Why are you interested in being an Empathy Circle facilitator?
Jessica
Why I want to be a Facilitator of an EC: Because I feel aligned with my life purpose and values to be part of the “empathy movement”. EC are awesome and is a great starting point to learn about listening.
I also love facilitating and want to grow the best facilitator I can be. Combining facilitation and empathy is “la cerise sur le gâteau” (la crème de la crème). I think guiding and holding space for people to exchange empathy will eradicate dehumanization, create better understanding and awareness of our differences, will reduce violence and enhance communication.
The simple answer is because I want to facilitate ECs and I want to do it well. More than theory and reading materials, I want to practice empathy. I practice every day in my own life, but practicing here, in a structured environment, with feedback, with learning goals to reach, helps me to go deeper and helps to track progress. I enjoy being part of the community too.
Nancy
Why: Because I enjoy working with people, with learning or understanding new perspectives. I am curious about people’s thoughts, interactions, needs and desires. Leading a circle with curiosity and a hope to help people better understand each other and communication effectively is challenging and interesting.
I really enjoy facilitation just as a service and function. So taking that to a different environment such as empathy is challenging and rewarding both.
Edwin
Why: I think empathy circles can be the gateway to fostering an empathy movement for cultural transformation. This can heal the social problems, divides, and open up creativity and more social well being.
Desire to Spread the Practice.
I see the the effectiveness and power of the Empathy Circle and feel it is a basic skill and practice that needs to be spread widely. So I want to be able to do a good job of holding an Empathy Circle. Taking part in a training I hope will deepen my skills and insights. I also want to be able to teach people to be facilitators as a way to spread the practice.
Desire to Grown and Learn
I also enjoy the learning, growing and going deeper into how to do the Empathy Circle more effectively.
I see active listening and Empathy Circles which are mutual active listening, as the most effective first step toward exercising our empathy muscles and building that caring and empathic culture. So I want to spread it as far and wide as possible and that can be done with an effective facilitators training.
Second I want to keep growing and deepening my skills.
I also want to be together with others on this journey for companionship and comradely
Lewis
I love being a Facilitator because I get to experience myself and others all benefit from seeing & hearing & understanding & feeling the diversity of human bodies & minds & spirits in just two hours.
I love speaking because I get to feel heard accurately and I love listening and reflecting back because I get to learn how to hear and reflect back more accurately. :-)
Ingrid
Why: I like to connect with people on a deeper level and I want to build my skills in empathic listening and one of the best ways to do that is to facilitate empathy circles.
I am interested in being an Empathy Circle facilitator because it opens my eyes to what others are experiencing, to improve my own empathic skills, and to build relationships in the community where I live and elsewhere.
Dimitra
Why: Because we need to practise a different, more tender way of communication and I am willing to introduce this way to people. It is a good way for me to motivate my students to practise their speaking skills, I believe a lot in the power and potential of empathy.
Evan Magor
I want to contribute towards mutual empathy in the world, because I think it’s an untapped resource that will make society and life more wonderful and harmonious.
Zak Wear
As an organizer I see how people struggle to be present with each other, especially in the context of difficult questions about worldview, culture, and how we change our communities. Reflective listening gives me a lot of hope! If this skill is taught/used regularly in community organizing, it could be transformative in people’s personal lives and how they engage in the political process. Becoming a facilitator will only make it easier to utilize this method/area of skill.
William Filler
I want to be a facilitator to help spread the practice of Empathic Listening through Empathy circles.,
Toby Yesterday
There are a lot of different ways I could answer this question. In a way, this is what I have been trying to do for years - a form of it at least. I could say it is about contributing to or building a healthy society, peacemaking, etc. But I also feel like it is self-preservation. Things are not looking good in our society - it feels like they are deteriorating towards tribalism/feudalism, violence, another Dark Age if you will. Some people are preparing for this by turning towards survivalism - stocking food, learning self-defense.
I don’t know if I have what it takes to survive in such a situation, so this is my attempt to help things de-escalate and stabilize enough to avoid the worst version of that. Also, even if we do go in that direction, having relationships with people on various “sides” is strategic for discouraging them from killing me or the people I love (and generally discouraging people from killing each other).
On a more positive note, I am sometimes hopeful that through dialogue we can find points of agreement about conflicts and search for win-wins. In political conversations, people often don’t really listen or take in what is being said, even data points. By reflecting, at least I know my statements are more likely to actually *be heard*. There is a lot of psychological stuff going on here too - people need to be heard, to be witnessed, to feel like they matter.
Susan Campbell
I feel passionate about helping to make the world safer for people to be honest about and more accepting of their differences. I am founder of a body of work that I call Getting Real--which teaches 10 truth skills we need to live authentically and consciously. I don’t think people can feel safe enough to be honest until more of us learn the truth skills that I call “holding differences.” This means being able to really listen to views and needs that differ from your own while not losing touch with your own views and needs.
I think this is a very high skill, and Empathy Circles teach this in a wonderfully simple way. The practices I teach are very similar to what we do in Empathy Circles--active listening, etc. I have been a professional conflict resolution specialist for many years--having done Black-White Encounter Groups in the 1960’s as well as T-group circles where Hawks and Doves (re Vietnam War) sat together and shared feelings and stories. Even though I have done all this work, I still have a lot to learn myself. So I look forward to sharing a rich learning experience with everyone here on this team.
Sam Kifer
For a while I have felt saddened and disturbed by the national discourse and in people's inability to understand each other and have empathy for their differences (either political, racial, gender, etc.). I felt that people were not growing up with basic skills of communication, empathy, problem-solving, emotional management, etc. that allows them to effectively handle conflict and respect the validity of each other's opinions and perspectives.
The events in Charlottesville, VA were a catalyst for me to get more directly involved and try to do something about it. I started to come up with an idea for a local meet-up group where I would hold discussions about difficult and taboo subjects (such as racism), but would first teach people foundational social and emotional skills in order to engage in these "courageous conversations" through designing my own curriculum. At the time, I was also beginning a new career in social work and put the project on hold while starting my first job in the field. However, I've never forgotten about it.
When I discovered the Empathy Tent movement, I was immediately intrigued and knew that this was key in what I was attempting to accomplish. I appreciate how empathy circles allow people to engage in difficult conversations while teaching social and emotional skills at the same time. I'd like to learn to be a facilitator so that I can bring the empathy circle process into my work and eventually my community.