Synodality - how is it relevant in the day to day workplace?
Synodality is not only for synods. It is a way of working together, listening to the Spirit in one another and discerning together where God is leading, that can shape the everyday culture of our schools, parishes, retreat centres and works. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we do not walk alone, even when we fail to recognise the One who walks with us. Drawing on years of formation work with the St John of God Sisters in Western Australia, Gerry O’Neill presents a simple framework for building workplaces where people feel safe enough to take risks and engaged enough to create.
At the heart of the session are four quadrants of psychological safety and engagement: disengagement, negative engagement, creative engagement and self-interested engagement. Each is described in terms of what people need rather than how they behave, with concrete examples from a retreat centre.
Participants will take away:
a practical lens for reading the culture of their own community or team
the needs behind each quadrant, and how to respond to them
key skills for synodal conversations: empathic listening, speaking with boldness and humility, summarising, discerning the movement of the Spirit in the group
what we may need to let go of so that synodality can flourish
English with live translation into Spanish and French.