2019-11-27 XRFDH
XR Future Democracy Hub: Empathy Cafe:
How might we best build an XR facilitator army and tangle steps you will take?
Short URL: http://bit.ly/2DWpvfU
This free workshop used the process of the Empathy Circle to explore how Extinction Rebellion can best build a facilitator army to embed new democratic tools into the DNA of society. After setting the context, the session will explore deeply the ideas we all might have and harvest the results for taking tangible steps forward.
- Learn and practice the Empathy Circle process for constructive dialogue.
- Contribute to deepening democracy."
HOSTS
XR Future Democracy Hub http://j.mp/2K5b1Oq
Extinction Rebellion Empathy Circles Work Group
https://facebook.com/groups/685938591830987/
EMPATHY CIRCLE
An Empathy Circle is a structured dialogue process that effectively supports meaningful and constructive dialogue. It increases mutual understanding and connection by ensuring that each person feels fully heard to their satisfaction.
How To Take Part in a Basic Empathy Circle (25 min)
How To Take Part in a Basic Empathy Circle (9 min)
Empathy Circle 1: Facilitator: Edwin
(View Video On YouTube or On Facebook)
How to deal with aggressive people?
Empathy circle as baseline practice.
Empathy circle to process Impacts.- ie Roger Hallam- Holocaust statement
Other practices are needed. To deal with issues.
People are thrown into facilitation without having been trained.
Frustrations come up from poor meeting facilitation.
Need more effective and systematic facilitator training. Need a baseline.
Need peer support
Need a clear pool of skilled facilitators to call on.
Need skilled professional marketing for creating the army. Skill professional in marketing and design.
There are different strategies for getting people engage in facilitation
Have Specialists
Have Rotation of facilitation
Want to share the power in facilitation. mitigate for power
Trouble makers - need to be listened to - to feel heard.
Some people feel so bad they can’t come into a circle.
concern that Some people are too sensitive to be in an empathy circle.
How to effectively promote empathy dialogue with different people. Need skilled people for this. To design speed dating dialogue.
Having off the shelf processes is helpful
Empathy circle help cross fertilize ideas
Séverine adds :
A possible answer to those who are more hostile or trouble-making people is to have a 2 persons empathy circle
Empathy Circle 2: Facilitator: Richard
Video Recording didn't work
Empathy circles as a way to interact about “what is true”.
Truth not just “posed” by scientists.
Would people be willing to listen, when everyone wants to speak?
Circles could spread organically as its simple, easy to learn.
Inspire people to get involved.
From debate to deliberation, which needs active listening
By the information age, the concept of “truth” is changing.
to also include in a sense a form of “collective” emotion.
As humanity we have to learn to deal with this extended form of truth.
Empathy circles and citizen assemblies are valuable tools here.
Empathy circles has this feature of radical inclusion
Post-truth: an explosion of opinions - and speakers, by the internet
Emotional truth vs factual truth
Empathy circles as a first step to start listening - to each others emotional truth.
Empathy circles as a first step, before going to a citizen assembly
(By empathizing and active listening - before you speak yourself, its tricky to connect with ones own thoughts)
The first part of a citizen assembly could be an empathy circle, to tune in to listening
The outcome of an empathy circle is not so much epistemological knowledge, but more some kind of “connective knowing”.
We live in a post-truth time, obsessed with facts, we all play the fact-game
How do we include emotional input, how to develop a fluency in “post-truth”.
Haris: Hold empathy circles and embed the culture of active listening before any large-scale citizen assembly event takes place
Empathy Circle 3: Facilitator: Karolina
Empathy Circle 4: Facilitator: Bill
Video Recording didn't work
Edwin
I took part in the empathy cafe which looked at forming a facilitator army.
I really enjoyed being part of the cafe and thus understanding better what the process is...
A few bits of hopefully useful feedback:
I did not know the process when we went to rooms – how long we’d be; that we’d have a number of ‘rounds’ etc.... this was tricky
We were never steered towards the facillator army question, so never talked about it – my fellow (American) participants and I had an interesting chat about American politics.... It was never clear if process of product was the aim...
One of my fellow participants had clearly not ‘got’ the idea of empathy and was not steered in any way by the ‘facilitator’..... I did not feel able to do so, and it messed things up quite a bit.
I hope that’s helpful
Peter