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How to Use Talking Circles for Deep Communication

August 10, 2010 By 3 Comments

Long, long before group facilitation came on the scene, Native American cultures used Talking Circles to gather group wisdom for consensus decisions. In this week’s article, How to Use Talking Circles for Deep Communication, we discuss the essence of this tradition and how you can implement talking circles in your work with groups of all varieties. As always, I look forward to your comments.

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Comments

  1. Rick says:
    August 10, 2010 at 12:52 pm

    There seems to be an incomplete sentence when you describe the inner circle.
    “When working with a large group (thirty or more) consider forming an inner circle and an outer circle. Whoever is sitting in the inner circle can speak while those in the outer circle.”

    In the aforementioned sentence,”…while those in the outer circle.” do what?

    What determines who is inner and who is outer and how the “outers” eventually get their turn to speak?

    I have participated in them quite a bit, but none of the circles were larger than 23, so we didn’t need to create innies vs outies.

    Thanks for reminding me about their usage.

    Rick

  2. Tracy Pan says:
    March 13, 2011 at 2:38 pm

    My question about ‘Both negative and positive comments about what anyone else has to say should be avoided’. I wonder when you see obviously that somebody is saying something wrong, such as his understanding of a definision, can we facilitate and let everybody have a right understanding by not giving negative comments?
    Especially in a training session, the wrong saying might mislead the team. Do we need intervention to that?

  3. Harry Webne-Behrman says:
    March 17, 2012 at 9:52 am

    Thanks for the reminder, Steve… yes, this is a really helpful approach that we’ve used in creating spaces for dialogue during conflict. Old tradition, easily adapted by slowing things down and using ritual to reinforce intentions of clarity and understanding before action. I’m reminded of an article I have (somewhere in a file) from Utne Reader about 15-20 years ago that showed recent adaptations of talking circles for work with groups…. I’ll try to find it and share it with you.

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