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Empathy Circle Café. Join us on Zoom every Thursday at 6PM PT for an opportunity to be heard, understood, and improve your listening skills.
Last week I invited Street Prophet’s readers to sign up for our Empathy Circle Facilitator training course. <Link to last weeks Street Prophets open thread.> This is a free course that starts on July 6.
There is a prerequisite for the Facilitator training course of attending two circles. Here is a link to our schedule and there are multiple circles, some with established topics that one can choose from. <Link to Schedule.>
I would like to note that all of the Empathy Center affiliated circles listed on the schedule also have as a topic, “whatever is on your mind.” So, if you attend you are not locked into the suggested topic.
A good example of the power of this “openness” was a circle I facilitated a few weeks ago at the Empathy Circle Café. The usual topic for the Café is “How can we build a culture of empathy? However, the first speaker chose to share that they were training to be a hospice caregiver.
As it turned out one of the other participants and done similar training and each of the other participants, including myself, had experience caring for individuals at there end of life. This became the topic for the empathy circle. It went deep very quickly and everyone present shared their thoughts and feelings about the topic.
Please jump the fold for a brief discussion of the values taught in the Facilitators Training course.
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As part of the training we consider and focus on three values, openness, mutuality, and care. And these values support the value of empathy. All of these values are tough and illustrated experientially. That is we do not lecture about the values we embody the values and invite the participants to discover them in the process.
Openness
Above the fold I gave an example of openness. Yes we had a topic for the evening in the circle, but everyone was open to a generative topic of hospice and death. Openness is a state of mind that is able to “go with the flow” without distress. There was an openness in every attendee to flow with a shared new theme. And though not experienced at that circle I would expect there would be an openness to someone bringing up a different theme.
Mutuality
Mutuality is built into the structure of the circle. Each participant takes turns to speak for a agreed upon time. The facilitator gently keeps time and signals when the time is up. I use the word gently because when the time limit is reached the speaker or listener is allowed to finish their thoughts. There is no hard cut off. Also, the facilitator is on an equal level to the speakers and listeners and joins into the circle.
Care
Care manifests itself through paying attention to the speaker. This is evidenced by the quality of the reflection of the listener. As one learns the process of reflective listening one becomes able to quiet ones mind and listen to the person speaking. Care can also be demonstrated by others in the session picking up on a theme presented by someone that was speaking earlier. Often someone sharing a similar story later in the process has powerful healing effect. Care is demonstrated by knowing we are not alone in our struggles.
Throughout the 4 training session these values are expressed and our students a encouraged to share examples they encountered during the sessions at the debrief following the training.
Thank You,
Jonathan Gordon (linkage)