Recipes for Inner Peace; Group Dialogue

If you’ve ever wondered how you could change the way people behave in a group from being either passive or aggressive into one where they actually listen positively to each other, here’s a recipe for you. Whether the group you are thinking about is a family or an executive board, or anything in between, this will work like a dream.

In the book, Recipes for Inner Peace, Jenny tries the Group Dialogue out on some of her friends at a dinner party. She invites one person, Alex, to speak about something important to her and asks everyone else to listen, asking questions when they aren’t clear what’s being said.

Jenny then asks each of the others to note down their understanding of what Alex shared and to read that back. The effect is very moving and insightful for Alex, who then makes her own summary of what she has said. Next, everyone else has the chance to say how they would handle the situation. Alex hears that, and on reflection, decides what she will do. Finally everybody relates how Alex’s story has impacted on them and how it relates to their own experience.

What a difference this is from most group scenarios, where one person offers a piece of information or shares an experience and everyone wants to jump in with their own. Only the person who has the loudest voice and most compelling presence gets to feel any satisfaction, usually short-lived until the next time when they can do the same thing.

Here’s the recipe for how you can facilitate a Group Dialogue and offer everyone in your team the opportunity to feel really heard and understood and to feel a sense of inner peace and connection with the others.

RECIPE FOR GROUP DIALOGUE

Ingredients

Invite between 4 and 9 people in your group (a work team, family members or group of friends) to participate in a Group Dialogue, telling them how it works.

Outline the “rules” and the process as described below and say that you will facilitate the process (first time around, after which someone else may wan to.)

Ask who has something they’d like to talk about (something of personal or professional significance to them), and who would like to be first.

Decide how you are going to select someone to speak first (you or the group can decide, or pick a name at random).

Restate the “rules”, especially that everyone else will listen and follow your guidelines as you take them through the process.

Method

1. Presentation: one person talks about something of personal or professional significance to them.
2. Clarification. Invite the others present to ask questions just to clarify what the speaker means about specific aspects. Don’t allow people to go into their own “stories” or explanations.
3. Summaries. Ask all present, except the speaker, to give a succinct summary of what they have understood. This is best if they write it down first and read it back.
4. Speaker’s summary. When everyone else has given a summary, the speaker gives her/his own summary.
5. Action. Ask each person to say what she or he would do. This is not the same as advice-giving. Each person is invited to imagine being the speaker.
6. Speaker’s action. Now the speaker says what s/he will do, or has understood differently, as a result of having heard from everyone else.
7. Implications. Everyone is now asked to consider the implications for him/herself in relation to the issue that the speaker has presented.

Jenny cooks up a “rustic dinner” to go with her Group Dialogue. Try her Black Bean and Sausage Stew, which you can find on our website. Get cooking now with your own Recipe for Inner Peace, and a dish to go with it. Visit www.synchronicitymagazine.ca to enter our contest. Winners will receive signed copies of two of Warren Redman’s books: Recipes for Inner Peace, and the award-winning The 9 Steps to Emotional Fitness.

Get cooking now with your own Recipe for Inner Peace, and a dish to go with it. Visit www.synchronicitymagazine.ca to enter our contest. Winners will receive signed copies of two of Warren Redman’s books: Recipes for Inner Peace, and the award-winning The 9 Steps to Emotional Fitness.

Warren Redman © September 2006

Here is a recipe for your group dialogue created by chef Robin Harnish for Recipes for Inner Peace.

BLACK BEAN AND SAUSAGE STEW

4 tb. olive oil
1.5 lb. cooked lamb sausage, cut diagonally into 1/2 inch slices
1 onion diced
2 carrots, sliced
2 celery stalks, sliced
7 garlic cloves, minced
32 oz. Can black beans
1.5 litres chicken stock
2 bay leaves
3 tsp. thyme dried, 1 tb. fresh
1 tsp. rosemary dried, 1 tb. fresh
Salt and pepper to taste.

1. Heat 2 tb. oil in large saucepan over medium high heat until hot but not smoking. Brown sausage, about 6-10min. Remove sausage and place in a bowl.
2. Add onion, carrots, and celery to pot.
3. Stir in garlic, black beans, stock, bay leaf, and herbs if using dried ones. Season with salt and pepper and bring to a boil.
4. Reduce heat and simmer on medium low heat for 30-40min.
5. Return sausage to the pot, add herbs if fresh and simmer for 5-10 minutes. Sausage should be hot.