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Restorative Empathy Circle with Democrats and Republicans > Brainstorming Page
 

 

from circle 1 - Some things I learned were;

1. to develop and have an introductory 15-20 min video to give participants an overview of the process. They can watch it before even deciding to take part,

2, do a 15 to 20 min pre circle with each person to explain the process, test the technology, and answer questions.

3. For the circle, spend more time on explaining the process.
- maybe expand the circle to 2 hours

4. do a 15 to 20 min post circle with each participant.

Possibly do a series of circles with the same participants.. one circle is difficult to get into depth.
 

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Restorative Empathy Circle Outline

 

Edwin Introduction

Intention - dialog, connection and understanding


Participant short Introductions - passions



Process Overview

   About Reflective Listening

   Guide the listener
 

Questions

 

Closing

 

 

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Introduction:

I'm Edwin Rutsch, the director of the Center for Building a Culture of Empathy and I'd like to welcome you to our Restorative Empathy Circle with Democrats and Republicans.

 

 

 

Intention

The intention of this circle is to foster empathic dialog, connection and understanding between our participants.
 

I know this is a intense political time with the elections coming up in just a couple of weeks, I hope this circle will contribute to us seeing our common humanity more deeply and finding common ground.


Process Overview

Next let me give an overview of the process we will be using.

We have 3 questions
 

Question 1: What is your most important value and what is the story of how that value became important to you?

Question 2:  What is the relationship of your value to empathy?

Question 3: How can we work together to create more empathic

dialog, connection, understanding across political lines?

 

About Reflective Listening

What is unique to this empathy circle is we do it with reflective listening.  Which is a process that can facilitate a deeper empathic understanding.

The goal is for everyone to be and feel fully hear, to the extent that they wish to be heard.

In this process I'll pose a question 
The first speaker selects one person to direct their comments toward and then speaks.

The listener reflects back what what they are hearing until the speaker says they are fully heard.

If you are the speaker, you're job it to help the person hear you. You are a teacher of sort, teaching the person to hear you more clearly.

As speaker it's good to pause periodically to let the listener reflect.
 

don't feel pressures to hear, the speaker


Then the listener will speak and direct their comment to someone else and the dialogue continues.n a back and forth fashion. 


 

Modeling Process

To model this How are you right now?
I will reflect what I hear.

 

Questions

 

Question 1: What is your most important value and what is the story of how that value became important to you?

 

 

 

Question 2:  What is the relationship of your value to empathy?

 

 

 

 

Question 3: How can work together to create more empathic dialog, connection, understanding across political lines?

 

[jot down the ideas]

 

 

Closing:

 

What is a sign of how you feel right now,

 

 

Thank you so much to all participants.
This is the first circle of what I hope will be many more.


End

 

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Notes and Brainstorming

  • From Joe Brummer

    • set clear ground rules and intention: 10 minutes

    • how to accomplish a real dialog - we want a real dialog

    • use reflective listening

    • the mediator can help with translation and reflection?

    • What is the goal -

      • empathy now

      • work together to create more empathy

      • Create An action plan.

    • Why do this? be clear about the reason to create empathy -

      •  Empathic Action - what does empathic action look like?

      • Paul Zak talks about Raising trust, and Oxytocin, connections

      • So we can work effectively together

    • be careful of bogging down in a back and forth... where's this this going
       

 


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Where to find participants for the dialogs


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