Clearing the Air Practice

●When to use:

○When you want to be heard and understood

○When you want to understand someone else

●(Quotes from Authentic Relating Manuals) Requires:

○- Overcoming impulses to withhold communication

○- Weaving Shared Reality

●Removes:

○- ‘Gunk on the windshield’ between people

●Restores:

○- Affinity, respect

○- Mutual understanding of each’s experiences, motivations, values

○- Creativity, coordination toward shared goals & purposes

○- New possibilities for the relationship

“Empathy Game: Clearing the Air

of any emotional frictions & withholds

●Person who brings up the conversation invites the other, with clarity of how long (20-30 min), where, and in service of what.

●Set the stage/Intro: We will go SLOW, be precise, and make sure we understand each other, 20-30 min ‘Use WF agreements if necessary’

●Person A(starting):

○Something I have on my heart and I have been withholding up until now is…

○What happened is… (precise moment), being factual, exact words

○How I felt.../how it touched me was.../how it impacted me is…

●Person B (responding):

○What I heard you say is…(Repeat exactly what you heard to make sure you have understood)

○Is that all? Did I miss anything? Is there anything else you want to make more precise or clarify?

○OR Did I get you correctly?

●Person A

○Yes/No; Something else I want to clarify is… (Might finish with a question or not)

●Person B

○Would you like to hear the impact on me? (if yes) Hearing you say all that, the impact on me is that I feel (emotions, sensation; thoughts later)

○Optional: One way I (may have) contributed to that is..

○How is it for you to hear that?

●Person A

○[shares their impact] (give space to let it settle,take a breath; let’s look at the deeper thing that is happening in yourself) [implicitly: is Person A now more open to receive Person B’s impact & perspective? }

○Optional: (Are we open to notice and check some of our assumptions?) An assumption I’d like to check with you is… ?

○What does person A require? Is there a clear need now, or if relevant,an impulse to request an apology (given with freedom)? }

●Person B

○(if need not already spoken by person B) What would you need? Would you like x…?(Apologies, request, acknowledgment, etc)

○OR Having heard you say that I feel… (continue rounds of sharing impact if needed)

○Ending with: Having clarified all this.. How complete do we each feel? (do we want/need to reconvene?)

●Person A: Yes I feel complete about this topic (if something else, start again from the top)

●(Natural option: Moving into peer-to-peer culture emergence): Can we agree on something explicit to avoid this in the future…?

After Clearing the Air:

Continuing to work together

●A quality I have seen in your is

●What I want you to bring even more is

●Appreciations when starting to work together (in a new dynamic)