.

Over a series of facilitated sessions, the group slowed down enough to listen, to each other, to God's Spirit and to what was being asked of them. What emerged wasn't a strategy imposed from outside but a clarity that surfaced from within: a new name, and a much more grounded, practical sense of how to move forward on their core challenge.

We didn't hand them a plan, they left with a strategy they recognised as genuinely their own.
A charity leadership team of consultants working at the intersection of culture, faith, and public life came together for two days. The structure loosely followed an innovation sprint process but the purpose was different. They were generating ideas but alongside that, listening carefully for direction.

What came back was more ambitious than they had arrived with. Rather than a modest refinement of what they were already doing, the group found themselves with a sharper, bolder sense of calling – a collective why that went well beyond their existing objectives, and a much clearer shared picture of where they were actually headed.

The difference between a 2x conversation and a 10x one, it turned out, was having the right kind of space.

Questions to think through

Could this process be right for your team, these questions might help:

Is there a topic your team keeps returning to without resolution?
Is there a tension that needs exploring?
Does your team have a shared sense of calling, or has that become unclear?
Do you want to create space to listen together, rather than just decide?
Is there something important at stake right now that deserves more than a meeting?
Are there big questions about vision, direction and purpose that you want help working through with independent help?

If several of these resonate, it may be worth a conversation.

Bruce has 30 years of experience working in teams as a creative director, product manager and innovation facilitator, designing and leading processes for organisations navigating complexity and moving towards strategic action. He has facilitated processes with St Martin-in-the-Fields, Bible Society, the Church of England, Welsh Government, the Royal Society of Medicine, and EU R&D projects across education, media, health, and the non-profit sector.
Katharine has over 30 years working with NGOs, churches and charities facilitating transformative group processes that enable growth in congruence, clarity and purpose. Her work spans formal academic environments, informal community settings and mixed‑ability learning groups, always with a commitment to creating spaces where people feel safe, engaged and able to contribute meaningfully. Her facilitation practice is grounded in deep listening and reflective presence.

Who's behind the process

This work is led by Bruce Stanley and Katharine Thompson, both directors who bring substantial experience holding groups, designing reflective processes, and helping teams do serious (and sometimes playful) thinking together.

Start a conversation

If your team is looking for something new in direction and strategy, we would be glad to hear about it.

A first conversation is free, informal and without obligation. You bring your context and the questions you are carrying. We can explore together whether this kind of process might be useful and how to make it suit your context.