Making room to listen.
Premium facilitated listening experiences for leadership retreats, executive teams, and organizations. ListenStill combines live string music, guided reflection, and intentional room design to help groups practice attention, presence, and listening under complexity.
A room designed for listening
ListenStill is a guided listening experience built around sound and reflection.
It is designed for organizations that want a focused, memorable way to develop listening, attention, and group awareness outside the format of a conventional workshop.
The experience includes live string music, nature sounds, guided prompts, reflection cards, floor or chair seating, and subtle lighting. Each element is chosen to support intentional pause and mindful attention.
For organizations where attention shapes outcomes
Executive leadership teams
For senior leaders who spend much of their time in rooms where timing, judgment, restraint, and trust matter. ListenStill gives these teams a structured experience for practicing attention before discussion, so they can enter strategic conversations with more awareness of pace, pressure, silence, and group dynamics.
Leadership retreats and offsites
For organizations planning a retreat that needs more than presentations, breakout groups, and discussion prompts. ListenStill can serve as an opening, closing, or midpoint experience that helps participants shift out of ordinary meeting mode and into deeper attention before the next piece of work begins.
Cross-functional teams
For teams working across departments, roles, or areas of expertise, especially when coordination, handoffs, decision rights, or priorities are unclear. ListenStill helps participants notice how groups handle timing, interruption, silence, tension, and shared attention before those patterns show up again in meetings and projects.
Mission-driven and high-responsibility organizations
For organizations whose work requires sustained attention, care, judgment, and emotional steadiness, including education, healthcare-adjacent, nonprofit, arts, civic, and faith-adjacent settings. ListenStill offers a structured pause that helps groups step out of constant output and reconnect with presence, purpose, and shared responsibility.
A guided arc of attention
Every ListenStill session is designed as a complete experience, from the way participants enter the room to the way they return to conversation, decision-making, or reflection.
Arrive
Participants enter a room prepared for listening, with intentional seating, lighting, sound, and simple materials.
Settle
A brief orientation helps participants understand what will happen and what is expected of them.
Listen
Live music, nature sounds, or guided sound design create a shared field of attention.
Notice
Short prompts invite participants to observe what they hear, where their attention goes, and what shifts over time.
Reflect
Participants use a reflection card to write, sketch, or simply pause with what they noticed.
Return
The session closes gently, allowing people to return to the rest of their day without being rushed back into noise.
The organizational value of deeper listening
ListenStill is not a break from leadership work. It is a structured way to strengthen the attention that leadership work depends on.
Better listening before harder conversations
Many teams try to solve problems before they have noticed how they are listening to one another. ListenStill gives participants a shared experience of slowing down, tracking attention, and noticing patterns before they return to strategy, conflict, decision-making, or change work.
A stronger transition into retreat work
Retreats and offsites often begin while participants are still carrying the pace of email, travel, deadlines, and unresolved work. ListenStill gives the group a clear threshold experience, helping people arrive mentally before asking them to collaborate, reflect, plan, or make decisions.
A concrete experience of executive presence
Executive presence is often described in vague terms. ListenStill makes it observable through timing, silence, restraint, attention, and response. Participants can feel the difference between reacting quickly and listening long enough to understand what is happening in the room.
Improved awareness of group dynamics
Teams often miss the early signals that shape a meeting: who enters quickly, who waits, who fills silence, who withdraws, where tension gathers, and when the room loses focus. ListenStill gives participants a shared vocabulary for noticing those patterns without turning the session into a critique of specific people.
A memorable alternative to generic workshops
Most leadership development relies on slides, discussion, and exercises. ListenStill uses live music and guided reflection to create a focused experience participants are more likely to remember, reference, and connect back to their daily work.
Support for culture, change, and trust
During change, teams need more than information. They need attention, steadiness, and the ability to stay present without rushing toward false certainty. ListenStill helps groups practice those capacities in a low-risk setting before applying them to higher-stakes conversations.
Ways to experience ListenStill
ListenStill can stand alone as a focused listening experience or become part of a larger leadership development session. Each format uses live music, guided reflection, and intentional room design to help participants practice attention, presence, timing, and listening under complexity.
01
60-Minute ListenStill Experience
A complete facilitated listening experience for organizations that want to create a meaningful pause within a retreat, staff gathering, community program, or leadership event.
Participants are guided through an intentional arc of arrival, live music, focused listening, reflection, and return. This format works well when the goal is to help a group slow down, reset attention, and experience listening together without adding a longer workshop or discussion component.
Best for: retreats, staff gatherings, community programs, arts organizations, libraries, mission-driven organizations
Format: 60 minutes
Includes: live string music, guided listening prompts, reflection materials, room setup guidance, and a host planning call
02
ListenStill + Debrief
A 60-minute ListenStill experience followed by a facilitated conversation that helps participants connect what they noticed to their work, leadership, and group dynamics.
The debrief helps the group name patterns around silence, interruption, pace, tension, restraint, and attention. Participants leave with clearer language for what often happens in meetings before anyone names it.
Best for: leadership teams, boards, retreat groups, staff care days, cross-functional teams
Format: 90 minutes
Includes: 60-minute ListenStill experience, facilitated debrief, tailored reflection prompts, room setup guidance, and a host planning call
03
Half-Day Leadership Workshop
A leadership development workshop built around the premise that attention is a leadership capacity that can be diagnosed, practiced, and developed.
This format combines the ListenStill experience with the ensemble-based diagnostic framework. Participants examine the patterns that shape how teams listen, coordinate, avoid tension, share authority, move too quickly, or lose alignment.
Best for: leadership cohorts, cross-functional teams, managers, high-potential groups, teams navigating change
Format: Half day, typically 4 hours
Includes: sponsor consultation, selected diagnostic lenses, ListenStill experience, applied discussion, facilitated debrief, and shared team commitment
04
Executive Session for Senior Leaders
A premium private session for senior leadership teams, executives, founders, boards, and senior decision-makers working in complex environments.
This format focuses on the attention habits that shape executive team performance: what leaders hear, what they miss, when they speak too soon, where silence carries information, and how the group responds under pressure. The session is customized around the organization’s specific leadership context and two or three selected diagnostic lenses.
Best for: executive teams, senior leaders, founders, boards, advisory councils
Format: Custom private session, typically 3 hours
Includes: sponsor consultation, custom executive framing, selected diagnostic lenses, ListenStill experience, senior-leader debrief, and one concrete leadership commitment per participant
Leadership development built on listening
ListenStill's organizational and leadership work is directed and facilitated by Renée Anne Poulin, PhD — an organizational facilitator, leadership coach, and group coach whose practice spans leadership development, Agile coaching, and team dynamics research across complex, cross-functional environments.
Her work centers on the dynamics that shape how groups speak, listen, decide, and disengage, patterns which are visible long before they appear in a report.
A former university professor with a PhD in Italian/musicology, she treats listening not as a passive act, but as a discipline that can be developed.
She performs as a violinist and serves as Vice President of the Overland Park Orchestra's Board of Directors.
Design a session for your organization
Every ListenStill engagement begins with a 30-minute conversation about your organization, your group, and the leadership context you are bringing into the room.
Use the form below to share what you are planning. If the fit is right, you will receive a recommended format, scope, and next steps.