Wendy Taira 01

Empathy Team Assignment – To facilitate an Empathy Circle - 2015-09-13

team-6

I held an Empathy Circle with my father in-law Nikki, mother in-law Myleene, sister in-law Alex and my husband Rey. I asked them to share whatever they were feeling at the moment. We dialogued for close to 90 minutes.

Experience feedback:

Refreshing to share something that’s going on with you and be assured that the other party is hearing you the way you feel like being heard

Good feeling – feel lighter after talking to someone and hearing confirmation

Enlightening - should be done more. One way of expressing our ideas and emotions

Nice start to learning about empathy. I never felt like I was being fully heard because of the judgment. Felt heard differently

This exercise is necessary in relationships with intention of active listening, as things get lost

Large benefit for the speaker is to get something off their chest and not expect resolution or judgment because the speaker doesn’t pre-judge or pre-bias what they’re saying

There is a presupposition of trust in this exercise to help others in the group or hurt

Empathic sharing can be used within framework of exercise to things it was not meant to do like fix problems. (Referencing round 2 when a speaker told a previous speaker what they’d do if they were in their position)

I asked if they felt more inclined to share

Not sure

Feel safe to share

I didn’t expect so much heartfelt dialogue. There were a lot of happy tears and participants (in my opinion) were truly heard and got to get things off their chest. It was amazing to witness the varying listening levels.