Simone Weil and the Inner Weather of a Workplace

Every organisation has two lives. One is visible and busy. It deals with plans, meetings, deadlines, and reports. The other is quieter. It is carried in the way people greet one another, in what they notice, and in what they quietly protect. This quieter life forms the soul of the organisation, the part that cannot be measured but that shapes everything.

By soul I do not mean something mystical. I mean the depth of a group, the inner atmosphere that grows from its habits of attention. Simone Weil understood attention as a form of moral life. She wrote that attention is a kind of waiting, an openness to what is real. This idea has been on my mind as I prepare for the next Hedge School on 27 December. The theme is thresholds, and Weil has much to say about the thresholds of perception.

Weil’s own life gives us a sense of what she meant by attention. She worked briefly in Renault factories in Paris. She was a gifted scholar, but she chose to work on the factory floor so that she could understand the conditions of the workers she wrote about. She refused to write from a distance. She wanted her attention to be shaped by experience, not by theory. Later, during the war, she spent time in fields in the south of France helping local farmers with the harvest. She believed that real thought begins with contact, with the grain of ordinary life. Her attention was not an idea. It was a practice.

When we speak of the soul of an organisation, we are speaking of something similar. We are speaking of how a community pays attention. What does it look at with care. What does it ignore. What does it allow to come close. What does it keep at arm’s length. These choices reveal its inner life far more clearly than any official statement. They also reveal its moral weather, the quiet climate that shapes how people feel and act, often without noticing it themselves.

I think of this often when I am outside planting trees. The land here is quiet and the work is slow. At this time of year the trees are dormant. The sap has sunk. The leaves have fallen. From the outside, nothing seems to be happening. Yet this is the moment when transplanting becomes possible. The roots can be lifted without harm. The tree can take on a new place because it is resting.

There is something in this that speaks to organisations. The surface may look still, yet the inner life is active and capable of change. Roots can be tended. Soil can be improved. Dormant seasons are often the most important ones, because they decide what will grow when the light returns.

An organisation begins to lose its soul when it no longer allows for this depth. When speed becomes its only rhythm, and everything is pushed through the narrow frame of what can be counted, the inner life starts to thin. People still work. Meetings continue. Targets are met. Yet something essential has drained away. The place becomes rootless, unable to feed on anything deeper than its own momentum.

By contrast, an organisation with soul pays attention to the quiet things that hold a community together. It notices the tone of daily interactions. It honours the small gestures that give dignity to the work. It allows space for reflection, even brief reflection, so that the pace does not strip the meaning from the task. It understands that relationships are not a distraction from the work. They are the ground in which the work takes root.

I have seen organisations regain their soul in simple ways. A leader takes the time to hear the story behind a colleague’s frustration. A team pauses before a difficult decision and asks what they might be overlooking. A group remembers its origins, not for nostalgia but to recover a sense of purpose. These gestures seem small, yet they are like tending the soil around a sapling. They make growth possible.

Leaders have a particular role here, not through control but through attention. A leader does not create the soul of an organisation. The soul is already there, formed by the history and the people. But a leader can help it breathe. A leader can make space for the conversations that carry memory and meaning. A leader can notice who is becoming tired and who is losing heart, and can respond with steadiness rather than haste. A leader can honour the long view, remembering that deep work unfolds in seasons, just as trees do.

None of this requires new initiatives or elaborate plans. It begins with a willingness to look closely and to listen. It begins with a simple question. What are we paying attention to. And what have we stopped noticing.

An organisation with soul is not perfect. It still makes mistakes. It still carries strain. But it remembers what it is for. It understands that its inner life matters. It knows that work is more than a sequence of tasks. It is a form of relationship, a way of belonging, a shared attempt to keep something alive.

As winter settles in and the planting season begins, I think again of the dormant trees waiting in their bundles. They look lifeless now, yet they carry the possibility of future woodlands. They only need attention, patience, and a place to root themselves. Organisations are not so different. Their inner life may be quiet, almost hidden, but it holds the possibility of renewal. Soul grows slowly, yet it can grow again. Even the moral weather can change when given time and care.