Okay, welcome. We're recording this for those who don't we will be recording the big rooms, we do not record every breakout room. And so the only breakout room will be, which will be recorded will be the one that I'm in when Bill fill a trainer are for recording. If for some reason you have a strong you don't want to be recorded, please let me know we can put you in on recorded breakout room. Okay. So we'll go round. And Jana, would you like to do the beginning of the?
Yes. So welcome to our five week empathy circle facilitator training. And I'm so glad we're also glad to see you all here and for all of us to be here. And so glad to see everyone here and all this interest in developing empathy skills and building a more empathic and caring world. So Edwin has the producer role for this cohort, which means that he oversees and does the background coordination and organization and usually the technical stuff. And today bill is filling in and when can't make it and Bill has experienced being a producer and has the titular honorary role. So, and I have the honor of introducing the trainers and the trainees. So the trainers are bill here says trainer, Bill filler has a lot of experience in and Larry, Larry la horn is a trainer, Miami network here and an EN and Jordan is a trainer. And so we welcome all the trainers, and then a few of us are trainees. That means we've taken this course already in our empathy circle facilitators. And now we're repeating the training for the first or second or third time or fourth time, then you become a trainer. So Jonathan is a trainee, and DJ is a trainee. Wendy is a trainee. And Kava is a trainee and I myself am a trainee. So welcome. And let's see what else. So I'll pass this on to add Go ahead. And
oh, thank you. So you've had a welcome, everybody. And what I'm going to do now is invite you all to do a personal check in. But we do need to time limit that to about 30 seconds each. And during that time, it would be good if you could introduce yourself with your name, where you are your location? And why are you interested in taking the training? Why you are interested in taking the training. So I will call on people and I'll say who's going to be the next person. So you you know when you're going to be the next up. Okay, so I'll start with the trainers. So you can see how we tend to do this. Larry, I'd like to invite you to be the first person to introduce yourself. And then Jana.
Thank you again, I'm Larry in Florida, a retired occupational therapist, and I love these empathy circles. So I just keep coming back because I really love him. And passing on to what he said, Jenna.
Yeah, and I'm in New York. And this is my second time as a trainee, my third time taking the training. And I love these empathy circles too. And so here I am to thank you. Who's next day bill
from Jana. Bill, would you you've really already introduced yourself, haven't you? So DJ, followed by John.
Hi, I'm
DJ Chandler. This is my
third training.
So I'm happy to be here and happy to see everyone. It's really transformational. This practice, and I think about it every day. So thank you.
Thank you DJ. off after John Wendy.
Hi, everybody. I'm John Rodriguez. I'm based in Austin, Texas. This is also my second training training session. And I do a lot of volunteer work in the mental health area. And this has helped me tremendously what I do Hi.
I'm Wendy.
Can I just say up to Wendy will move to de?
Thank you. I live in the north of the UK in the Lake District of Cumbria. And I have thoroughly enjoyed so many of these empathy circles that I've been able to take part in. And like few people have said, I just keep on coming.
Okay, my name is Dee. I'm from the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. I've done a couple of empathy circles with Larry, and I plan to use this for some of my clients once I'm completed with the training.
Okay, so I'll go next and after me, Ruth, and then Karen. So I'm Jordan. I live in the southwest of England, and in the United Kingdom. And I do doing this training because I think this is a really valuable skill for as many people on this earth to have as possible. I think it's potentially transformative. That's why I'm here. So over to Ruth, and then Karen.
I am Ruth. I'm in London, the UK. I've done this training a couple of times, but I've never quite finished it. I've always like missed one of the evenings. So I'm really going to try and come to all seven. Yeah, I really like these as well. They're kind of elegant and simple. At the same time. They just work so well.
And then after Karen Jennifer
Hello, I'm Karen Johnson from Illinois. I have a commitment to peacebuilding and non violence and I can always use more practice with listening and speaking clearly.
And after Jennifer Sally.
I am Jennifer. I'm in Florida in United States. I am Larry Longhorns daughter, and I took two empathy trainings with him and my son and it made a huge difference in our relationships. So yeah, that's really why I'm here. Excited to be here.
Thanks, Jennifer NAFTA, Sally George.
I'm Sally roadman. I'm kinda on the west side of the well, is somebody and then the Sierra Nevada. Put hills and then the training too many times? Probably maybe. Okay, I'm a trainee. And anyway, I love these empathy circles.
Thank you, Sally. After George Cara, who's one of our trainees.
Yes. Hello, I'm George from Georgia. And I'm sorry, my video is interfering kind of the. So I'm George from Georgia contract with the city of DC. And well, I'm excited to be here. I have taken some empathy circles before already. And I'm excited in the rest to learn about empathy, empathy, training buildings, the culture of empathy. And yeah, that's pretty much
Cara and after
Cara, Jonathan, did you already go. So if you would like to go after car, please, Jonathan.
I'm Kara. I'm from the Pacific northwest of the United States of in Washington State, but on the desert side, and I come to the US because I think that this is exactly what the world needs. And selfishly, I do come a private coach. And it's really handy to be able to understand when people are talking to you and be able to articulate it back. Thanks
Jonathan.
Thank you. I'm Jonathan Gordon, and I'm from the San Francisco Bay Area. And I'm a community activist in Vallejo, California. And I'm interested in introducing reflective listening and quality listening into the Vallejo political goal culture.
Thank you. Now have I missed anybody. Everybody been Okay, good, thank you. In that case, I will now pass on to Wendy.
Thank you so much. And, and I think most of you actually probably know what the current course purpose and objectives are down, just reminders. So the purpose of this training, and the empathy circle practice generally, is to create a culture of empathy. Excuse me. So the learning outcomes we hope you take away from this training, all of us that we understand and become familiar with the goals, the values and the core structure, that the empathy circle, so that we can guide others through the experience, that we deepen our experience and skill of being an empathy circle facilitator, that we become aware of our strengths and our learning edges as a facilitator. And we learn to respond to typical challenges that can arise in any empathy circle. And fourthly, that we leave this training, having established strong bonds with each other, and a sense of community with each other. And that we continue to support each other with our training and growth towards building a whole culture. And then I'll pass back to Thanks, Wendy.
So now I'm going to describe the course arc. So a brief description of each of the six sessions are the five sessions. So in the first session, the goal is to review the empathy circle practice, to be introduced to some of the core values of a culture of empathy, and to experience the benefits of the practice. In the second section session, we'll be focusing on practicing the how to do an empathy circle. So the How to introductions, and you will be beginning to facilitate an empathy circle. In the third session, we'll demonstrate the How to again, and we'll present some more challenging circle situations at a level at which you feel ready. In the fourth session, we'll get more time to facilitate and discuss any challenges that might arise. And the fifth session is the new one. And in this one, we'll be giving a short introduction and practice on how to use empathy circles in conflict resolution. And the sixth session, we will use that opportunity to integrate your learnings and gather feedback about your experience. So that's me with the call stack. And I'll now pass you to Larry, for the core values and principles of a culture of empathy.
Of course
Larry
Barry there.
muted yourself, Laurie.
I was muted. Hello, I'm back. All right, I'm going to share a screen and go through.
Well, can you go through the core values decreed goes off first. And then we'll go to the Mentimeter.
All right, hold on, please. Sure. Thanks. Let's share the screen. And I'll have to get the screen to the correct screen. Give me just a moment please.
There it is, our values and we're going through our outline and to the Mentimeter. And our core values we'll talk about first we're familiar with things like mutuality, openness, care, curiosity, clarity, empathy, inclusion, and equality, seeing everyone's humanity. The Empathy circle is part of a larger vision of a culture of empathy. That is the vision of nurturing mutual empathy. Between all people of the world, as well as humans and nature, the values are still a work in progress. Here are some of the core values of a culture of empathy. And we are pasting a link, I can probably do that in a minute into the chat. Empathy is at the core of the culture of empathy. Most basically, it means sensing and feeling into the experience of others. Self empathy, is sensing and feeling into one's own experience mutuality, we aspire to reciprocal empathy between all people openness, to expressing oneself, and being open to listening to other care, having a sense of what is necessary for the health, welfare, and well being of oneself. And others. This is not an exhaustive list. And there are links to all of this. And we're going to show you what you all have heard of now as the mentee meter. And you've probably placed your three values into the, what's called the voting on the multimeter. If not, we can post a link into the chat to make that available so that you can do that now. And I will click the View Mentimeter. And it should pop up the live presentation of what everyone has entered so far, in a word cloud, or a representation that when a word is repeated, then the word gets larger in the word cloud. And so we have mutuality, empathy, courage, wisdom, authenticity, honesty, truth, compassion, humility, spaciousness, vulnerability, respect. And these are the values that we've all entered into our multi our mentee meter. And you can always do that at another time, if you'd like to. So now I'll stop the screen share, and turn it over to Jonathan. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Are there any questions from some of the newest attendees about the empathy circle? Actual process? Okay, I'm going to give a brief description of the process. What it comprises of is four roles that everyone in the group abides by the roles are the speaker, the active listener, and the facilitator, and the listener. I'm going to try and share my screen here, which isn't working. Hold on folks. There we go, share. Okay, I'm going to be providing a link in the link for everyone to get access to this document. And I'm going to just share with you some of my experience says as a facilitator, starting a breakout room. I think it's very important to greet everyone and to establish that that that we are joining together spontaneously, and what we're doing is important and to live in the moment and everyone agreed to treat each other civilly and and with courtesy and respect. And I'm going to pass this on to Tim bill. Thank you get out of share screen. Okay. There we go. All right.
All right. Okay, so, let me see here. And if I were to Okay, so that's the link to the Yeah, what Jonathan just showed.
Thank you.
So okay, so essentially, just to kind of review very quickly, there'll be facilitators and we will handle that. The people who have trainer or trainee after their names will be able to facilitate the circle. And that's what you'll be learning to do. And then, in the the empathy circle, there were really three basic roles. One is the speaker, the speaker talks on the topic. In this case, we're talking about the values of empathy. Or, and this is very important, whatever's on your mind. So you can go off script, if you want. That's totally okay. The trickiest part in this is to be the reflective listener, because essentially, we're conditioned to respond, oh, teacher, if the answer, go on me. And that's what we're conditioned to do. But in this case, what we're trying to do is to help the speaker go through their process. And to do that, we want to reflect without judgments even agreeing or sympathizing or anything like that. Just trying to understand you can repeat the words, you can paraphrase, you can infer, if that's, you know, that seems appropriate, what the speaker is saying. So that's the reflective listener, and then the silent listeners help hold the circle, pay attention and respond, a lot of times, you know, the circle will go in various directions, depending upon what somebody spontaneously decides to, to share. So, in a minute, now, we're going to be going to the breakout rooms, where that's going to happen. If you are in a room with me, then we will record that room. The other rooms will not their three breakout rooms, so the one here will not be recorded. If you feel uncomfortable with that, just let me know. And that I can move you to a non recording room. And just be aware that I might shift people around a little bit during the session, so I apologize if I have to do that. And we'll get to it. Before I start, are there any questions that people have? Okay, looks good. Okay. All right. Yes, I'm sorry. Yes. Question.
Oh, doesn't matter. I was just wondering how many minutes?
Oh, we've been up there for about about an hour. But an hour and a half or so and 15 minutes, I'll give you a warning when it's when it comes.
I meant for the you know, the speaking time, but I guess that's
interesting. The four or five minutes, I think we can do five minutes we have for the groups will be five people. And so that should be five minutes should be good. If you want to, in your group decide on four minutes. I know that, you know Anna's talked about there'll be a break so people can you're not glued to your chair for the whole time. So you can take a break. And you know, so we'll see. So you can adjust between those five and or four minutes, depending upon what feels comfortable for your group. Okay. All right. I'm going to open up both journalists there any burning questions. I'm going to open up the rooms now. And then we'll get started and happily listening and being heard. All right.
All right. All right. So DJ, you're in the room with me. Do you feel comfortable facilitating?
Sure. But I don't like being recorded.
Or you don't like being recorded. All right.
I can be with you. I'll deal with it.
Okay. Yeah.
It's cool. Bill. I can handle it.
Okay. All right. Thank you, TJ. I appreciate your flexibility. All right. All right, then I'll hand it over to you, DJ.
So,
welcome back, everyone. We can each take one minute to share our experience and insights from the empathy circle. So how did one if values relate to empathy and a culture of empathy or whatever, it's alive for you? And I'll call on people to move it along faster? And let's see here. So maybe we'll start with the new people. Jennifer, would you like to add you? Can you appear? A break?
Because our group's second a bio break right now.
Oh, okay. So we should go ahead then and a camera would you like to stay?
debrief, I had a wonderful time we dive deep into not just the values themselves, but what value what, and I learned holy bunches about myself, I love these circles for that. And they let me play with a timer in my screen. So thanks, guys.
And mostly, would you like to speak for a minute?
My time.
Bruce, you're muted. Sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead, tell Ruth is
I didn't put my hand up, I just was moving around a lot. Because the futon sliding down.
So we have a minute to share what insights we had. And today.
Yeah, it was good to get back into it. And it was good to see how quickly we can get quite go day. Yeah, it was interesting, because we had an issue in the middle, but I'm sure someone else will cover that in their checking out. But yeah. I really enjoyed it. Yeah. Thank you.
And would you like to share?
Oh, I really enjoy being around it. People learning and learning together. It's so exciting. There's just something very wonderful and magical about that.
And
I think about I'm thinking about mutuality. And again, that kind of linking in with that we've got trainers and trainees and people new to it, do empathy circles. And that we are, you know, the equality, equality and the mutuality of that. And that we're, we're doing that in a in a in a kind of a democratic way, or how do I say, an empathetic manner. And I love it. Thank you. Thanks for the privilege of being here with you.
Thank you. Yeah, would you like to share?
Sure, um, well. It's interesting. Especially in our society today, we're so kind of isolated in these little, you know, media streams, or whatever. And it was interesting to share that my frustrations are the same as other people's frustrations. And, and it makes me wonder why, where there's not more change towards sort of really coming together as a community. And that's what I love about the circles. And that is that we were able to create the community, we had a bump in the road, but we dealt with it openly and honestly. So I really appreciated all the people in my group for that. Thank you.
Thank you. Deep would you like to share? Sure.
I enjoyed our, our session a lot. We went deep into values, and the values that make up who we are is one thing, but we also went into things that are of value to us, like possessions or whatever and how those are values too. And so that was really interesting. Oh, and the value of play. We all agreed that play was important and we didn't see where it was, or I didn't see where that was listed as our core values. Thank you
Yeah, I enjoyed it very much. As I shared in the group, this is just my third time being part of this have empathy circles previously in this group? Yeah, it was interesting how we went from, you know, talking about the values of, you know, our values, and how they relate to the empathy circles. And we kind of just naturally migrated into that, how those are not that top values in the culture, and how do we shift from the current culture to culture of empathy, even though that wasn't quite deliberately announced, we all just kind of gravitated toward that. So it was really an interesting exploration in ourselves and the communities were a part of.
Thank you. Well,
I think by the end, we were talking about transformation. And, like, how did we do it? I think, even just in education, and I kind of see that is that by having fun having games that are like a blast, and kids are feeling relief from being authentic and able to listen and understand each other. They're not gonna I mean, this is my hope that they wouldn't choose the paths of their parents.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, circle was awesome. mutuality, equality, it just brings such peace to everyone. And fun, we had fun. We were laughing. And I think fun is really important. And I just want to mention that the neuroscience shows that our brains axons connect much more quickly. If you're doing an activity, that's fun, than if you're just rote ly learning something fun is really I'm going to lift that up. Yay, fun. Thanks.
Thank you, Wendy.
Oh, yeah,
I just, it's such a privilege, you know, to, to just spend so much time, you know, because it's 90 minutes, quite a long time, in a way. And then we covered a lot, you know, from the value of deeper attention to authenticity, to honesty, temper by kindness, and just on one hand, quite wide ranging and yet seen that, you know, the commonality. Yeah, it's just a real privilege. So thank you, Tom.
Thank you, John.
Yeah, it was an interesting experience. I liked seeing the dynamic and how things. Flow, I think that it's what I noticed is that a few things, but one of the things is that it's going to be challenging for me to stay neutral and not want to pick up where somebody else left off on something and bring that conversation forward, and just create new leaf from nothing every time. That's, that's going to be the interesting challenge for me.
Thank you, Jennifer. And John.
Oh, that's just like, every time it's the best part is meeting new people, meeting people from around the world, and listening to what's going on in their life, and what's important in their life. And oftentimes, for me, it's, you know, I can I can relate, and just wonderful conversations, and it just the more practice, the better makes us being practical summers. Thanks. Jonathan.
Ah, well, I was grateful to be here today. I decided to sign up literally at the last moment. And what I'm trying to do is to become a better facilitator to support our Thursday's empathy in this tool Schools Project.
just froze a little bit
till you come back and join Are you there? Yes,
I'm here. Thank you. So Well, Jonathan is back I guess
you first Jonathan. So we, we only had a pint
I'm very grateful to be here. I actually learned quite a bit. And I'm practicing to become a better facilitator. So that I can now be the host, sometimes on the empathy in Schools Project sessions, which are on Thursday.
Yeah. Yeah. Yes, thank you. So my videos interfering, so sorry, and syncing DJ to further some, some advices. Chat about the day, try this. The next time it will be better, I guess. So now, about the process here. main main thing, it's how the reflect our reflections and souls of each of the group member facilitates and inspires you some sorts and others. That's the most important thing I guess how to insights from every time when we have this empathic listening and empathic cycle practice. And another message, what I got is it's practices much important in this process, right? Like, it comes with a practice, when many things comes from this practice. Thank you. Thank you.
Yeah, it was really
great. I feel like I have 341234 new family members. It was great. And we really focused on honesty, which is my favorite thing to do is to be honest. And we just embrace one another with our honesty. And that is such a beautiful thing. It's such a rare thing in this world. Thank you so much to my group.
Guess I'm left.
So I'll just say briefly that
the empathy circle was very precious. And yeah, I really appreciated the discussion on values. And then also about a vision for how we might help a society transform. So he suggested a new word for combining science and kindness. And that would be wonderful. And, and I also appreciated the self reflection of sometimes the difficulties we have and maintaining kindness. And just, maybe sometimes it's appropriate. It's alright, we can be kind to ourselves as well. We're not perfect. So thank you so much. And then yeah, time is up.
Okay. So Kara, you'll be doing the closing.
Bring us in. So the last few closing things that any final comments from any of our trainers? Were anything that you'd like to share that hasn't been shared yet?
No, I just say that the issue of recording came up. And I apologize that I wasn't clear about that. And generally, in the future, people who will be in the room with the producer, whether it was Mike, me or Edwin will be recorded. It's done for educational promotional purposes. And if you don't, you can be in the other rooms. But just to make clear, and I was I could have been clear about that. So I just wanted to make that. Thank you.
Thank you. So let's review what we did in this session. And so to summarize, we reviewed the core values of culture of empathy. We explored how those values relate to empathy and a culture of out of empathy. And then we participate in an empathy circle and dive real deep. Sounds like everybody got a chance to dive real deep today. So what's next? Next is Session Two where we will participate, facilitating a mini empathy circle, you'll want to get familiar with how to facilitate an empathy circle in the instruction page, and prepare to introduce an empathy structure, an empathy circle process. In the next session, I will post a link to that here in just a moment. Assignments, you will be getting an email. So to do remember to fill out the session feedback survey so that that there will also be a link in the chat. Hold your own empathy Buddy Call. So a couple of clarifications on that. There is a web page that explains it and it will be in the email. It is important to have a support as a facilitator, so you know, get a buddy, it's everything's better with a buddy. And the benefits of a Buddy Call is having people to co facilitate with So ask your questions, share your thoughts, help each other out. And then my screen just froze. So I can't see what number three for our assignments is.
Oh, okay. Buddy tagging. Okay. All right, I'll tag in. We've talked about the how to the email the Buddy call, if you can facilitate it, empathy circle with family or friends. That's great. That's optional. And then the feedback session, I think, did you already? Is that already in the chat? I? Yes, it is. And thank you, Jana. And so we will do jazz hands.
He has his hand up.
I'm sorry. I didn't get to. Yeah, Larry, go ahead.
Thank you so much, Bill, when you were suggesting if there's any final comments, and it just been mentioned about kindness. And what came to me was, be the kindness you want to see in the world? I think Gandhi would agree with them. Thank you.
Thanks, Larry. Okay, now I can see everyone is. Are there any other comments? Okay, if that will go on to the jazz hands. And so we'll do the jazz hands. And goodbye. See you next week. Great meeting you. And then for people who are the trainers and trainees. So stay for the post session. And we're ending early actually. So people are getting to we're on time. Okay.
Thank you so much for facilitating the whole thing.
Oh, my closure. You guys are great. I always love working with you. Alright, so I'll see you next week was we'll see you next week. And we'll go ahead and then for a new trainers and trainees who stay back. I'll leave this open, but it's break time to say take a
break. Thank you.
Bye, everyone. Thank you
Thanks for jumping on.
Sure. Thank you for the buddy jumping
on. Sure. That's absolutely. It's, it always happens. Okay. So the first order of business in the post session here is to take a bio break or take a three minute break. So I'll be here and, you know, get do what you need to do. Then we'll start up in a few minutes.
Three minutes how long?
Three minutes or so
ago, I realized we needed to stay the extra time and I need to go get our grandkids but I we have 10 minutes left. So I'll be here till the end and I'll squeeze out a little bit more time.
Okay, I'll try to get you a try to get your comments first. Also, if you're going to be you know, if you want to be a trainee, you can take it again if you want, but then you would come at 930 a half an hour early and stay half an hour later. So if you want to go into that trend and that tract of being a trainer, then you are in the pre production and the post production. If it doesn't make a difference to you right now. No problem. You still welcome
to get to the the truthful trainer level on how many. So verse three,
it would be five times taking the training five times on the fifth time. You're then a trainer.
Trainee, we're at least we accomplished one threshold because I remember we got a certificate of recognition as
a participant you got to have a certificate for completing the training. Edwin has a certificate for the trainees to. And so the question for you really is what skills, whatever the label is, or the title, whatever skills you want to learn, you can learn here. And then when you come as a trainee in the pre production and post production, you'll actually be presenting part of the training. And then as you go along, then you learn to present other parts. And then behind you can see me, producer, but I have yet to master all the facets of producing. So I do a sort of quick and dirty version of what Edwin does. He's really very thorough. And so the way Edwin does the producing is is really very detailed.
Yeah, so it's like five turns to reach the trainer or reset right by going over,
essentially, yeah, but if you want to do that, then come to the pre and posts.
Okay, yeah, I'm gonna ask you something on before you go. Yeah, so you're in the Pacific coast. A timezone. Oh, central
in Texas.
Central. Okay. Okay. All right. All right. Well, it was great having you in the circle. I, I look forward to seeing you next week.
So here, thanks, everybody. Bye, bye, John.
Okay. So I guess, let's see. And Sally and Wendy. And I guess we're about three minutes. So there's Sally. And we'll be coming back in. So, Wendy, yeah. Good. You're there. And and are you there? All right. There she is, Hey, okay, great. All right. So what we do here is we go along, kind of giving our feedback, our impressions of the training. I like, I wish, what if any group requests from the group so basically, you know, positives and challenges. And I'll just go around my screen of the session. And Larry, I'll start with you
sincere. Everything worth for now. It was just incredible. What a great circle. I don't wish for anything better. I just love these empathy circles. This just keep going.
Okay, thanks, Larry. Great. And oh. Nothing.
I don't think I have anything set the moment. It was great. Good.
Okay. Kara.
Right, I was lucky to just sit in on my first one. Thanks, Donovan. And he took all the heavy lifting back them up beautifully. I would love or would wish I like what if? What if we had a chance to have one where we just messed with like, timers and timing and communication pieces. Because doing in the circle is incredibly disruptive, which we learn by my mistakes. Thanks for letting me go through that everyone. But I did learn so much from it. And so having a place where we could do that would be really
exciting. Okay. All right. So I guess in the pre and post, we could we can do that. Also, on Wednesdays at nine o'clock Edwin has, that's an that's a place where we can then go through that and give you some time to do that. In these trainings we could do in pre and post, but people's time is really so we're kind of compressed. So we're kind of caught a little bit in between a rock and a hard place, but it's nothing that we couldn't address at some point. So great. DJ, go ahead.
Um, yeah, it was
it was different. You know, it's,
um, I think that
we need to be more clear about certain things before we go into the circle and I like your idea, Kara about timers and timing. I like to know how much time I have left. That's just her Personally, and I do know that the timer on the screen that zoom as can be wonky, because zooms wonky, right? And so one time it just kind of like shut me down twice so I'm not going to be all gung ho on let me be the timer all the time.
