Reflective Listening

To Start the Game
Empathy Circle Reflective Listening

As a rule, we are trained to respond to others. In this activity, we learn to reflect our best understanding of what the other person has said. The Empathy Circle is a practice of mutual reflective listening. Here are some basic Empathy Circle rules:

Speaker: Speak on a given topic or whatever’s on your mind in the time allotted. Pause often to let the Active Listener reflect. Say, “I feel heard” when you feel complete.

Active Listener: Reflect as best you can what the Speaker is saying. Avoid judging (or even agreeing) or adding your own experiences while you are the Active Listener. You can repeat, paraphrase, summarize, and infer to best reflect your understanding of what the Speaker has said.

You can find more about the Empathy Circle at 

https://empathycircletraining.com/ 

and

https://www.theempathycenter.org/home

To start, each Player takes one minute to listen to another Player and reflect what they understand that Player is saying. Then they switch roles.

The Speaker can speak about a selected topic or whatever’s important for them. Tip: The Speaker should stop after speaking for a short time, so the active listener doesn’t have to remember too much. 

The Reflective Listener does their best to reflect what they understand the speaker is saying by restating what the speaker said. Tip: Do not offer your own opinion by disagreeing, commenting, judging, or even agreeing.

To Advance: After the time is up, the Speaker says whether they felt heard and understood or not. If the Speaker has felt heard, the Reflective Listener is ready to start the game. If not, they can try again until the Speaker feels heard.  

The Speaker and the Reflective Listener, then change roles.

This activity needs to be completed successfully by all players to start playing the Prop Game. (It doesn’t count as a Turn)