Inclusion -
Create a community where everyone is included and where inclusion is
the norm. What could come out of that. Beautiful if everyone could be
themselves
Suzanne's Circle Summary We started by talking about empathy. We did reflective listening until
all three of our understanding of empathy, empathy circles, and empathy
communities, etc felt heard.
Adam and I had questions for Edwin. Adam asked what has been Edwin’s
reception of his proposal/ideas. Edwin said that this takes a lots of
time. Even in his cafe circle there is not the “gel-ling” quite yet. As
an example, there are thousands of followers of the Circle of Empathy
page and yet there were only three of us present this morning. My
question was what is the first step in forming an empathy circle or
group or community. Edwin said sometimes you just have to recognize a
crack and then use empathic conflict resolution at that moment. Once
people have benefited from empathic listening, they are more open to
learning more about it. He suggested to start an empathy circle, go to
the website, print out information, gather willing participants, talk
about empathy and empathic listening, then practice reflective
listening. And, viola, you just had your first empathy circle.
Edwin’s vision, for now anyway, is I start a circle, Adam starts a
circle, then we meet once a week to talk about our circles, the good,
the bad, and the ugly. Find what works and what doesn’t.
Edwin talked about this as a story arc, and we are are the beginning.
It has a beginning, middle and end. I see it as beginning to build a
pyramid with the top of the pyramid being Adam’s beautiful vision of how
the world could be if everyone could be their authentic selves, with
full acceptance because they are human.
We talked about using this document as a sort of “toolkit”. A toolkit
for building local communities, as well as a toolkit for a human
centered design model of empathy. 12-21-13
Transcripts by Edwin
This is the transcript of the circle. It has been edited somewhat
for clarity as well as adding ideas, etc.
Adam I’m really was excited about this empathic community building and have
been thinking about it.
I live in Germany and am excited to meet like minded people with the
same basic gist of creating local community around empathy. I’m very
happy to be here and excited to see where this will take us.
I’m
very happy to be here and
excited to see where this will take us.
Edwin I’ve been doing a lot of online empathy circles and am now looking at
how do we foster, build and create more empathy in society in general.
I'm looking for strategies around that.
A couple years ago I had some meetings here at home and I created a
local empathy community. We did some events but then the group fell
apart. I didn’t have the empathy community building skills and tools
at that time. I’ve been learning those empathic listening skills and
am getting better at it. So, I’m feeling like it’s time to give it
another shot to build actual local empathic community.
Adam talked about growing up in church and the sense of community and
connection he had there. I also grew up in a religious background and
left that, but I miss that community aspect. I’m looking at; can we
create local communities that are based on empathy? That have that
community aspect but without the theology of a religion. I’m look for
ways, processes, and strategies of building that community.
To get that started I wanted to start holding weekly online empathy
circles to bring together people who are interested in working on this
this from around the world.
Also, to get these
communities started I’m also holding
weekly local empathy circles here in the Bay Area. We call these
meetings, Empathy
Cafes and meet in local cafes. We have had 4 to 9 people come to these
circles. So we’re just getting started, it’s just been the last month
that I’ve been putting the intention out there. We just getting the
ball rolling and I’m thrilled to meet you Adam and am also glad to see
you Suzanne again.
Empathy
Cafe in Berkeley -
Dec 30, 2013
Suzanne I’m in Texas and I’ve been in a few circles with Edwin. He’s a pretty
amazing listener. I learn a lot and I need a lot of practice
listening. That’s why I like coming to these circles. So it’s nice to
meet you and I hope your weather is nice there.
I learn a lot and
I need a lot of practice listening.
Edwin
The intention of this circle is to help build the local community here
in the Berkeley area and also for supporting each other to build our own
local communities wherever you are. To think about
empathic communities building,
to strategies
about it.
There’s a student in Holland who would like to make a
dissertation project around how to build empathic communities. So this
might become her student project and I think she has 6 months to work on
it. I hope she is able to join us at a future time. I’ve done work with
her professor around creating these empathy circles.
This is the beginning, the core of getting the ball rolling.
We
could start talking about our dreams
and vision for community.
Would you
like to say something around that?
Adam:
Gladly, I really resonate with what I hear you share, where you talked
about how you missed that sense of community and connection that you
knew from that religious group that you used to be in and that you left.
I can totally resonate with that because my experience is as well that
religion, for example, can provide a good ground for bringing people
together and then when you took it from there and talked about bringing
that to life, that kind of community and that sense of community, based
on empathy. I was like, I’m getting goose bumps just saying that. It’s
like, Wow, I see so much potential in that for true connection and the
meeting of needs without the idea of write and wrong and all that kind
of stuff, that makes it so hard at times.
So, I’m really excited about hearing that and seeing that. And I love
the fact that you said we are at the beginning and this is something
new. so that is something I wanted to say that really resonated with me,
and it’s like, Yes!,
Yes I would love to have something like that here
and then see it pop up all over Germany, the States, or wherever,
because I believe that in itself, if places like that existed where
people could come, where people could come that are totally new to
empathy, that don’t know anything about it, people that maybe are entrenched in enemy
images, and right and wrong thinking, and they could experience that kind of
empathic community.
I believe that empathic community has such a huge potential
for transforming the way our culture is…
that, that.. words fail me to describe.
What kind of transformation could happen. And if those places could open
up their doors, or meet in cafes, then people would know, OK, if I’m
going through a lot of stuff, there are people I can go to and they know
how to listen. I believe that has such a huge potential for transforming
the way our culture is… that, that, words fail me to describe. I look at
it and, Wow! imagine that, all the negative energy, so to speak that
could be pulled out and be transformed into something constructive,
positive. All that got which goes into harming each other, harming
nature and harming our global existence could go into building something
good for everybody and I love that idea.
There’s also the potential for people like us, who already know the
concepts of deep listening and how good that is, and to a certain extent
have integrated these strategies and these approaches into our everyday
life.
It’s convincing power, a certain element of convincing power because it
is so foreign. Over here in In Germany it is so foreign, it’s so natural
to have this against, and you have to fight and not be honest and blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah. So if there is something that works then that is
a great argument for, “hey, check it out.” It’s not just a nice theory,
blah, blah, but it doesn't work.
[note:
we need an empathic community prototype]
[note: so it’s also modeling it so that people can see it and they can see it
the community that modeling it.]
Edwin:
The way they are there in German, like they are here in the US, is it’s competition and so
forth and then people, say we need something else, but then it seems to
be just words, and to have empathic community manifest and have a model of it would be
really, hay, “We’re actually doing it. This is what it looks like.”
Suzuane:
Not only did I hear a lot of passion, but the passion just exploded out
of the top of your head while you were talking. It was a beautiful thing
to see.
I have a view of empathy circles that are already in place now. One of
them is my grief group which is a empathy circle. I keep getting hung up
on that empathy circles are not new.
I also just read the book, “The Republic of Outsiders”, and in there she
talk about people who establish a church and they call it the Church of
Crafting. And every Sunday they get together and they bring their crafts
supplies and they sit around and they craft and they chat. And to me
that is a perfect example of an empathy circle. That’s another way of
doing what Edwin is trying to do where you just have something in common
and you gather people together at a specific time and place and you just
feel more comfortable and free to talk together.
So, I think empathy groups are already going on and have always gone on,
like sewing or quilting bees in the past. They have always gone on, but
they have not been called an empathy circle. So I think if we could just
point out to people, that if you are in any kind of group that actually
is an empathy circle.
So empathy is not really new, people have been doing empathy for long
time.
Edwin
One thing I’ve been doing in the empathy circles is to do some empathic
listening. In our meetings I’m looking for how do we start building the
community and I find the most basic first step is to just use empathic
listening or reflective listening. And that’s even without talking about
the feelings and needs like they do in Nonviolent Communication NVC.
It’s very accessible, you don’t need to do a training with NVC, and it’s
based on the work of Carl Rogers, who Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of
NVC was a student of. NVC basically builds on that basic framework of
reflective listening.
So how about we incorporate empathic listening into our dialog. I’ve
been doing that a little bit already. Does that work for everyone?
The one thing I’m think Suzanne is that we have empathy throughout
society and it’s the glue that holds society together. When people get
together there’s empathic connection. It can be more of less, but there
can also be competition and all kinds of other things like one-ups manship,
etc. What I’m looking at is how do we make that’s equivalent of a church, sangha, synagogue, temple, etc, that is a very consciously created
community. Where we say, “This is a community and foundational value is
empathy and all the values that come out of it. And we are going to look
for ways, processes, ways of deepening that empathy and community". For
me what grows out of empathy is when we connect with each other we have
a sense of inclusion, a sense of being heard, a sense of caring, a sense
of community, belonging…
For
me what grows out of empathy is when we connect
with each other we have
a sense of inclusion,
a sense of being heard, a sense of caring,
a sense
of community, belonging…
So there is a whole series of values and a way
of being that get created and to do that in a very conscious way and have
processes in place where we can deepen that connection. There are so
many different tools, there’s
reflective listening,
empathic
listening,
Focusing from Gene Gendlin, (he was also a student of Carl
Rogers).
there’s NVC, which goes into feelings and needs,
and
Human-centered Design which is a design process that uses empathy.
So
these are all tools that we can use to very consciously and explicitly
build a community that starts with the foundational value of empathy.
Suzanne
I have practiced reflective listening. I think it might be helpful, I
need practice controlling my temper especially listening to Glenn Beck..
Maybe there are more exercises that you could do to help me and others
become better listeners.
I have practiced reflective listening.
I think it might be helpful,
I need practice controlling my temper
especially listening to Glenn Beck..
Edwin
What I’m seeing, in terms of starting a community, something you might
think of is doing we’re doing here in the Bay Area is starting with an
empathy cafe or an empathy circle. Getting together with people who
would like to build community. And what we’re doing is just using the
empathic listening as the beginning process. So we can get together for
an hour and a half, and we do an empathy circle. So we use empathic
listening,, we have a couple of steps we do in terms of setting the
intention. And the topic is whatever anyone wants to bring up. What
every is alive and going on for them. And it’s just a time to be heard
about that. It’s good to have around 4 or 5 people maximum in a circle.
And if we have more people, like 7 or 8, we break into smaller groups.
I’m seeing this as a basic simple empathy building process. If we can
get this basic process down, that it creates a foundation where we can
start adding other processes on top of that.
If it’s a smaller group you get more chance to practice in terms of
reflecting as well as getting a chance to speak and be heard. That’s an
advantage of getting more practice by doing a smaller group.
Suzanne
I feel like I hear what you are saying but I feel like I have trouble
recall and get it from my ear into my head and then back out my mouth. I
have enough trouble doing that with just you. If I have to reflect what
you said and then reflect what Adam said, obviously that’s twice as hard
for me. So In understand how the smaller circle work better.
The reflection takes a lot of practice. I think your empathy circles
helps people practice that.
Edwin
With a small empathy circle you have variety of people and you get a
chance to speak a lot and to reflect a lot. You get more practice that
way. Once we get that practice going and getting familiar with it, then
we can start adding other practices and processes and other things on
top of that.
Suzanne
What is the next process that you would introduce?
Edwin
The first thing to do is empathy circles with maybe 4 people. Then it’s
to talk about what’s going on in our lives, to have that sharing. Then
we can have different topics. A topic can be; How do we go about building
a community?
That can become a topic. There can be multiple topics and
that’s what we would do in the community building, is to start laying
out the series of exercises or processes that are empathy building. I
have a bunch of them that I am starting to put together and that would
be one of the projects for the group to do is to start putting together.
Having the intention to build a community and then starting to do it.
Suzanne
A basic rule, regulations, whatever you want to call it. But it’s build
on listening to others and build on building your own sense of how to
make yourself heard. You would like the community to keep growing and
get bigger and bigger.
Edwin
It’s not that it’s a
religion, I don’t have a word for it, it’s just an empathy community.
It’s really about a community that is based on empathy, that works to
create community. It’s more of a solid ongoing community, a committed
community.
Like a grief circle, people have grief, they get together and have empathic listening with each other, and then
at some point you leave. Or maybe you're in 12 step, and there’s
empathic listening. But this is like, can we create community that is
really ongoing deep committed community? That’s really about having
those qualities of having empathy, caring, support, belonging and all
those values that at least for me grow out of empathy. [Note: maybe it’s creating a formal
organization. A place, a formal organization and entity, bureaucracy,
roles, etc. A place like spirit rock would be great.]
Suzanne
I don’t see how you can be in a community where it’s set aside that on
Monday night we’re going to meet at a specific cafe. Because I have to
go to work, or school, or whatever, and I don’t understand how the
community you like can be with me 24/7 hours a day.
Edwin
Yes we can get together on a specific dates and time and do things like
have a potluck, a hike. But do empathic listening, games or exercises.
It’s around fostering a type of relationship.
Adam
You have a vision of a really committed community that sticks together.
Something that is not temporary something that doesn't serve of purpose
of solving a specific problem and then the problem has been solved. It’s
something that brings people together and they stick together and
experience community going through life on the basis of empathy and all
the values that come out of that. And incorporating all the different
approaches and practices that can be used to experience empathic
connection or build upon that. You are wondering how that can be
practically done, how could such a community practically be build. I
remember you sharing earlier, a few years ago you got something started
but then it fell apart and one reason was that you didn’t have the tools
set to keep it going or build it up. So that is something you are
looking for here. So this is another go at it, because you have this
vision.
You have a vision of a really committed
community that sticks together
Edwin
Yes, and i see that we just get started doing it and that these empathy
circles are core. And if we get some people together who have that
intention and we just dialog about it that we start putting it into a
reality.
So not just talking about it, not just theorizing about
it or dreaming about it, but actually taking steps, although we don’t
know how thing work maybe, still step out and begin to do something and
a central piece of doing it is having these empathy circles. Where
people come together that share this common goal and just do it and
practice it already. I’m wondering what come up for you around that? We
can do empathic listening.
I see that we just get started doing it and
that these empathy circles are core.
Adam
I love it. I have empathy buddies who I do it with and I always love it.
What comes up for me is that I totally resonate with that. When I hear
you speak about that, I’m like Yes, oh yes, let’s make that happen.
Let’s find ways to really create that kind of communities. Something
that is based on empathy, based on the value of a human being basically.
Not on the value of being right, being wrong, doing right, doing wrong,
all that kind of stuff that we have in our culture.
I’m like Yes, oh Yes, let’s make that happen.
Let’s find ways to really create that kind of communities.
Something that is based on empathy
Where you quickly get excluded and don’t get heard because it’s all
about arguing about what is right, what is wrong, but instead have a
community where the entry point is you being a human being. That is the
entry point. You don’t have to achieve anything, do anything, blah,
blah, blah. The entry point is you are a human being, so as a human
being you are accepted and taking into.
And so that is the core value and then the first practice is this
reflective listening and then growing from there, when I hear you
talking about this vision that you have. and you said, that it’s
continuous and commitment is an issue, I’m like yes, that would be so
lovely, because one thing that I personally experienced as quite lacking
in my culture and when I look at it, I believe it is something that is
lacking is this commitment. And a commitment that is based on
achievement, so people can be really secure and really honest and open
and authentic, I believe that would be so good for all of us. I’m like
yes, I deeply resonate when I hear you talk about that.
I can personally see the value for myself and the value for all of us.
And it corresponds with the values that I care about. So I am very
excited about the idea of creating that.
Suzanne
I agree that just being human qualifies you in being in an empathy
circle, just because the fact that you're a human being. I also heard
you talk about the competition and that you don’t like thinking that you
or anyone that it has to be some kind of competition. You don’t think
that it’s the right thing or think the way that I do, and you don’t get
to be your authentic self if you have to be worrying about people not
accepting you, for you, as opposed to what they are going to get out of
it.
Adam
Thank you for touching on that point, That’s an important element of
this whole picture for me to create a community where exclusion is not
the norm. It might happen by accident in certain situations because our
skills set isn’t as
developed or we get triggered too much, but the approach is an
inclusion as opposed to the exclusion. I believe that this fear of being
excluded is a deep root of many many, of a lot of suffering that is
going on. And many problems that come out of that suffering. People
trying to cope with that. So the idea of a community where everybody
is accepted no matter what, no questions asked, no fear of exclusion,
that’s the kind of community where I believe that people could really
begin to thrive and if that begins to spread throughout society, if we
have more and more havens of that, what could come out of that. Just
imagine what could come out of that. So thank you for touching on that
point. It’s a very valuable point for me.
the approach is inclusion as opposed to the exclusion.
I believe that this fear of being excluded is a deep root of
many, many, of the suffering that is going on.
Suzanne
You just drew a very beautiful picture of what the world could be, if
everyone could be free to be themselves.
Edwin
What are some processes, structures, for getting the ball rolling? I
find the core is empathic listening. If we can get together where we
have this empathic listening that we are practicing and it becomes the
foundational structure, I find that with the listening, I feel heard, I
feel other people feel heard. It seems to me that it’s the core of
conflict resolution, because what happens in these communities is that
conflict come up, and that’s what happened in previous communities that
I was in. But then I didn’t have the tools that I have now of empathic
listening and the practice of it.
And I’ve been doing this with my family. Just a couple days ago I did an
empathy circle mediation with my sister and sister-in-law. They had been
in conflict for years and we've been doing a series of Restorative
Empathy Circles. It has been this tremendous effect in terms of bringing
people together, really nurturing the family, supporting everyone.
Everyone was feeling like no one is hearing me, but now everyone is
feeling heard. (more heard) That is allowing conflicts to bubble up but
get dealt with, I just see that this empathic listening is a foundation.
There are a lot of other tools, with the empathic listening it also goes
into restorative empathy circles for conflict resolution, we can go into
NVC, learning more about feelings and needs, we can go into the felt
experience (focusing). There’s a lot of things we can do to build on
this. But I see this core is the empathic listening. If we can get that
down, if we can get that practiced, it really sets a great foundation.
Adam
In building this community, you see a central core piece is the practice
of empathic reflective listening, because , and you shared several
experiences which included your family. You keep experiencing that this
kind of listening, brings people together. It allows conflict to come up
and get resolved, so this seems to be the basis that a community can be
build that doesn’t have to break apart, such as in the past.
Edwin
What does everyone see as ideas for our next steps. I’m seeing that we
start practicing empathic listening. I’ve created a Google doc, where as
we get more people perhaps we can keep notes and create minutes of what
we are doing, ideas that are coming up, plus we have recordings of these
discussions. We can go back and take notes. And we can just start slowly
building. We have the intention of creating global communities. I’m
working on one here, perhaps Adam you could start something there where
you are, Suzanne if you want to try starting a community where you are
in Texas. And then we come and share how is it going, what’s our
experience, what’s the struggle, and support each other in building
those communities.
Adam
Going into more strategic thinking mode. These meeting that we have
could serve as a basis for us, a relational basis to connect and work on
the project that we do locally. You in the Bay Area, Suzanne in Texas,
and Adam in Germany and then we can meet-up here and share about how
things are going. Also from our time together take out that which might
be helpful for us and others to remember, in documentation. So this will
be more of a strategic, how to come together and help one another in
building this. Like a support group and a base to come together and get
what we need and spread out and do the work.
I like that idea, I also started taking notes. I love taking notes.
That’s something I can totally relate to as well and I believe that
starting our local communities and having a base to come back to is
something much more……
Having this kind of base to come to and collaborate and know that there
is a space for sharing and being heard and getting new ideas or
different viewpoints, that make it a lot more easy to get started. If
you are all alone and you have to like reinvent the wheel and are all
alone in all your troubles around it, or the victories and everything.
I really like that idea and just to answer from my part, yes!, I really
am excited about starting something here and I love how you really
helped me and contributed to my clarity and understanding when you said
that the art and skill of empathic listening is something as you see as
a basis. Because as you shared about that, I began to see the picture
and I was like, yeah, right that’s a very good starting point. I really
like that is a starting point, because it’s relatively low level, but
takes a lot of practice, but anything does. But it’s relatively low
level so I like the idea of just starting there. Not even going into
feelings and needs and all that.
That can come later. Just start there, to make it as simple as possible
while making it as effective as possible in community building. Because
the moment people experience being heard, (finger snap) things change. I
like the picture, the glue that keeps society together, is that bit of
being heard. So I can really see how if we open up this space where
that’s the thing we do like you do a meeting cafes and people just
listen to one another. That could be really a low level starting point
for creating a natural organic community that is sort of self sustaining
and grows naturally as opposed to something that you try to impose on
people and they have to fit into and then of course it begins to break
apart.
So that helps me a lot practically as well to see that as the entry
point because that is the question, “where do I start? How do I start?
Do you rent a big room and then call it something and invite people and
no-one comes? How do you start?” Seeing that, I like that.
What came up for me is a question, a practical question, and maybe you
have an answer, I’d be curious to hear about that. How was your
experience so far in the receptivity of people and the openness to the
idea of learning this kind of listening? Because that is something I
wonder, were people generally open and enthusiastic like, ‘oh, that’s a
gift sent from heaven, I’ve been waiting for that all my life and I want
to learn it?’ or more like, ‘what’s that, and what on earth do I need
that for. It’s esoteric strange new age blah. blah.
I’d be curious to hear about that.
How was your experience so far in the
receptivity of people and the openness
to the idea of learning this kind of listening?
Suzanne
I remember saying in a previous meeting say about how we define empathy,
and one of the things I remember saying was that it has this hippy dippy
connotation, empathy does. You know is empathy like a feminist, does it
have a feminine connotation. I remember specifically those were two
reactions that you got, that I also have the same question Adam has. I
live in a house and there are four of us, and if I want to start a
empathy circle in this house I would just ask all the other 3 people and
say, Y’all come and sit around this table because I want to talk with
you about something and I would like to practice reflective listening.
Is that how I would start a circle?
Y’all come and sit around this table because I
want to talk with you about something and
I would like to practice reflective listening.
Is that how I would start a circle?
Edwin
I can start with my family. My family is evangelical Christian
fundamentalists. For them it was like this empathy is kind of weird but
I’ve been modeling it, just being empathic. When I grew up in my teens I
was more progressive, fighting with them and all that kind of stuff. I
felt like I was right and kind of self-righteous. But now I just try to
listen to what’s going on with them, so it make them more comfortable
with the empathy.
Still doing an empathy circle seemed strange to them. So what happened
is there was a fight started in my family and 2 family members at
Christmas a year ago were in conflict and fighting with each other and I
was able to empathically listen to each party and then get them to do
empathic listening with each other. And it turned into a whole family
empathy circle and it ended with hugs all around. So that was break
through, people had that resistance but then they actually saw that it
was a safe, positive experience which open the door where my sister and
sister in law were willing to do an empathy circle. A restorative
empathy circle, which deals with a hot conflict, it’s not just talking
about building community, but we have a specific circle designed for
handling conflict, and there’s a lot of steps for that. And then we did
that and 8 years were addressed in 4 hours, and then opened up to doing
a family empathy circle about our experiences growing up.
We did that on our last 4th of July independence day holiday here in the
USA. That was like a 4 hour empathy circle with my siblings. Then other
conflicts have come up and I just did an empathy circle with my sister
and sister-in-law this last Friday. It helped resolve some new
conflicts.
It’s like a building process. It’s hard to just impose it, but it’s like
looking for the doors that open. It’s almost like an improvisation of
having the intention and then bringing it in through the cracks that
open up. So that has been quite successful.
It’s a building process... It’s going to take time
It‘s not like people are breaking down the doors, yeah we want empathic
community. I have 10,000 people on the Facebook empathy page and there’s
3 of us here. So it’s not like there overwhelming huge demand for it.
But I feel if we just get started and we find the people who are really
interested in doing this, that we will start creating the community and
start modeling the community. It’s going to take time, it’s going to
take that community building. Even in the circles we’re doing on Mondays
here, the people are coming from the NVC community and they don’t have
the idea of the community yet. They are willing to do empathic listening
and share their problems that are coming up for them and it contributes.
But there’s not quite the jelling.
Adam is one of the people that really
gets it, the community building aspect. You have a real passion for
this. There are people who are looking at, ‘what is this”, I’m not quite
sure who this works. Maybe Suzanne you have a sense of it, and you’ve
experienced it but it’s going to take time. We’re going to have to work
at it, but I can see the potential, I can see, I can feel the experience
that it has the potential. I see it as the only way forward.
So Suzanne, so getting started with your household that would be one one
idea is to start where you are and say, ‘I’d like to have an empathy
building circle.” So one idea is just to bring the housemates together
and do an do an empathy circle. We have documentation on how to do that.
We light the candle, do a bit of mindfulness. We do a bit of mindfulness
to start. Set the intention, do a circle around what is important with
us, what is going on, what is alive in everyone at the moment. What
would you like to be heard about. And then everyone just start talking
and things just start bubbling up.
Even maybe conflicts in the household
will eventually bubble up and you’ll see they get resolved through is
empathic listening. You have maybe an hour or 2 circle, and then have a
closing to it. We have a candle and blow it out. There is a basic tool
or process to get the ball rolling. When we start the circle I say the
intention for this circle is empathy community building. And then I keep
reiterating that this is about building empathic community.
And the you can always come back to this circle here for support to
talking about any struggles you're having. This is a problem I’m having
with building community in our house. You can be heard about it and
you're not alone in the community building and you can be heard about
what the struggles (and successes) are and we can come up with
strategies of supporting each other in our efforts.
Suzanne
I’m trying to figure out how I take that first step and approach. I
think my sister and daughter are pretty open to new things. I think I’m
going ask them if they want to play empathy listening game with me. The
only other thing I can think of to replace community is club. You can
come and join this club.
Adam
I really, really like the idea of an empathy game. I really like that
because it could also be a very practical entry point to engage with
people who are not familiar with the idea of empathy and empathic
listening and why and what’s that. And the idea of a game and something
fun. It implies fun, it implies we do something together and usually
when people play a game or come into a situation expecting to play a
game, they are open for something new and something that is different
from what they usually do. So an empathy game, that basically invites
people to come together and start this kind of empathic listening is an
idea that I find very intriguing and very thankful that you coined that
term and brought it up, because I really see potential in that.
Immediately I was thinking of inviting friends to play games and this
empathy game is one game, you know. Something to wet their taste for
this. Have them see this is good. And calling it a game takes out a lot
of right and wrong, good and bad, stuff. They don’t have to change their
lifestyle because it’s just a game. And if they like it, there is more.
So thank you for that.
Suzanne
The game I keep thinking of is like: I’m going to build a hamburger, and
I have a bun, and Edwin says, I have a bun and I have a patty.. and them
Adam says, I have a bun, patty, and a tomato. To me that is kind of
reflective type of listening game, because you have to listen to what
the other person said. and you have to add to it. You have to listen,
and repeat it and you have to add to it.
The game I keep thinking of is like:
I’m going to build a hamburger,
and I have a bun
….
Edwin
We are doing a Christmas party game night so I’m seeing how games could
be one way of making this community building more accessible to people.
I like the empathic listening but want to be open to all the other ways
we can draw people into this, and I’m seeing games as a way of doing it.
I haven’t experienced empathy games so am not sure how that would be
done. I know NVC has created some games around empathic relationship.
Another thing we could do is to start creating a Tool Box or Toolkit for
creating creating community. I have this google doc here and I’ll send
you the url for that so we can just start laying out a little tool kit
that we can draw from for getting this started from our experience.
That’s another idea.
The goal is to have a wrap up of the session to make it more effective.Documenting the empathy circle is for effectiveness.There is a person I
have been connecting with, Rosa, she does empathic facilitation, and
what she does is a facilitator and people are dialoging and she is
writing down everything they are saying on flip charts. There’s a
documentation of what is being said and then what is being said she
organizes that and it gives a written reflection of what we are talking
about and then it creates material to start organizing and giving it
shape and then it’s something we can take action on.
It starts giving tangible form to the ideas that come up and besides
reflecting each other we have a written recording and a visual
reflection of the recording and so we’re starting to build. It’s also
going into another process called Human-centered design, which is a
design process that’s build on empathy that connects empathy and
creativity. There’s a huge amount of material on this is another big
tool. Once everyone is familiar with empathic listening that the next
thing, step, is other tools that we can use. With Human centered design,
we start interviewing each other and hearing what are your needs for
community and then we create mental models or empathic maps of each
person. And from there we go into a creativity model of how we can use
creativity to address each others needs.
There is an arc to this and empathic listening is just the very
beginning, and I’m looking at how do we build those steps and part of
the steps would be documenting what we are doing. It’s used in this
facilitation that Rosa does as well as in human centered design process.
Adam
So you're looking at the ach and empathic listening is just the
beginning entry point. One practical approach to building into this
bigger picture that you can clearly see or wonder as see that it could
be something helpful, is taking notes and taking that which we talk
about beyond the level of the movement and the reflective listening. and
get the wisdom out of it and get the challenges out of it. get the
solutions out of it, and have that extracted and accessible so that it
can be used as building blocks to build something much bigger.
I really like that idea, I love and can tell your strategic thinking
about this really meets my needs for clarity and security and hope,
because I can look into the future and be like - right if there’s
someone like Edwin that has the bigger picture in mind and want’s to
make sure that what we do in the moment and the small level integrates
with the bigger picture and works into it and then something can come
out of it. It makes things more efficient and more effective and clearly
oriented towards this bigger vision and bigger goal. As opposed to
things just happening and then either by chance they go in some
direction that we like or by chance they they don’t and there’s very
little control. And maybe we waste a of potential because nobody really
thinks about how to tap into the potential and use it. So I’m like,
yeah, I really like that. That works really well for me and note taking
is one approach I find very helpful and that’s why I do it a lot when
coaching people and talking to people, I’ve to take notes and usually
when I have a session with someone, right after the session I sit don’t
and type up a wrap up. What we went through, what we started, what
happened and we ended because I find it helpful for integrating the
process and I also have heard back that people find it very helpful to
integrate it.
You don’t remember everything and if it’s something like
this it’s very new and there is now clearly defined model of building
this community that we can refer to, we are kind of like building that
model just by experiencing it. I believe it’s very good to have
something more easily accessible than hours and hours of talking. if you
want to refer back to, what was it there, what was this, how did we get
here, or all these kinds of things, so the bottom line I really love
that idea and that direction. I'm totally on board.
I really love that idea and that direction.
I'm totally on board.
Suzanne
In this session, we started at the top that Adam painted a beautiful
picture of what the world is like if it’s filled with empathy. We
started with the goal, I think we worked down a little ways to start
reaching. Edwin has done a very good job of explaining how he sees this
going. Actually I see you farther down the road than the last time I was
in the human centered design project with you. I an see what you got out
of it. I would also like to say when you are talking about that this is
a arch, I see it more as a pyramid and we are building the bottom layer
and that the top layer is going to be Adams beautiful picture that he
drew, and I feel we’re going to be building this pyramid from piece of
the tower of Babel. You know where we have all this stuff that we have
thrown out here, and by having the documentation and the video and the
tool box we can start taking the pieces of the tower of Babel and see
where they are going to fit in our arch or our pyramid. And that’s what
I see the documentation and the video and all the work we’ve done in
this group.
Some next steps I’ll Google empathy games and
add them to the document.
Adam
I like the idea of writing up a summary about what I took out of this
call. The next natural step for me is to sit down and give more thought
to the practical, or decide how to start, the first group, what’s the
next step for me to do to start a group. Because you have one there
already, Susanne will be taking in her households, and for me the
question is, where do I start.
The next natural step for me is to sit down
and give more thought to the practical,
or decide how to start, the first group
What are the next steps?
What actions would you like to suggest, what requests would you like to
make, what would you like to offer.
Edwin
( ) write out a
summary ( ) give report on Monday circle ( ) create short how-to video for doing an empathy circles.
Adam
( ) will write up
a summary ( ) will think: about how to start the first group what’s the first
group? where do I
start ( ) request - timing that is more convenient will offer some
times that work. ( ) Alternate Meeting Times Proposal* Tuesday, between 10am and
1pm PST Thursday, between 10am and 1pm
PST Sunday, between 10am and
1pm PST
Suzanne
( ) keep eyes open
for cracks for showing empathy ( ) write out a summary ( ) do empathy game with family
( ) What games did Edwin play at NVC CHRISTMAS party? ( ) Suzanne will Google empathy games
Questions
What will be people's openness to creating empathy community?
What are peoples openness to learning and doing empathic circles?
==========
Dear Edwin,
Thank you for creating the transcript. I imagine it being a lot of
work. One thing I like about it is that it might support our project
in attracting attention, since text is accessible to search engines
and plays a role in ranking search results. I also find it much
easier to get back into what we talked about in that circle.
