Building Team Spirit as Community

By Larry Fidelus, Director of the Carmelite Retreat Center in Chicago

Community, its elusiveness and calling, has been at the center of much of our work over the last several years at the Carmelite Spiritual Center in Darien, Illinois (about 30 minutes south west of Chicago). It has also been a part of my journey leading me to be with people and in places that I could not have imagined. This journey into the understanding and process of community has been challenging and rewarding. It continues to inspire me. It has proven to be both a personal and group experience continually unfolding as new approaches and connections are made.

Several years ago at the Carmelite Center we recreated our vision and mission. We felt that the call to community has been one of the themes of our Carmelite Order since its inception. Community … that difficult yet necessary human encounter with each other. We invited M. Scott Peck's Foundation for Community Encouragement to bring community building workshops to the Center. With guidance from these workshops and other sources, our hope was to reach a new audience interested in the theme of spirituality in the workplace. Our hope was to offer retreats, workshops and programs to people from all walks of life and organizational settings. These inclusive programs were to offer to the participants an experience of renewal while providing tools and insights that they could apply to their own personal and organizational journeys.

One of the wonderful doors that was opened to us as we searched for new partnerships and programs was the Robert Greenleaf Center on Servant-Leadership. The striking message of Robert Greenleaf was his call for leaders to build community in their organizations.

I was introduced to Barry Heermann and Team Spirit through Richard Smith, Senior Educator at Servant Leadership's Greenleaf Center in Indianapolis. I attended the Team Spirit Certification in the fall of 1996 and felt that Team spirit could offer much to organizations at the team or group level. I also felt that offering Team Spirit in conjunction with our other programs at the Center would allow us to help others in a new and exciting way. Since that time my experience with Barry, the Expanded Learning Institute and Team spirit has been spirit filled and inspiring.

Barry and I began to think about the integration of community building with team spirit. The Team Spirit model offers the possibility for the team to enter into what I experience as a deeper level of being and working together. By integrating methods and experiences of what I call a "community building dialogue," the team is invited to experience itself in an even more profound way. I am excited about the potential depth that can be reached when community building dialogue and associated activities are used to compliment to the Team Spirit model.

Barry and I will offer a Special Certification on Building Team Spirit as Community at the Carmelite Center from November 16-20, 1998. For more information I can be reached at the Center at 630-969-4141 or via e-mail at Lfidelus@AOL.com. Larry Fidelus is member of the order of Carmelites, a religious group of friars dedicated to the call of being contemplatives in action. He is director of the Spirituality at Work programs for the Carmelite Retreat Centers in the US and Canada.