Notes
Other Project Ideas and Notes To Sort
Empathy Circle Topics: General or Deeply Personal
There is a range of topics we can talk about in an empathy circle. From addressing social problems, to general information, to personal experiences like what are fears , stresses, anxieties, pains or problems we are dealing with. In the course we are dealing with learning how to do empathic listening. It can be more meaningful when participants can talk about deeply personal issues. Ideally we would combine the two.
Empathy Circle Topics: General or Very Specific.
We are now reading 2 or three chapters of the book and discussing them. There are multiple concepts that we discuss so we touch on the different theme and points. What if we focused just on one topic for an extend period of time. For example in chapter 3 and 4, we could have just focused the whole meeting on the topic of
what does it mean to be empathically accurate?
empathic listening be not just a skills but also a empathic mindset, or
what are qualities of the empathic mindset, or
benefits being listened to, or
benefits being a listener, or
the 4 box listening model, or
Team Based Learning
The model for the training is for participants to form teams of 3 to 6 and to do the lessons together. While someone can go through the lessons on their own, it's important to be able to practice in relationship with others for best learning and growth.
Meet in Person or Online
The material for the training is delivered by book and multimedia online. Participants can form a learning team online with video conferencing software (like Zoom, Google Hangouts, Skype, etc.) or in person.
Having an Individualist and Relational Awareness
The Listening Well book is slanted toward an individualistic viewpoint. IE, You as an individual can learn these skills.
We want to come from relational view. We are in a social and cultural relationship. We have a vision of a relational culture of empathy where we create a society that is based on these values and we want to actively work on turning that into a reality. This would mean bringing these attitudes into our training team, our empathy circle, our families, or communities and political systems, from local, county, state, country, etc.
Mauren O'Hara writes: "In Rogers' original work a key component of the core facilitative conditions for individual growth is empathy. Empathy has since been shown to be the gold standard for effective facilitation in any growth-focused relationship (Bohart and Tallman 1999). Empathy is commonly regarded as an individual-to-individual phenomenon in which one person senses the unspoken or inchoate thoughts or feelings of another. Our observations show that group or relational empathy may be even more important than individual empathy in the formation of conscious communities.
"O'Hara describes relational empathy as that process wherein one attunes to the whole entity--the group. Relational empathy makes it possible to sense the interpersonal dynamics, knowledge, unconscious processes, dreams, images, narratives, concerns, feelings, sensitivities, priorities, fears--in other words the tacit and explicit consciousness--of collectives."
Becoming a Paid Curriculum Facilitator
We will develop the training so that people who have done the training can lead teams and be able to charge for that.
Book as an Initial Jumping Off Place.
The book is a back outline to empathic listening and servers as a framework for exploring he topic and practice. We may or may not agree with the different comments, but we can explore and build on them.