As we have gone through the 16 Chapters of the Listening Well book, it has become clearer that the central component of the initial empathy training I would like to design is the Empathy Circle as a person to person, peer to peer, self guided learning and practice Team. The reason is to make the Empathy Circle as easily reproducible as possible so that it can have as wide a distribution as possible for an many people as possible.
I envision a participant lead course as compared to a facilitator led course. I would like the empathy circle to be the core component. That participants can form an empathy circle learning team for 2 to 6 participants to take the course together.
There would be a lesson web page with instructions, readings, instructional video, and other support material so that participants can run their own circle on a peer to peer basis. There would be a lot of support material for people to form their own team.
The will be lots of time for practicing empathic listening. This is an empathy boot camp of sorts. The basic skills and way of being that are foundational to the next steps.
So a focus is to
Articulate how to take part in an empathy circle.
What it is,
What are the benefits
What to expect,
support for taking part
possible challenges that may arise and how to address them.
etc.
Creating tools for people to be supported in holding their own empathy circles.
Could be on of the intentions is for each participant to host their own empathy circle. Come back and get support.
Create a minimal viable product: Put together and test a most basic viable training. Right now it looks like a 6 week course.
Promoting the Empathy Circle as a process.
We want to promote the empathy circle as a process that people can implement on their own in as many situations or contexts as possible. i.e. family, friends, community, work, school, government, etc.
Participants Create and Led their own Empathy Circles.
Paid Facilitated Basic Course
While the basic course can be self lead by participants, we also want an option that it can be a paid facilitated course. So that someone with experience can facilitate and organize that course with 3 to 6 participants. They take the leadership role to bring people together , etc. And get paid for their time.
Start with 3 or so empathy circles on personal positive sharing.