Like to welcome Kathleen owergan And Kathleen Kathleen's work is focused on helping communities, organizations and individuals become empowered to fulfill their greatest potential through dialog, negotiation and collaboration. Their topic is the impact of empathy and empathy circles in conflict. So look forward to hearing you. Kathleen, thank you so much.
Thank you Jana, and thank you, Edwin, for all of the beautiful work that you are doing in the world through the empathy circles and these summits I have found in my 25 years as a peacemaker that one of the root causes of conflict in every context is the absence of empathy. Absence of empathy can cause conflict or can be born out of conflict, and can be born out of conflict. When, when in conflict, people are often unable or unwilling to empathize with the experiences and the emotions of the people they see as their opponent or maybe even as their enemy. They see no common ground in which they can relate to the other differences, whether they be different politics, different religions, cultures, different appearances, difference in perspectives about something that has happened, should have happened or should not have happened, or any other significant difference can lead us to close ourself off to the other person and to objectify them. And when we objectify another person, when we lose sight of their humanity, we are less inclined to want to hear their perspective, understand their experience, or feel their pain. Yet each and every human being wants to be deeply heard. We want to be understood. We want to have others relate to our experience and our feelings. And in my 25 years of experience as a peacemaker, I have seen time and time again that one of the most powerful tools for resolving conflict and healing relationships is empathy, the empathy that is evoked in empathy circles restores our recognition of our shared humanity and inspires a sense of common ground that helps us to find our way to negotiating Win Win agreements and Win Win agreements are what lead to lasting peace and this is because in the empathy circles, a sacred space is created for each person to feel safe in sharing their thoughts, their experiences, their beliefs and and for The others in the circle to feel safe hearing them. The empathy that is created in the sacred space of sharing and deep listening evokes our recognition of our common ground, which gives us a foundation for what we call needs based negotiation that results in the Win Win agreements I mentioned a moment ago. So to give you an example of you know of one experience that I've had in witnessing the power of of empathy circles, and it wasn't in a mediation that I've done, although I'll tell you about that in a moment, but I was at the empathy center once for a one of their facilitation trainings. And at the end of the training, when we were doing cleanup and all of that, that one of the team members was out getting ready to clean off the barbecue that we had used and and and decided that one of the quickest ways to get started on that was to was to light the barbecue and just let it sort of burn off all the grease and residue that was on the grill. And so got that started, and then got distracted and left the area briefly. And in that time, the fire got kind of bigger, and we were in a it was a on a wood deck, right? And so the fire is getting a little bit bigger here. And and Edwin came out and saw the fire, didn't know what was going on, or why it was burning, or anything like that, because the person who had. Uh, left the fire burning. Wasn't there to explain it? And so of course there was panic, because Edwin saw, you know, this is a wood deck. There's this fire going. It's getting kind of big, and we're in the mountains of California, and we know about fires in California. And so of course there was high upset, got triggered by that, and fear, and all of the strong emotions that go with a dangerous situation like that one that could really, literally explode and and so, of course, he, you know, put out the fire, and the individual who had left the fire, you know, came in and you could just, you could feel the tension in the air. It was just, it was palpable. You could cut it with a knife. There was high emotion on both sides. And immediately Zach, who was the other person who had had left the fire, said, We need to have an empathy circle. And I was so impressed, because so often, especially, forgive me, gentlemen, but often men take a warrior approach to that high degree of upset, right? And, and they, they, they do that battle thing. And, and instead, I saw these two men immediately in the presence of all that high emotion. Recognize this is a moment. They were mindful. They said, this is a moment for an empathy circle. And they sat down and they had it as a mediator. I honor confidentiality. They had their conversation between them. I was not mediating it. I wasn't asked to mediate it. So therefore I felt that that was a confidential conversation, so I did not listen in. I did not so I don't know the the depth of the dialog that happened, but what I did see was them go into the circle with this high level of emotion, and them come out of the circle with deep understanding and negotiated agreements about how this would be prevented in the future. And so through the empathy circle process, they co created a better tomorrow. They prevented a future disasters from happening, they resolved their upset. They came to to a deeper, more profound relationship through that experience, in my observation, and I was able to witness them walk in their talk. And if this was a fairly new relationship to me. And so I wanted to see whether these people that I was beginning to be associated with and learning from, whether they were actually walk their talk, and they did, and it was astounding. And so that's one example of where I've seen the power of the empathy circle. When I when I since I have learned the empathy circle process, I have brought it into my mediations, although, in all honesty, I don't say, Okay, everyone, we're going to have an empathy circle now, because sometimes it just doesn't feel right for the moment. To label it an empathy circle, what I do say is, I'm going to invite you all into an opportunity. And I loved that, that what Rosa had said earlier about reframing the opposition to empathy as an opportunity, right? That's so important. I said to I say to people in mediation, I'm going, I'd like to give you all an opportunity to deeply hear one another in ways that perhaps you haven't before. And I'm going to invite you all to create a safe space with me for each of us to be able to safely share our thoughts and to be safe and to feel safe in hearing the other person's thoughts, and as you do so, I encourage you to not just hear them deeply, but to listen, to learn and understand. And then from that process, we will look to see whether or not we can negotiate some agreements that help will help you all co create a better tomorrow together and time and time again, when they have taken the time to do this with me and they're willing to do this with me, that we find that they have new deeper understandings of one another and of themselves and how they are showing up in the other person's experience. And the consequence of that was that that conflicts were resolved, relationships were healed. I've seen families who were in deep conflict for generations, and. Actually find a new way to be with one another and see each other, not as objects, because we so often objectify each other when we are in conflict, but to see one another's humanity.
And I noticed earlier when when Rosa was speaking, that Kara put a comment in the chat about how she uses empathy circles in her leadership trainings and the value of leadership development. And that spoke to my heart, because I have so often thought imagine, ladies and gentlemen, what the world would be like if our world leaders developed empathy toward one another, toward one another's countries and cultures and beliefs and and had empathy circles with one another when they are having their interactions with each other, especially in times of world conflict. Imagine, ladies and gentlemen, the millions of people who would still be alive today because of the wars that would never have happened if only our world leaders would develop empathy through the practice of empathy circles. So there are so many profound applications, from the microcosmic level to the macrocosmic level, from the individual level to the multinational level of developing empathy through the practice of empathy circles. Thank you. Applause.
