Empathy Circles at Work
How to Run an Empathy Circle at Work.
First of all, what are the benefits?
Team Strengthening. Conflict Resolution. Leadership Acumen.
Helps teams communicate more efficiently.
Helps conflicts resolve more effectively with a greater chance of win-wins.
Helps leaders develop their ability to listen to and value their team members’ suggestions, thereby increasing motivation, creativity, and strengthening company culture.
It is free to do and does not require developing any new skills. Empathy circles just build on the skills we already have of listening and speaking but they make this process of communicating more conscious by doing it in a certain way.
How to do it?
Before the first circle:
• Start with a Colleague. Invite a colleague to participate in an empathic conversation so you can model the conversation and talk about how it would best work in your organization. Also, you will want a colleague with you to facilitate the circle so you can model how it works for the group. Identify who in your organization would benefit and why.
• Choose some topics. Based on who the participants are as individuals and in relationship to one another, choose topics that allow the participants to reflect on what is working for them. What is going well? What recent accomplishment would you like to celebrate, and what did that accomplishment mean to you? What have you been learning recently? What inspires you? Empathy Circles can also be useful for addressing challenging issues, yet that requires greater trust and more experience.
Running a circle:
• When. Depending on the size of the group (should be 3-6 people), you may want to plan between 45 minutes to two hours for facilitating the exercise. Make sure to leave some time toward the end, to get feedback from participants and also to plan any next steps.
• Why. Share what the potential benefits are. (You can find more about this, on the "What is Empathy" page.) Share the reason for why you are facilitating this right now. And make sure they are on board.
• What. Explain what you are going to be doing. Acknowledge the potential awkwardness of this but then reiterate the benefits and make sure that everyone knows that this is something they are learning. So it makes sense that there might be a little learning curve. Have fun with that. If it is the first time people are doing this start with a prompt that is easy to speak about. Bring along a simple set of instructions. See the one-page or two-page intros offered here. You can print one of these and make copies, or create your own.
• Who. Note who is there and re-iterate the jobs of the speaker, empathic listener, and silent listener. See if anyone might be willing to be the time-keeper for timing the turns during the empathy circle. For example, the timekeeper could let each Speaker-Listener pair know when there's a minute left, before the end of their turn. The facilitators should also participate in the circle, having an outside eye creates self-consciousness. If everyone is involved everyone relaxes more.
You can also ask the time-keeper to let you know when you are approaching the time to shift into feedback and next steps. For example, if you are planning to leave 10 minutes at the end for feedback and next steps, you can ask the time-keeper to let you know 15 minutes before the end of the meeting.
• How. Invite someone else to start and choose you as the listener, so you can model reflective listening. Then when the first Speaker is finished, you become the Speaker, and choose someone else to be your listener.
Again, it's ideal to host the circle with a colleague – someone with whom you have already practiced empathic listening. Then one of you can choose to be the first Speaker, and the other one of you can be the first Listener.
This gives both of you the opportunity to model something for the group. The one who starts out as the Speaker, will model "pausing" every once in a while, so that the Listener can reflect. Meanwhile, the one who is being the Listener, models how to offer reflections. (They can also model how to ask for a pause as needed!)
Once the first Speaker is done, the person who was Listening becomes the new Speaker, and asks someone else in the Circle to be their Listener. (Please note: you are NOT both just "switching roles" here, as you want to start including others in the Circle.)
• When the time approaches for the closing part of the circle (feedback and next steps), you can let the circle know that this will be the last Speaking-Listening turn.
• Shift into the closing part of your time by inviting participants to share their feedback. What did they most enjoy about the experience? What can they bring back into their lives with them? What changes would make it work better for them? Thank everyone for participating.