Empathy as a Life Skill for Personal and Social Transformation

“Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another and feeling with the heart of another.” – Alfred Adler.

This is Empathy Week and our theme for the dialogue is Empathy as a Life Skill for Personal and Social Transformation. Here is the link Greg has provided to the Zoom dialogue meeting tomorrow (Wednesday) at 6:30 PM

Join Zoom Meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88009019886?pwd=dHZpem9EcHYvMFVTZGs0YjJ6WHUrZz09

Meeting ID: 880 0901 9886 Password: 843014

The structured list of topics for the meeting is appended below this message.

You may find it helpful to visit a website on teaching empathy skills to children https://bit.ly/302oD5K

TED talks and good books can help. For example, Greg has previously circulated links to a talk on empathy and to a talk on how to have a good conversation, as well as a bullet point summary of a book on empathy. From any of those resources, you might “take home” just one small point that will enhance your empathy skills. Recently I watched two short videos on how to improve listening skills, and found especially useful the “three tips” expressed in the shorter of the two videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWPkHHlchIE and an almost counterintuitive idea William Ury begins to express about ten and a half minutes into the longer (15-minute) one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saXfavo1OQo

As regards the short story on empathy, I did put together a description of one, but didn’t get it under the 60-second read-aloud time limit, so I’d suggest we focus on other things in the structured list of topics.

Arthur

Here is a structured approach to the dialogue that Greg circulated recently:

There has been a great deal of emails and conversation dialogue and since our last meeting. Based on these exchanges, I would like to propose the ideas and structure below, which we can choose to adjust along the way.

Our Humainologie Dialogue Dance

Any conversation or dialogue is a dance. What does a joyful dance look like for each of us? What does a joyful dance look like for all of us? Are these the same? Is there something we can learn about ourselves and with others as we dance together each Wednesday evening?

The following why, how and whats will help keep our dialogue dances joyful. As we learn and grow, we can adjust, refine and improve them as we move forward.

Why Are We Here: To build connection with diverse people and learn something new balancing a need for some structure that also allows emergence to occur.

How Will We Connect: We will respect one another always. We will publicly or privately let others know if we feel disrespected. We will be kind. We will be open to new ideas. We will actively listen. We will contribute only what we think or feel will be of benefit to others in our dance.

What Will We Connect On: Our weekly dance card will consist of the following 7 dances:

1. Welcome, Mindful Moment & Breakout Check Ins (6:30-6:40) In your breakout, share with each other whatever you’d like.

2. Open Forum (6:40-6:55) What ideas, themes or intuitions showed up during the check-in that might be nice to dance a little with?

3. Stretching With Brian (6:55-7:05) Let’s stretch while we reflect on joy, abundance, challenge and empathy.

4. Focused Learning (7:05-7:10) Let’s draw and discuss something from our Dialogue Wisdom Well (where we aggregate great ideas and exercises)

This week’s topic is empathy. Roman Krznaric defines empathy as the art of stepping imaginatively into the shoes of another person, understanding their feelings and perspectives, and then using that understanding to guide their actions. What do you think of this definition? How can we improve it?

5. Learning Exercise Breakout: (7:10-7:30) Let’s try our build some new muscles or try out a new dance move.

Building on our topic of empathy, and in breakouts, do each of the following:

(a) Person 1 shares any single lived experience for 1 minute.

(b) Person 2 actively listens and then shares how they would feel if they had experienced what Person 1 shared for 1 minute.

(c) Person 1 shares how they felt (1 minute).

6. Learning Exercise Debrief: (7:30-7:40) Any big ah-has from our breakout exercise?

7. Singing With Leila (7:40-7:50) Let’s sing while we reflect on joy, abundance, challenge and empathy.

8. Key Learnings & Insights (7:50-8:00) Did we have any other big ah-ha moments tonight?

Participants are welcome to visit online after the dance ends for as long as they like.