Lou Zweier

Topic:  Why the Deceptively Simple Structure of the Empathy Circle is So Effective.

9:40  Speaker:  Lou Zweier (10 min)

Summary 

Lou Zweier, a member of the empathy center board of directors, discussed the importance of maintaining the core structure of empathy circles, which he has been facilitating since 2016. He emphasized the significance of mutuality, ensuring everyone gets a chance to speak, and the use of time turns to manage speaking time and prevent any one person from dominating the conversation. Zweier highlighted the value of allowing speakers to express themselves freely, without strict rules, and the importance of reflection for making speakers feel heard and understood. He noted that these elements contribute to the empathy circle's effectiveness in fostering genuine communication and empathy.

Outline

Empathy Circle Origins and Personal Journey

• Speaker 1 introduces Lou Zweier, highlighting his long-term collaboration with Edwin and his roles in the empathy center and California State University system.

• Lou Zweier reminisces about the origin of empathy circles with Edwin and expresses joy at reconnecting with Russia, a long-time colleague.

• Lou shares his background in nonviolent communication and restorative circles, emphasizing his extensive experience with empathy circles since 2016.

• He describes his public listening project in Petaluma, California, where over 200 people have participated in empathy circles over the past three years.

The Importance of Empathy Circle Structure

• Lou Zweier emphasizes the simplicity and effectiveness of the empathy circle structure, despite ongoing experiments and changes by others.

• He plans to discuss the key structural elements that he believes are crucial for the success of empathy circles.

• Lou mentions that he has prepared two slides to guide his discussion on the importance of mutuality, time turns, speaking freely, and reflection in empathy circles.

• He stresses the importance of not discarding fundamental elements while allowing for experimentation and adaptation.

Mutuality in Empathy Circles

• Lou introduces the first structural attribute: mutuality, which is essential for ensuring everyone gets a chance to speak and be heard.

• He explains that mutuality counteracts the natural tendency for some people to dominate conversations, flattening the hierarchy within the circle.

• The facilitator, being a participant, also contributes to the mutuality, ensuring no one is overlooked.

• Lou highlights the importance of equal speaking time, which is facilitated by the use of time turns.

Time Turns and Their Role in Empathy Circles

• Lou discusses the significance of time turns, which ensure roughly equal speaking time for all participants.

• Time turns limit the length of speeches, preventing individuals from dominating the conversation or going off on tangents.

• They also provide a natural break, making it easier for listeners to tolerate difficult or offensive content, knowing there is a limit to how long it will last.

• Lou notes that while he generally adheres to strict time limits, he may occasionally vary them based on the needs of the conversation.

Speaking Freely in Empathy Circles

• Lou emphasizes the importance of allowing speakers to say whatever they want without excessive rules or restrictions.

• He explains that giving people too many rules can hinder their ability to express what is truly important to them, especially when they are emotionally charged.

• The empathy circle provides a free space for individuals to express their feelings and thoughts freely, without fear of judgment or control.

• Lou highlights the focus on listening in empathy circles, where the power lies in how we listen rather than in controlling the speaker.

Reflection as a Key Component of Empathy Circles

• Lou introduces reflection as a crucial element of empathy circles, noting that it is not a common practice in normal conversations.

• Reflection allows speakers to feel heard and understood, which is essential for building trust and connection within the circle.

• It also slows down the conversation, helping participants to process difficult or complex topics more effectively.

• Reflection interrupts the typical pattern of immediate objection or challenge, allowing speakers to feel truly received.

The Role of Silent Listening and Becoming the Speaker

• Lou briefly touches on the importance of silent listening, which allows participants to fully absorb what is being said without interruption.

• He emphasizes that the listener eventually becomes the speaker, bringing a sense of emptiness and openness to their turn to speak.

• This dynamic shift changes the conversation's flow, reducing the focus on immediate responses and encouraging deeper understanding.

• Lou concludes his discussion by expressing his hope that his insights will be helpful and contribute to the ongoing development of empathy circles.

Transcript 

https://otter.ai/u/xD6-TS0-tnEBvJGYQRbSgWmV31I?view=transcript

Thanks. Thanks very much. So fun. They go down the memory lane with Edwin of this origin of the empty circle, and then listening to Russia. Haven't seen Russia in a really long time, so feeling a lot of joy right now. So I'm going to so, you know. So I started doing empathy circle work with Edwin, I think, in 2016 something like that. So I've been doing this a long time. And I also have a background in nonviolent communication and restorative circles, which Edwin mentioned, both of those. And for the last three plus years, I've been doing a public listening project in my hometown, which is Petaluma, California, where we do usually in four week blocks. We do empathy circles, and people are invited from the public to come.

 We've had over 200 people, different people participate over time. And much like Russia, we see people coming, you know, repeatedly, and people really learning a lot from that experience. So the what I'm going to share today, so when I was asked to talk or when I thought about, what would I want to talk about? You know, as more and more people have learned empathy circle practice, and people are going off and doing different things with it. 

People are experimenting. Like Rasha explained that she was experimenting with different, you know, changing different parts of the structure. And that's fine, but what I because I've been doing this a long time, and I've, I think I've, well, what I've seen is that the simple, it's amazing, that the simple structure of the empathy circle produces kind of a magical result. It's very simple, but amazing things happen in it. And so I wanted to share my thoughts about the bits of structure that make up the circle and why I think they're important. So as people experiment and try different things, you know, they don't throw out something that is important, and that doesn't mean that things can't change. 

People should experiment. But I just wanted to share my learning about what I think is really important, about the different pieces of structure. So I've made up a couple of I made up. I just have two slides, Richard, which are really meant to just help guide my the things I want to say so, so the first attribute of the structure of empathy, sort of structure that I think is important, is mutuality. And I think, you know, one, one of the things about the empathy circle, I say this often when I introduce it, is one of the things it does is it interrupts our bad habits of communication. 

That's one of the advantages of the structure and mutuality in relating, in talking and communicating is one of the things that if you kind of watch what happens between a pair of people or and more so even in a group of people, a small group of people, is mutuality does not happen naturally. You know what happens naturally is, some people talk a lot, some people don't talk very much at all, and a lot of times, one person or two people will dominate conversation. And so mutuality is, I think, a really important attribute of the empathy circle. It ensures that everybody gets a chance to speak, you know, and be heard for what's important to them, and including the facilitator, you know, the the facilitator is also a participant. And so that kind of mutuality also flattens the there's no hierarchy. 

It reduces the kind of hierarchy in the circle. So I think mutuality, the idea that everyone gets an equal chance to speak. I think that that's really, really essential. And time turns, which is the second thing that really helps support that. The fact that people are timed means that it means a couple of things. It means one that everybody gets a roughly equal time to speak. It means that speakers who tend to tell a lot of stories or tend to go on and on, they get limited in what they are saying, and they learn to get to the point more quickly over time.

 It means that if somebody is saying something that's very difficult for people to hear, either the idea that they're expressing or the way they are communicating is, like, you know, offensive, or it's very hard to hear, it means there's going to be a limit on how much time people have to listen to that, and that makes it, you know, more. Um. Intolerable. Knowing that there's a limit to how long this is going to go on makes it easier for people to tolerate listening to things that they disagree with or that they might be offended by.

 So time turns for that reason are really important, and it doesn't mean that I never as a facilitator, I never vary the time. I mean, if somebody, you know, if, if, if a reflector is taking a really long time to reflect the speaker, I might give the speaker a little bit more time, because they're not really getting a lot of, you know, they're not having much time to speak. Okay?

 The third point is speaking freely. So I think it's a really important attribute of the circle that the instructions are to the to the speaker are, say whatever you want when it's your turn to speak, you know, say whatever you want. And you know, this comes out of a lot of experience of mine and trying to teach communication skills to people, both nonviolent communication and other communication models. And when you give people a lot of rules for speaking, they have trouble saying what's important to them. 

You know, often when someone has something in them that's really important them to say, there's usually a big emotional component to it. And when I'm feeling a lot of emotion, I'm not thinking very clearly. I can't be really careful about how I'm expressing myself when I'm feeling strongly about something. And so the I think the a great attribute of the empathy circle is that it's a and others have said this, it's a free space. It's, you know, speak however you want say whatever it is you need to say, get it off your chest. And there's more focus on listening. You know, not not really trying to control the speaker, but trying to not control the listener. But that the power is in how we listen to what people are saying. What do we what are we listening for?

 You know, maybe when I'm not listening for their judgments, I'm not listening for their bad language, I'm listening for so why are they saying this? Why? Why is it important to them? How are they feeling about what they're saying, and why is it important to them? And yeah, I think that. So I think that's a really important attribute of empathy circles. So then the next is reflection. So if you watch what happens in normal conversation between two people or in a small group, you know reflection rarely happens and often in empathy circle, when people are being reflected, people will say at the end of an evening, I don't think I've ever been listened to like this before, and it's because we reflecting what people are saying is not a habit that people have, and so reflection lets the speaker feel heard. 

That's one reason it's really important. Another is that it slows down the conversation. So in terms of talking about things that are difficult or where people have big differences, slowing down the conversation is one of the main things that helps people hear each other across differences. Another is another aspect of reflection is that the it interrupts what happens in normal conversation, which is someone will say something, and then someone will object to it or challenge it in some way, asking questions or saying, No, this is my experience, or something like that. And so then the speaker doesn't feel received. So part of the importance of reflection is for the speaker to feel received. Part of the importance minute Leo is to slow the conversation down, and another part is for people to understand that listening is about understanding the other person. 

You know that that's actually the purpose of listening is to receive the other person. So I'm going to skip over silent listening and say that another important thing is that then the listener becomes the speaker. So when the when the because you've been doing the listening and you've been having to reflect when you become the speaker, you're kind of empty. You haven't been sitting there thinking, Oh, how am I going to contradict what they're saying? How am I going to respond to what they're saying? So there's a kind of emptiness that I think also changes the dynamic of the of the conversation, and that's about

time. Lou, yeah,