Edwin Rutsch

Sonja interviews Edwin

You are an expert on empathic listening. What is the experience of redesign?

I find it the best process to rewire the brain to become more empathic.

It is like an exercise.. You have to exercises repeatedly.

We will exploring the nature of iteration. continuously improving the empathy circle process. I’m really excited about that. ie Improving the process and also learning design.

Has the process changed, or is it being done differently?

We are doing basic empathic listening right now, but usually its more deep with emotions mirroring like

    • setting the intention

    • lighting candles

    • mindfulness exercise

    • tap into emotion. and do physical motion.

    • With the empathy circle we can add steps to redesign and add more methods to make it more effective

    • etc.

Is there space to improvement?

Right now we talking..

what is the most effective question to ask for the dialog?

What different question to ask to improve the process?

You make guesses.

We can do the Focusing process we can do as well,

Process of focusing in primarily not about thoughts but about taping into and empathizing with feelings.

I only speak to felt experiences it take lots to directions to deepen the relation.

There is also role playing and have different pieces come together

That Last part was interesting

I have good stories for how to do that.

You were really involved

Multifaceted and profound

People may feel bored by the empathic listening.

We need to explain that is like doing a basic exercise.

We are practicing, this and it needs to be done over and over rewire the brain.

There is a desire to ask questions, dig deeper, to help, etc. That is not helping with fostering empathy and for the other person to feel deeply heard.

workshops/2015-07-25

Patricia interviews Edwin

(notes by Velina)

How are your feeling about the empathy circle?

    • Edwin is feeling some anxiety about the format but with the dialogue he is feeling better hearing all of the feedback. [needing effectiveness and reassurance]

    • He Liked the ritual of the empathy circle and using the candle and mindfulness with intention setting to set the state but the empathic listening part also felt short.

    • The one hour feels a bit short since from experience he noticed that it takes about an hour to warm up and then people start sinking into feelings.

    • He did a lot of these circles before and it was nice to do it again.

    • He wants to do it a lot more empathic design workshops because he thinks that is the answer to refining the process.

    • He sees the need for more educational material such as videos addressing specific problems. Like maybe a FAQ but more like most common concerns then have a list of solutions or maybe video examples and showing the possible remedies

      • [how might we design educational material for the empathy Circle?]

      • [how might we design a FAQ for the empathy Circle?]

    • Detaching from the circle. Feeling bored. Boredom not exciting.Curious about the quality of the circle. Exploring the boredom. The feelings of the different participants involvement. Maybe having silent listeners take notes in order to feel more engage.

    • [edwin is concerned about people detaching or withdrawing, wanting them to stay engaged and involved. (why)

      • How might we foster involvement and engagement with participants?

      • How how might we assist edwin with his issues around people not staying present, detaching and not being present?]

(notes by Melissa)

Edwin feel about empathy

    • Anxiety about how it’s working

    • feedback is helping on getting back on everyone in the circle

    • it’s good to have ritual to add more empathy to other people

    • Want more time to do empathy circle so that the connection could be deeper - but also sees that to do the full cycle, we only have an hour.

How to improve

    • Practice/consistence/do it a lot of empathy circles to get a lot of experience. practice makes better

    • Do video and sample of empathy circle

      • Explain what’s right/what’s wrong/ how can we do it

    • Find anxiety in the process to improve how we do empathy circle

Feeling that need to improve

    • bored/ not exciting this involve with the empathy quality

    • how to make more involvement

    • How to make it more engage> write doesn’t topic in the empathy circle